Of all the newspapers in print and online; I think that The Guardian has the best coverage for football. Each Wednesday online they have a segment called ‘The Knowledge’ whereby people email in quirky questions about football and readers and Guardian writers themselves attempt to answer them for next week’s edition.

Today’s knowledge had an excerpt form and archived edition where someone had noticed during a match between Wales and Russia, that the letters that made up the abbreviated names of each team in the top corner of the broadcast, spelled WALRUS. He wondered what other names of aquatic mammals could be created from the abbreviations of football teams.

One suggestion was that Belgium and Uganda would produce the name BELUGA; which the writer of the article stated was a species of white whale, famed for its tasty eggs. This is obviously not true and while I am certainly the type of pedant who will point out small mistakes in things; I am not the kind of person who writes to newspapers to point out these mistakes (because that would require effort and I would probably tire of doing it half way through) This time however I just couldn’t resist and sent the following email.

Hello

I just thought I would be a pedant and inform you of an error you made in The Knowledge today 12th March.

You said that the Beluga is a species of white whale best known for its rather tasty eggs. Beluga Caviar eggs actually come from the Beluga Sturgeon which is a large freshwater fish. It is entirely unrelated to the Beluga whale, which is in fact a mammal, and therefore does not lay eggs at all, but gives birth to live young.

Great site though; Guardian Unlimited Football is by far the best football news site around

Cheers

I was rather chuffed to receive a reply shortly afterwards as follows

Hi there

Thanks for your Beluga-based email. It's a pretty shocking error, which slipped through twice as that section of this week's Knowledge is drawnfrom the archive. I've tweaked it to put minds at rest. Not least mine.

Cheers