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In this football language post we explain the newspaper headline, ‘Tunnel bust-up over red card from the Telegraph newspaper from the Newcastle versus Southampton game in the Premier League. You can see more newspaper headlines here and don’t forget we have hundreds more explanations of football language in our football glossary. If you have questions or comments about this or any other phrase then email us at: admin@languagecaster.com.
Newspaper Headlines: Tunnel bust-up over red card
The opening game of the season between Newcastle and Southampton saw the first red card of the season when Newcastle defender Schar headbutted the Southampton attacker Brereton Diaz in the 28th minute. In football if another player hits, punches or uses their arm or head to another player’s head then they can be punished with a red card and this is what happened to the Newcastle defender. He used his head against the head of his opponent after the attacker had pushed him to the ground. The referee had no choice and gave Schar a direct red or a straight red card – he was sent off.
Many Newcastle fans and players were upset at this red card as they felt that the contact was minimal – there was not much contact at all. They also felt that the Southampton player had made the most of it and because of this he was booed for the rest of the game by the home fans. This bad feeling continued at half time when the players started to argue and fight on their way to the dressing room and we can call this a tunnel bust-up. This bust-up did not take place on the pitch but in the tunnel of the main stand. The headline calls this a ‘bust-up‘ which usually means a strong argument or a fight though maybe not a serious one. The word ‘over‘ is used here to mean ‘about’ or ‘because of’; so they had a fight or a bust-up because of the red card incident. We could summarise this headline by saying that there was a confrontation between some players in the tunnel at half time because of the disputed red card in the first half.