When did BBC radio 5 live get rid of the two commentators per half. Alan Green was always wonderfully acerbic
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I only watched this the other night and I was thinking to myself whether John Motson coined the term âooooftâ so beloved on this forum.
âZicoâŚooooft what a turnâŚâ
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Fond memories of those games and days. Intense matches with the brothers or friends and repeating Johnâs phrases verbatim. Also canât forget the amount of dead arms and dead legs dished out after a goal was scored that sent someone over the edge with John shouting away in the background.
Do ye think that âgreatâ commentators is a nostaliga thing, and you think they were great because they were commentators when you were young and impressionable?
Will lads in twenty years be saying, Ryle Nugent was the voice of a generation. Remember that time he said Tommy BOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWEEE. They donât make commentators like that anymore.
Marty Morrissey, what a man he was, he knew every players club in the country. Etc etc
I donât think even nostalgia could elevate Ger Canning mind.
I could easily imagine people saying they donât make em like George Hamilton anymore, âa nation holds itâs breathâ etc. But by God he is/was dreadful. Maybe he was better then, it feels like he was, but again is that nostalgia?
I feel like a lot of life is like that, people imagining everything was better in their day. Even when it clearly wasnât. @peddlerscross and @BruidheanChaorthainn think everything was better before they were born, which must be an even more depressing outlook on life. To think you never even got to see the good old days.
Iâve no doubt in 30 years time theyâll be saying you donât get musicians like Harry Styles and Taylor Swift anymore.
Auld lads in the 60s probably thought the Beatles were shite
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Mike Ingham would take the first half of the half?
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Canât stand Marty âthey love their hurling in _____â Morrissey. Canning would have warranted putting down decades ago. Shame some iconic GAA moments have those two chancers commentating.
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Canning is just the worst
This is the nub of it. While itâs a very entertaining discussion driven expertly by @Cheasty i think what most of us miss the most is being young.
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I never get that concept. Things are shit so change them. Where as older people seem to think things should never change or that you canât change.
Ger Canning has an incredible commentary voice and has been responsible for some fantastic lines down the years - âMcMenamen dodging, McMenamen scoringâ was probably his finest line⌠âThey can fire hurleys at Lar Corbettâ another classicâŚ
I donât get why people get annoyed with him. George Hamilton has that authoritative voice too and brings a big game feel to proceedings.
Brian Tyers on TG4 though is the best commentator in any sport this country has produced. You know things are getting serious when he goes into that high pitched voice (cc @Aertel220) and says âTa an chluiche anois in ard a dheanamh!!!â or âeist leis an sluaâ.
Simon Holt in Horse Racing is the finest across the water.
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think it was bill mclaren who had a great off the cuff when brian moore inserted himself into a row with the french
âand here comes brian moore with his 2 cents, and thats all its worthâ
Nostalgia. Don Draper knew. Don got it.
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No.
We miss being young. We also do not lose the ability to determine objective truths, as as long as we do not want to lose this ability.
It is an objective truth that individuality and authenticity has been steadily eroded from the medium of sports commentary in favour of cookie cutter blandness and fakeness.
Sports commentators now tend to look for the obviously pre-prepared line, the saccharine American soundbyte to match a moment, uttered in a bland, characterless voice. They commentate as if theyâre a Twitter account. No words, as they say.
You can tell the genuine article from the fake. It is an objective truth that Eddie Butler, cruelly cut down in his prime, who became BBCâs first choice rugby commentator in 2002 and remained so until last September, was a genuinely great commentator and broadcaster who added something rich and meaningful to rugby. You knew this listening to him in 2022.
It is an objective truth that Ryle Nugent was a competent if not brilliant commentator who appears superb by comparison to the current incumbent.
It is an objective truth that the Munster team of 2000-2008 was a special team which brought special days that had never been brought before.
It is an objective truth that the Dublin-Mayo games of 2016 and particularly 2017 were âthe good old daysâ, better than anything that had come before them.
It is an objective truth that the Tipperary v Cork hurling games of 1987 to 1991 would have been the best in the history of the game to attend.
It is an objective truth that the four Dublin v Meath games of 1991 are as titanic a saga as Irish sport will ever see.
It is an objective truth that All-Ireland presentations with no people on the pitch are shite.
It is an objective truth that RTE association football panels now are terrible. It is an objective truth that as recently as 2014 they were must watch television.
It is an objective truth that from 1992 until around about 2013, Sky association football panels were unwatchable dirge. And that now they are excellent television.
It is an objective truth that Ken Earlyâs musings on association football are more intelligent, more fluent more prolific and more entertaining than anybody has managed before.
It is an objective truth that quality free to air television coverage is good for a sport. It is an objective truth that sports removing themselves from free to air TV is bad for a sport in the long run.
It is an objective truth that club association football was more competitive in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
It is an objective truth that access to money and scarce expertise has hobbled the competitiveness of club association competitions and made them more predictable and boring in terms of outcome.
It is an objective truth that this dynamic has also filtered through to GAA.
It is an objective truth that the popular culture surrounding the 1990 World Cup, tied in in with the popular music and popular art and sticker collecting scenes of the time is an integral part of the enduring appeal of that tournament.
It is an objective truth that the popular music scene of 1990 was brilliant and that the popular music scene of 2022 is close to non-existent.
It is an objective truth that the 1990 World Cup was a crap tournament for football and that the 2022 World Cup, with possibly the worst popular cultural and political backdrop of any World Cup since 1934, was an objectively superior tournament to 1990, and objectively intensely exciting, with objectively the most exciting World Cup final ever played.
It is an objective truth that attending association football at its best in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s was a superior and more exciting experience on the whole for a young person than it is today. The attendances were bigger and the events more mythical. Celtic v Leeds 1970 in front of 135,000 people. FA Cup finals in front of 100,000. Real European nights. Liverpool v St. Etienne 1977. Manchester United v Barcelona 1984. Stadiums with individual character. No homogenous FIFA bowls or homogenous HOK Sport designed blandness. Proper floodlight pylons. You could go with your mates. You didnât have to pay through the nose for tickets. You could stand.
It was also demonstrably more dangerous in those days. The football was demonstrably worse. But the connection was exponentially greater.
The game was more accessible. Young people attended it. Now English football crowds are made up largely of middle aged and old people who were young when the game went all seater and have had the finances to keep up season tickets since then. Few can get in at the bottom.
The paradox about football culture in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and 1990s was that the overall culture was more suspicious of anybody who dared to be different, but it meant that those who were different were genuinely different, genuine individuals.
Individuals then didnât care what people thought. New âindividualismâ cares deeply what others think. It is a packaged brand.
Now everybody thinks theyâre âdifferentâ, and theyâre all the same. They nearly all think theyâre interesting, and theyâre nearly all crushingly boring and corporate.
The most interesting character in football now is possibly James Milner, because he was born 50 years after his time. Maybe Marcus Rashford, because he actually cares. Maybe Luka Modric, because he never talks.
I donât know exactly where Iâm going with this rant, except to say that most people miss being young, and people also have a brain to use.
Thank you John Motson.
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Lads. The Brighton season ticket holder part of this, a must watch 
Thatâs the only one I remember!
Was there an ITV highlights show when they had exclusive rights in the late 80s?
They showed the goals at half time the following day during the live match.
In this part of the world there was no Saturday night highlights show.
I do recall watching a highlights show on LWT in London on the night of August 19th, 1989, when I was in London, which mainly featured Manchester United 4 Arsenal 1, the game where Michael Knighton did the 100 keepie uppies on his head. I think it also featured the goals from Liverpool v newly promoted Manchester City.
I have a notion some ITV regional stations may have had similar highlights programmes. However UTV did not as there was no team from the UTV area in the English first division.
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No. They speak for themselves. How can you top what the likes of John Motson, Peter OâSullevan, Bill McLaren and Michael OâHehir provided in their respective sports.
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Another thing we miss about the old days is the modernity of them.
Modernity is about change and newness and hope. About big ideas.
The modern world stretches from November 1942, when the tide of the Second World War turned, to November 1989, when the wall came down. When the pace of change in the world was dizzying, and the overarching theme was hope. A belief that there was a long arc of the world bending towards justice. After November 1989, there was a honeymoon period where we sort of sailed on the waves for a few years, thinking the end of history had come, until about some nebulous point/s, which I would pinpoint to the period between December 31st, 1999 and September 11th, 2001, when we began the long retreat back to anti-modernity and anti-hope and darkness and a future of Blade Runner dystopia, except much more dull than Blade Runner.
Ireland, of course, was a massive laggard compared to rest of the western world in this seeming long arc bending towards hope and justice.
At some point, which I would pinpoint roughly to about 5:35pm on July 13th, 1985, when Bono sang âBadâ at Wembley Stadium, modern Ireland finally began.
The decade between then and 1995 was the most modern time in Irelandâs history, when the arc seemed to be always bending in favour of newness and hope and freedom and justice and truth and modernity.
Now nobody has any new ideas. Modernity is over and the arc bends towards pastiche and retread and darkness and negativity and lies and despair. There is nowhere else to go. Everything that is packaged as ânewâ is a retread into the shit things of the past.
âWhatâs your big idea? Oh, we did that years ago.â âAnybody have any new ideas? No? No. OK.â
The past was more modern.
We are more pessimistic and narky and dissatisfied because we grew up in the most modern and hopeful decade in the history of this world and this country and everything after that can only be a disappointment and so it has proved.
I donât know what this has to do with John Motson except that to say that Peter Drury is a passably competent yet still shite commentator who thinks heâs making a cheesy Oscars speech every time he commentates and has no ideas on how to be in any way original in his style. And Peter Drurys are ten a penny.
Thatâs very harsh.
Eddie Butler RIP was the best of the modern-ish commentators.