46th minute

This may be extremely obvious and basic but it suddenly occurred to me the other day that, in any given match, there is a certain set of minute numbers that happen twice. Somehow it had never occurred to me that, for example, if there’s a goal in the 46th minute, it’s either really late in the first half or really early in the second. Furthermore, because the clock resets to 45:00 after half time, there’s no quick, default way of acknowledging the added minutes played in the first half. You might say there was a goal in the 95th minute, but it’s actually the 98th minute, factoring in first half injury time. And if there’s lots of injury time in the second half, you might say ‘they played 100 minutes!’ like that’s a lot – but it’s actually even more than that! And it’s clear from just that short sentence that there were 10 added minutes in the second half — but no way of knowing how many in the first half.

I’m not saying any of this should change — it’s just something I’m thinking about for the first time.