against the run of play
- idiom
- Jargon
:
en contra del juego
- The goal came against the run of play!
Examples
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Their goal came against the run of play, as the opposition had dominated most of the match.
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The underdogs managed to score against the run of play and shocked the leaders.
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Fans cheered when their team equalized against the run of play in the final minutes.
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Liverpool scored against the run of play last night.
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The underdog team scored the winning goal against the run of play, surprising everyone in the stadium.
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They managed to score against the run of play, even though the other team was dominating the game.
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It was an incredible moment when they scored against the run of play, despite being outplayed for most of the match.
How Expected
1
2.3
- Jargon
219
3.5
- Informal
16
3.9
Surface Forms
Morphology
against + the + run + of + play
The components ('against' + 'run' + 'play') give a compositional clue: 'run of play' can be parsed as the general flow or sequence of actions in a game and 'against' signals something contrary to that flow, so a learner could infer 'contrary to the general play'. However, the precise sports-specific nuance — that a team scores unexpectedly while being dominated — depends on knowledge of the fixed sports idiom 'run of play' and is not fully predictable from the words alone, so it is not fully transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Against the run of play comes from watching a game where most action moves one way. The 'run of play' is the usual flow of the game, so to score against the run of play means to score surprisingly while the other team is in control.