The Art of the Football Commentator
Football commentary on the radio is an unrecognised art form. I hereby call on the to issue a policy statement to confirm its status in Scottish culture. I must have a word with Richard Holloway about this. Maybe I can get a grant.
Just think about it; you're sat there with a lip-microphone watching 22 blokes chasing a ball and you have to use your voice, your vocabulary and your knowledge of the game to convey the drama of the occasion. It's poetry. It's storytelling. It's performance art.
This came to mind most recently when I was listening to a recording of last year's SPL championship deciders. As ever, Radio Scotland had exclusive commentary from games across the country but the crucial ties were Celtic away to Motherwell and Rangers away to Hibs. The Championship was decided in the dying minutes of the Celtic game when the Glasgow side conceded two goals. Commentator David Begg painted a picture of high drama, of tears and celebration. You could see it all; the ball in the back of the net, the crestfallen army of green and white, the referee looking at his watch.
Sometimes I meet people who tell me they only ever listen to music on the radio and don't like speech programmes.
"What about football?" I ask.
"Oh yes, I always listen to that..."
I've puzzled over this. That phrase "speech radio" has its own connotations. It implies news programming, documentaries, politics, culture and authors plugging books. In the same way "talk radio" has come to mean phone-in shows and provocative opinions. There's a degree of snobbery and inverted snobbery around both. At its worst there's an implication that all speech radio should be aimed at a cosy clique of well-bred intellectuals. The same perverse logic would suggest that a speech programme with broad appeal is a clear example of "dumbing down." Yet popular programmes can be things of beauty!
On my frequent trips down memory lane I often come across an image from my childhood. It's of a group of pals sitting in an Easterhouse garden, gulping down shared bottles of fizzy Orange Crush (hygienic if you wiped the neck with the back of your hand) and devouring packet after packet of smoky bacon crisps. There's a soundtrack to this memory and it comes from a little black and silver box nestled among a clump of flattened dandelions. It's a radio. It's transmitting coverage of a Cup Final...probably Rangers v Celtic, but I'd need Richard Gordon to confirm the dates. Yet we small boys are not really in that garden. We've been transported to Parkhead or Ibrox..most probably Hampden. We're in the crowd, we're on the field, we're face-to-face with the ref telling him where he's gone wrong, we're shouting in the ear of the manager and offering our expert advice on substitutions. In other words, we've been encouraged to use that most wondrous of things - our imagination. Surely that's what art is meant to do.
I tell you, football commentary on the radio. It's not just speech. It's music to my ears.
