Part 4 – 'Hitting it too well'

If you’re thinking of awarding a prize for the most ridiculous expression in football, this one’s right up there with the worst of them.

How many times do we hear a manager, a commentator, a player or a pundit come out with ‘He hit it too well’ when a shot is saved?

Just think about that for a moment. The clear implication is that ‘he’ would have done a lot better if he hadn’t ‘hit it’ so well, which in turn suggests that striving for the best technique is a complete waste of time.

If all this is true, what happens next? Do we have training sessions where the coach instructs the players on the art of not hitting it too well? And if scoring is about not hitting it too well, then how well is well enough? Can you imagine Thierry Henry, Wayne Rooney or Michael Owen religiously practising how not to hit the ball too well for hours on end?

Then you begin to wonder if this great insight is confined to football. What about the batsman who isn’t scoring runs or the tennis player who can’t serve aces? If only they knew it was because they’ve been ‘hitting it too well’. Then there’s the gymnast who would win a hatful of medals if only her technique wasn’t so good, or the formula one driver, or the pole vaulter, or…

Take it a stage further. Imagine the reassurance of being operated on by a surgeon who has perfected the art of not doing it too well. Think how comforting it would be to sit in a plane, secure in the knowledge that there was no danger of the flight crew handling the aircraft too well, and no chance of air traffic control concentrating too hard.

Then come back to earth. And accept that in football the idea of ‘hitting it too well’ has been created and perpetuated by a minority whose misfortune is to struggle through life with just a handful of brain cells going at full blast. While hoping and praying that no-one will ever stop to think about the rubbish they come out with.