Thatâs a belter of a piece
Brilliantly put.
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Post of the year
Send it to football 365 and the irish jtimes and joe.ie and any other site now. Theyl take out the black references but theyâll be searching to find a piece like that. Its brilliant.
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My favourite Motty FA Cup Final.
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Thatâs unreal writing.
I used to think he was a doddery old goat and that he got too many plaudits compared to Barry Davis but that post has softened my take on him.
Met Motson in an OâNeills in Bournemouth the day of the Gerrard slip. He was watching the game with some friends, wearing a Liverpool polo shirt underneath his jacket. When Gerrard slipped, he gave a knowing shake of the head.
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Thatâs up there with @thedancingbaby spotting Marcel Desailly in a strip club in Vienna, but much more wholesome.
The black references are the essential heart of that post because thatâs how a lot of open minded people actually talked then. The two black players in the French team, Tresor and Tigana, were part of the attraction, part of why people loved that team, because they were different. Tresor was a braveheart. Tigana was silk. Brawn and brain. People saw them and liked them. They werenât used to seeing live association football, and they werenât used to seeing black players in a European football team. They gravitated towards them.
My oulâ fella would watch random matches on the telly and say things which are by todayâs standards considered toe-curlingly out of order, like he might be watching some European match, I have the 1987 European Cup final between Bayern Munich and Porto in my head here, he might say something like ânowâŚcome on blackie me boy, go on, good on ya!â. He wouldnât have known the name of the player because he didnât know the times of most of the players.
Paul McGrath was called âThe Black Pearlâ. When Nelson Mandela got the Freedom of Dublin on July 1st, 1990, crowds chanted âOoh Aah, Paul McGrathâs Daâ at him.
Iâm not sure what my point is here except to say that times were different.
Incidentally John Motson had one well known one minor run in regarding black players, ie. where he said something to the effect that it can sometimes be difficult to differentiate their identities when commentating, and at least two other less well known ones I can find, one of these more serious than the other, ie. where he didnât mention that Englandâs black players were being booed in a match in Slovakia.
Youâre definitely more likely to get away with saying things - or not saying things - if you were born in 1944.
Overall, people should be judged by the roundness of their character.
Motson came from a time when people werenât expecting every little thing they ever said to be on the record, on tap, and to be taken down and used as evidence against them.
And maybe that was why sporting commentators of yesteryear were better. They were freer.
Sports commentators now are commentating for a YouTube (or its future equivalent) clip 35 years from now. That doesnât work.
Thatâs actually why Iâm increasingly growing to like Darren Frehill. Every gaffe the man makes is noted down within seconds and reprinted here. But he has got something. An infectious enthusiasm. That commentary he did with Pat Spillane on the New York v Sligo match last year was bizarrely brilliant. It was like himself and Spillane were only commentating for themselves. They were free. It was like they were of the belief that nobody could hear them.
To sum up this rambling, all over the place post: give Darren Frehill a GAA commentary gig.
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I remember reading some piece with MicheĂĄl Donoghue in the months after Galway won the All Ireland & the Dazzler got a mention. It referenced how he was very supportive & keen to help in any way he could. If I recall correctly, heâd used his RTE archive access and media/production skills to package up some clips set to music of Galway players throughout hurling history doing Braveheart type deeds. Management played these to the squad at opportune times during the season. I was flabbergasted. Iâd have expected Donoghue to throw on a Dazzler DVD during the bus journey from team hotel to Croker only for a 1994 episode of Fair City to appear.
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Your mindset wouldnât be right going into an All-Ireland final after watching Bella do the dirt on Rita.
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Liam Oâ Dwyer RIP
This cunt
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The eyebrows will need their own coffin.
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So close