THERE IS SOMETHING special about football commentary.
Perhaps a comparison can be made between it and the music that accompanies those defining moments in cinema.
Without it, the scene is great.
With it, the scene is iconic.
Randall Poster, who has worked with Martin Scorsese but primarily collaborates with Wes Anderson, talks of the moment ‘when a fortuitous marriage of music and image enhances the moment in an unimaginable way – when the musical element brings something to life and brings context to a cinematic moment that had been dormant’.
Sport is naturally dramatic and lends itself to memorable, stand-out occurrences. It can be joyous, upsetting, violent – it carries with it a multitude of emotions. Adding music just illuminates everything.
Still, it’s football that seems to resonate most. Sure, there are the legendary, excitable and uncontrollable verbal releases: Russ Hodges and ‘The Giants win the Pennant’, Al Michael’s immortal line from Lake Placid in 1980 and Howard Cosell’s famous description of George Foreman’s knockdown of Joe Frazier.
But there are far too many to choose from football’s back catalogue.
In 2012, Martin Tyler created one.
When Manchester City snatched their first ever Premier League title on the final day of the 2011/2012 season with a last-gasp goal from Sergio Aguero, the veteran Sky Sports commentator lost himself in the moment. But like Poster said, he contextualised things. As a result, it will forever be remembered as one of the finest commentaries of all time.
“I haven’t done a more dramatic moment and that’s what it’s about”, he tells The42.
“It’s Aguero’s moment. The way the business is and the way the public want it, there is a need for a voice to find the mood. We don’t do every game so the luck of the draw gets you one of those moments. I’d been doing the job 38 years when that happened me and when you think about the 1966 World Cup and Anfield in 1989, those moments don’t come along very often. So I had one. It’s for others to say whether mine is part of that or not but the number of times I hear it suggests it may be.”
The moment is in two parts, really. The initial eruption accompanied Aguero’s shot as it hit the back of the net.
But crucially, Tyler didn’t say anything else for nine seconds – an eternity in live television. He didn’t have to, though. The din inside the stadium was enough.
Then, as the dust settled a little, there came the clincher.
“I swear, you’ll never see anything like this ever again”.
Perfect.
“Jim White of The Telegraph wrote a book about all these great Premier League moments and rang me about it”, Tyler says.
“I said ‘Look, it was Aguero’s moment – speak to him!’ And he said ‘No, no – you were the chief witness’. It wasn’t thought of. It was just what happened. When the ball went from Mario Balotelli to Aguero, I knew. My football intuition told me he would score and I knew what that meant. It was a fraction of a second but it was a fraction of a second that allowed me to (Tyler takes a deep breath) and a few more ‘Os’ came out because I had got air in my lungs. We had a break before the presentation and I had tears in my eyes because it was such an emotional moment for football.”
Tyler is the definitive football voice. His career began in the mid-1970s and while other legendary peers like Brian Moore and Barry Davies dabbled in other sports, he has essentially been a specialist commentator for four decades. With the remarkable growth of the Premier League, his reputation has led to him working for ESPN and Australian network SBS. His work with EA Sports’ FIFA video game series has led to even wider international acclaim and an entirely new audience.
He’s reluctant to refer to commentary as an art-form and admits that he’s very rarely satisfied with how he’s covered a game.
“I think it can be done in an artistic way but I think it’s a technique, really”, he says.
“Anyone who wants to do it needs one thing – not art or craft or technique – they need a love of the subject they’re going to broadcast about. If it’s football, they need to steep themselves in that because then your inner soul will get you through moments that need a bit of that rather than the technique or art. It needs to come from within.
It’s a journey for perfection that I’ll never reach the end of. You can’t do it perfectly. I’ll be brutally honest – I’m probably pleased with four commentaries a season.”
And what makes him pleased with how certain games go?
“Getting the right words at the right time, encapsulating the moment, not getting caught out – even though football is so quick so you should be prepared to be caught out and not be afraid to say ‘God, I didn’t see that’. But if you say that every week, they’ll be wondering why you don’t. It’s very inexact. But sometimes it falls into place. And you need the drama of the game. One thing you can’t control is what the game brings you.”
But even the bad games are good because there’s a challenge with them. You get a nice feeling afterwards that you’ve done your best with a poor game. With a great game, it’s really the game that’s great and you’re just keeping up with it, which is a skill. With the bad games, there’s an onus to explain why it’s bad and try and look for things. But never give up on a game. I’ve done bad games that became great games in the last five minutes.”
There is a skill-set to football commentary, of course. There are the basics and the nuances. And Tyler’s 40 years of doing it counts for a lot.
“Identifying the players is the most important thing, especially on television”, he says.
“Giving relevant information is important. It’s never exact about when to do it but finding the right time is a bit of a skill. You get a bit more of that with the experience. But, I still get the ‘Oh, my God he’s scored’ and I’m telling you a story. It can’t really be like that and it messes it up for everybody – especially the viewers, who are the most important people.
The context of the game is important. If I’m covering a late game, what’s happened before it? Has there been a referees’ revolution? If it’s the start of a season, how have the new managers done? That gives you your base. Then, let the game unfold. And don’t be frightened to watch the game. It’s a strange thing to say that, isn’t it? But don’t have a pre-idea of what you think you’ll be watching. It takes some confidence to do that because you want the props of your facts and figures around you. And there are those moments of ‘I need to be speaking now, what should I say?’”
Unlike other commentators, Tyler rarely editorialises. He has an ex-professional alongside him to provide the analysis and expert opinion.
“I don’t want to be a commentator who goes ‘This is rubbish’. I have too much respect for the game, the people who play it and the difficulty of playing it to be that kind of commentator. I try and see the good. If it is poor, it may be the weather, it may be the teams only had two days turnaround, it may be that the game is missing five or six key players.”
Is it nice to know a sport he’s been immersed in for so long still provides him with the ability to lose himself in moments of greatness?
“I don’t find it difficult to do that”, he says.
“I love the game so much. There’s no great distinction in my life. It’s just football. I’m assistant manager of a Conference South club (Hampton & Richmond Borough) and they all think I’m mad here. ‘Why don’t you go and do something else with your time off?’ Well, it’s what I do. This is as much a hobby as that is except for that I don’t get paid and here I do. I don’t draw the line there. It is a labour of love. It sounds so pious to say but put yourself in my shoes. Being paid to watch football for 40 years. What have I done to deserve that? Loving the game is what I’ve done to deserve it but millions of us love the game. So, why me? That’s the way I look at it.
There’s certainly not a week goes by when I don’t count my blessings.”
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