Weekly Football Phrase: At the Death

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Football Phrase of the Week: At the death

In this football phrase of the week we look at some language from the recent 2026 World Cup qualifier between Hungary and Ireland, including ‘at the death‘ and ‘hanging on‘. You can read the transcript for this post below, while you can also check out our glossary of footballing phrases here and visit our site to access all our previous posts and podcasts. If you have any suggestions or questions then you can contact us here.

DF: Hello everyone. This is Damian from the Learn English Through Football team and I hope you are all doing well.

Welcome to this week’s football phrase which is, of course, when we look back at some of the football language from the past weekend. And today I will be talking about Ireland’s dramatic victory over Hungary in their Group F clash at the weekend. To do this, I will focus on a couple of phrases that the Irish TV commentator used during the match: ‘at the death‘ and ‘hanging on‘.

Stinger: You are listening to Languagecaster (from an Irish fan)

@rte2

UNBELIEVABLE 🔥💚🇮🇪 Troy Parrott scoring the 96th minute goal that qualified Ireland to the World Cup Play-offs 👏👏

♬ original sound – RTÉ

DF: Yes, you are listening to the Learn English Through Football Podcast and that message was in Irish from a very happy Ireland football fan. Now, we recently looked at language used to describe qualifying for the World Cup finals, including ‘make the finals‘; ‘secure a place in the finals‘; ‘book a spot‘ or ‘claim a spot‘ and on today’s show we are going to talk about how Ireland made it to the play-offs for the 2026 World Cup. And we’ll be looking at the phrases, ‘at the death‘ and ‘hanging on‘.

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At the death

DF: So, at the death means right at the end of something and is often used in football to describe something that happens at the end of the game. It is quite a dramatic phrase and so we use it to describe something that happens right at the end of the game when it is almost impossible for the opponent to come back. So, if a team scores at the death it means that they have a goal right before the final whistle; maybe a winning or equalising goal. A similar phrase would be ‘last-gasp goal‘ which is another way of saying a goal at the end of 90 minutes, at the death.

Hanging on

Another phrase that was used in this Irish commentary is ‘hang on’ or ‘hanging on‘. This means that one of the teams wins or draws the game despite lots of pressure from the opposition and we usually hear this expression towards the end of the game: so, the team is hanging on – they are just about winning (or drawing) even though the opposition is constantly attacking their goal (maybe we can hear that they are ‘peppering the goal‘; lots and lots of attacks).

DF: Now, let’s take a listen to the dramatic commentary and see if you can hear these expressions. Before we do, let me remind you of two of the Irish player’s names: Defender Liam Scales and attacker Troy Parrott.

Commentary Transcript

RTE: Scales is up after it…Scales wins the header… a chance

Yes! There’s the goal! There’s the goal! That’s Troy Parrott

That is unbelievable. He’s scored a hat trick and right at the death Ireland have done it. I’ve never seen anything like it. Absolutely remarkable. Right at the end. Hungary have been caught…they were hanging on. It seems like for the whole night. Certainly when it went two-two. This is just stunning.

3-2 the time is up The referee has to finish the game. I’ve no voice left.

DF: So that was how the Irish commentator called the goal on RTE which is the Irish state broadcaster – it really was a dramatic end to the game indeed. Let’s take a look at some of the language that he used.

At the start of the commentary he talks about the Irish defender Liam Scales jumping for the ball – he’s up for it. And when Scales wins the header he suddenly realises that there is a chance of a goal as the ball bounces loose.

He then shouted ‘yes!’ when the ball goes into the net and then finally realises that it is the Irish forward Troy Parrott who has scored it and that he has ‘scored a hat-trick‘ – three goals. He then adds the expression, ‘at the death‘ which means right at the very end of the game, remember that we use this to describe something very dramatic. He mentions a similar phrase later, ‘right at the end‘ when describing this late, last-gasp goal.

He also mentions Hungary and that they had been ‘caught‘ which is a way of saying that they had been shocked at the end and he suggests that this may be because they had been ‘hanging on‘; they had been under lots of Irish pressure, especially when the game had gone to 2-2.

He also uses three adjectives to describe this moment: unbelievable, remarkable and stunning and all of these are quite positive indeed. He cannot believe what is happening (unbelievable) because the moment is such a special one (remarkable); and that it is extremely impressive or beautiful (and that’s stunning). The commentator also finishes this part of the commentary by saying that he had no voice left – much like many Irish supporters on Sunday evening!

Stinger: You are listening to Languagecaster (a French fan)

DF: That message was from a football fan in French. I wonder can we get more football fans to send us on a stinger (or a message) for our shows; just say ‘you are listening to ‘Learn English Through Football.com’ in English or in any language that you know!

So, on today’s football expression of the week we looked at the phrase, ‘at the death’ as well as ‘hanging on’ after the recent 2026 World Cup qualification game between Hungary and Ireland.

And how would you say these phrases in another language that you know? How about your favourite team, have they ever scored a goal at the death? Or even lost a game at the death? Let us know by dropping a post on our forum or on the comments’ section below this post here at learnenglishthroughfootball.com.

Enjoy all the football this week and we’ll see you soon with another football-language podcast this weekend as we welcome back domestic football an it’s the North London derby! Bye bye.

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