Not knowing the trialists. I completely understand why they don’t give their actual names, but I end up spending half the match on my phone trying to figure it out.
— Ally (@LincolnCity1884) June 16, 2021
This is a great one from Ally. Why is it every year your club puts out a list of players with the name ‘trialist’, as if the 21st century allows for anonymity of any kind at all? Google has photograph recognition software, Twitter is a shared space where football fans of clubs the length and breadth of the country gather, but your club think omitting a name from a teamsheet will hide a player’s identity. Look lads, unless you stick him in the mascot outfit, or tie his agent up in a cupboard for a month with duct tape over his mouth, fans and other clubs are going to know who your super mystery triallist is. Just stop it, it’s like ordering a diet coke with your Big Mac in McDonald’s: futile.
Even worse, it leads to two of my personal pet hates. the first is the media joking about how you have brothers on trial, A Triallist and B Triallist. I remember the first time I heard that, I smiled, a bit. Last season, for the 1600th time, I wanted to gouge my eyes out with a blunt pencil, or (even worse) retweet something the EFL Hub posted.
Secondly, it leads to those special types on the internet claiming they know who it is, picking up names from anywhere and everywhere and linking them with your club. They hear another player shout ‘Tony’, and scour Transfermarkt for all free agents called Tony. It must then be the guy who last played in 2017 for Boreham Wood, right? Clearly, you heard ‘Tony’ and there’s no chance they were shouting to Tony, your captain for the last three years.
