I've read several times, especially on teletext, headlines like, and this is purely an example, "Wigan THUMP Huddersfield", when, to my mind, winning by only 14 is hardly a "thumping".

Warrington - Harlequins... now that's a thumping.

A gap of more than 20 in a low-ish scoring match, to me, is a "thumping". By that I mean 24-0 would be a thumping, but I wouldn't consider 54-30 to be a thumping, both team's defences a bit too leaky for that.

So, take the list below, and fill in an example scoreline you think matches that description. The headline should read something like "Team A [iBLANK[/i Team B", obviously with additional words for context or rearranged if necessary.

Tight
Close
Pinch
Nip
Defeat
Comfortably Defeat
Overcome
Easily
Thump
Thrash
Trash
Overhaul
Teach
Give... a Masterclass
See off
Embarrass
Humiliate

don't think anybody cares

You replied within a minute. Give it a chance.

Tight 16-12
Close 22-16
Pinch 22-20
Nip 23-22
Defeat 22-10
Comfortably Defeat 28-10
Overcome 32-28
Easily 30-4
Thump 24-0
Thrash 40-4
Trash 50-4
Overhaul 40-36
Teach 24-0
Give... a Masterclass 50-4
See off 36-20
Embarrass 60-0
Humiliate 70-0

A personal favourite of mine

You've classed a thump as being 24-0 however if that score was in a cup final then it would be a humiliation, kinda like a 27-0 scoreline

Well, yeah, you should take these in the context of two "supposedly" even matched teams.

Like today, Warrington-Harlequins, you would have expected to be evenly matched given both team's form, injury and league position. The headline on teletext was indeed "Wolves humiliate Harlequins".

Likewise ourselves and Huddersfield was a tough one to call (and I believe the bookies had Hudds as favourites).

All I'm getting at is that so often I see scorelines where there's about 10-14 points between the teams, and they have a headline that uses the word "Thump" or "Thrash", when in all honesty, it was nothing of the sort.

You are right in what you say mate but I suppose there's 2 other things to consider. Firstly the performace, for example our defence was immense vs Huddersfield and we offered plenty in attack too. Based just on the scoreline the game is nothing special but as we all know the lads really put in an unbelievable display defensively so in that regard we did "thump" them. Also don't forget the main purpose of a headline is to grab attention and make people read the article, one that says "Wigan Thump the Giants!" is going to attract more readers than one that says "Wigan win at Huddersfield" or "Wigan too good for Giants!" etc.

Just keeping in with the fairness, there wasn't such a headline this weekend, but it has been used for similar scorelines. I only used Huddersfield as the most obvious (and recent) example of a match that wasn't particularly one-sided or hinged on 2 to 4 points.

I HAVE seen it used on a margin of 10. Even 10-0, I would [inever[/i call a margin of ten a thumping.