A nutmeg (or tunnel) is a technique used in football or field hockey, in which a player rolls the ball through an opponent's legs. This can be whilst passing to another player, shooting or occasionally to carry on and retrieve it themselves. Nutmeg is the Brittish name for this move. In many other European/Latin and African countries the Nutmeg is called "Panna".
The origins of the word are a point of debate. An early use is in the novel A bad lot by Brian Glanville (1977).[1] According to Alex Leith's book Over the Moon, Brian - The Language of Football,[2] "nuts refers to the testicles of the player through whose legs the ball has been passed and nutmeg is just a development from this". The use of the word nutmeg to mean leg in Cockney rhyming slang has also been put forward as an explanation. The most likely source, however, was postulated by Peter Seddon in his book "Football Talk - The Language And Folklore Of The World's Greatest Game".[3] The word arose because of a sharp practice used in nutmeg exports between America and England. "Nutmegs were such a valuable commodity that unscrupulous exporters were to pull a fast one by mixing a helping of wooden replicas into the sacks being shipped to England," writes Seddon. "Being nutmegged soon came to imply stupidity on the part of the duped victim and cleverness on the part of the trickster." It soon caught on in football, implying that the player whose legs the ball had been played through had been tricked, or, nutmegged.
There may be some basis in this story in that unscrupulous New England settlers apparently sold wooden nutmeg and cucumber seeds to native Americans.[4]
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