October 25, 2019　=========

☆  provoke 挑発する

============================

If you provoke someone, you deliberately annoy them and try to make them behave aggressively or badly. In sport, this is unfortunately a tactic that many players use to try and win. They try to provoke the opponent so that they make a mistake and therefore miss or make a foul.

A lot of the time, in team sports like rugby, American football and so on, the referees can’t really hear what is going on, so players often verbally provoke their opponents. When you suddenly see a player attacking another player for what looks like no reason, you can usually assume that they have been verbally provoked. Is this the same in sports in Japan? Do players provoke opponents as one way of trying to win?

Bye,

Chris