“Talk a little, but say a lot.” The Wit and Wisdom of Danny Murphy

Whatever your opinion of the British government’s policy on the Channel crossings by people in small boats might be, and whatever you feel about Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s statement on the subject in early March, or the tweet that it provoked from Gary Lineker that exploded all over social media and the mainstream media, most people will agree that there has never been a period of sports broadcasting in England quite like the one we experienced on the second weekend in March.

Pundits Alan Shearer and Ian Wright declined to appear on Match of The Day after Lineker’s removal, and commentators refused to pick up their microphones. There was no Football Focus (replaced by Bargain Hunt) and instead of Final Score there was The Repair Shop. Match of The Day and Match of The Day 2 were rebadged as Premier League Highlights and featured match action with no commentary or analysis.

The Saturday night highlights package lasted just 20 minutes, but even that modest running time was five minutes longer than the Sunday evening show. Nonetheless, the Saturday programme attracted 2.6 million viewers, half a million more than tuned in the previous week. Did this prove that what the viewers want is a heavily truncated show featuring no commentary or pundits? Or, like rubbernecking motorists peering across the central reservation at the opposite carriageway, were the extra viewers simply voyeurs of the car crash?

Blackpool MP Scott Benton was one who thought that it was the former. Here’s what he tweeted six minutes after the show ended: “Best #MatchOfTheDay episode in years. Had all the goals in No ‘expert’ analysis And finished quicker than usual so I could make the pub for last orders. What’s not to like” (his lack of punctuation). I don’t know how far he lives from his local pub, but getting there, tweeting about it, and beating last orders in six minutes is impressive stuff! (No, I don’t believe he went to the pub).

Football on TV has come a long way from the days when I started watching it. Only a few matches were broadcast live on television back in the 1960s; The FA Cup Final, some England international matches, and European Cup Finals were about the sum total. It seemed that Kenneth Wolstenholme commentated on most of the ones I watched, largely because where there was a choice – both ITV and BBC showed the FA Cup Final in those days – I would choose The Beeb.

Watching footage of games that Wolstenholme covered, the difference in style between him and current commentators is abundantly clear. A particular memory of a Wolstenholme commentary that I have was a match involving Newcastle United. At the start of the game, while describing the kits that the two teams were wearing – especially important to the many viewers watching in black and white – he announced that Newcastle’s black shorts had “the manufacturer’s fiddly bits down the sides.”  The multi-coloured, logo covered shirts with numbers that don’t conform to what he would remember as the players’ positions would boggle his mind were he to see them today.

Kenneth Wolstenholme

Newcastle United in their shorts with the “the manufacturer’s fiddly bits down the sides.”

Events in games seemed sometimes to take Wolstenholme by surprise, and he often greeted goals with a simple, “And it’s a goal!” as though no one could have seen it coming. One of his contemporaries, David Coleman, of course habitually announced goals – especially the first of the game – by simply reciting the score in an emphatic manner.

Commentators today offer a bewildering array of facts and statistics to enhance the match experience for their viewers and listeners. John Motson, who sadly died recently from bowel cancer at the age of 77, may not have been the first match broadcaster to supplement their commentary with statistics about games, players, stadiums, and competitions, but he was the one who made an art of it. Largely, he did it in a way that improved the viewers’ experience; he was a bit like your mate at a game who mentions in passing some esoteric fact about one of the players or some previous match because he’s interested in it, and thinks you might be too. Too many commentators today sound as though they have committed the whole of the Sky Sports Football Yearbook (forever simply the Rothman’s as far as I am concerned) to memory and are hell-bent on reciting it all for the ‘benefit’ of their poor viewers.

The late John Motson in trademark sheepskin coat.

There may be people for whom late Saturday night television is incomplete without a dose of the wit and wisdom of Match of The Day pundit Danny Murphy, but I would be sceptical about that, or any claims that Match of The Day audiences want the amount of punditry that is routinely inflicted on them for that matter. To be fair, I’ve never heard anyone who watches MOTD claim to want more chatter at the expense of the action, but it must be true of some people because everyone’s tastes are different, as the ongoing popularity of Mrs Brown’s Boys proves.

The best football commentators add to the enjoyment of games by bringing to our attention things we might not have seen, or imparting relevant information we might otherwise not have had, not by wittering on endlessly, describing events that we’ve all seen with our own eyes and vainly thinking that they are being insightful, or trying to shoehorn in some alleged witticism or tenuous metaphor that they have written and rehearsed to the point that any illusion of spontaneity has been thoroughly removed. Some commentators have me reaching for the remote control to lower the volume to barely audible. Sam Matterface is one, and I’m not alone apparently, because as soon as ITV announce that the commentary team for a game are Matterface and Lee Dixon, Twitter goes into overdrive with mickey-taking memes.

When Martin Tyler first began commentating, John Motson suggested that he should, “Talk a little, but say a lot.” It was sage advice, and something that many of today’s football commentators would benefit from following.