The Dying Art of Commentary

Picked up on this blog piece earlier:

http://thepremierleagueowl.com/the-dying-art-of-football-commentary/

I couldn't agree more. I've long since been irritated by current commentary standards and often watch games with the sound down than have it ruined by inane blither-blather or frankly pretty obvious inaccuracies.

Peter Drury's gushing hyperbole and constant ass licking of big name players and clubs is nauseating. Jonathan Pearce's screaming, confused babblings are an ear bleeding horror. Jacqui Oatley's desperately feigned "dramatic intonation" sounds like a child practising in front of a mirror while remembering a "fantastic" tap-in toe-poke scored at the park last week. The CCFC Player commentator who seems unable to recognise the same people he watches week in week out and countless other of the "new breed" of commentators who believe that shouting a players name as LOUDLY AS POSSIBLE when he shoots constitutes adding to the excitement, rather than distracting from it like a dog barking at a symphony.

Don't even get me started on "colour commentators" (that's not a racial reference before anybody points the finger, that's genuinely what they're called), a phrase that simply could not be a bigger oxymoron. If you stuck Robbie Savage, Michael Owen, Stan Collymore and David Pleat into a room together I feel the world would be sucked into a black hole of the most beigest (to mix my colour metaphors) and moribund kind, for which, I'd expect we'd all be extremely grateful for so we could stop hearing them talk such utter, brain squelching, nails-on-a-chalkboard, dribbling-drivel.

Long live Martin Tyler and his bastion of pretty decent commentary even if I do hear his voice in ringing in my head for far too long after too much late night FIFA, but those are my issues. Oh and Gary Neville, if he could just be less northern...

You'd be even more scathing of them if you'd heard my superb match summaries on Valleys Radio every Saturday afternoon. Sadly, I think that 'big break' didn't come along because I was too factually correct, calm and concise rather than hysterically inaccurate. I don't think my innate modesty helped either.

Cyncoedslumdog wrote:You'd be even more scathing of them if you'd heard my superb match summaries on Valleys Radio every Saturday afternoon. Sadly, I think that 'big break' didn't come along because I was too factually correct, calm and concise rather than hysterically inaccurate. I don't think my innate modesty helped either.

Well, good job I didn't hear that then. It seems you are a dying art as well.

must have been nearly 50 years ago i heard john arlott commentating on a sunday league cricket match and he named a batsman and said "so and so cuts late, so late as to be almost posthumous"
wonderful turn of phrase.

Arlott was superb - like a lot of cricket commentators - and I remember him being interviewed after the close of play on his last ever day of commentary. He was holding a glass of red wine rather precariously and was as pissed as a fart.
Test match special is commentary at its best and my wife can listen to and enjoy it even though she hates cricket.