five and two

A sports presenter on radio remarked that a particular football team was now five and two. Unless you were familiar with the conventions of that sport, you might not have realised that this meant five wins and two losses, the whole phrase being cut down to the bare bones of five and two, just two numbers with a linking conjunction. So using the chart above we would read the second line as ‘Australia are 6 and 3 against England’, that is, Australia has six wins and three losses against England — a very satisfying situation indeed.

How you enter that into the dictionary is not immediately obvious but I guess it has to go in under and as an expression  — (number) and (number). In golf, however, the same remark would mean that the player was five points ahead with two holes to play.  This illustrates the point that convention and context are so important to communication.  The jargon of each sport is comforting to those in the know.  In this instance the shortening of the otherwise clunky phrase is useful and creates an item to add to the insider knowledge.  To outsiders of course it presents a brick wall of non-comprehension.