John Motson: The Voice of Football

You would have to be born before 1968 to have been alive when the great John Motson wasn’t on the radio or TV. He’s been on Match of the Day since 1971! He’s pretty much only covered football, so he’s not just part of the furniture, he’s part of the warp and weft of BBC football coverage and is, in some ways, part of its DNA and thus in all of our football media DNA.

Motson all but invented the art of TV commentary. His preparation of various facts and figures predated the now commonplace reliance on in-game statistics. So many great moments of high drama in football have come complete with a Motty “Oh I say!” or a “Danger here!” or merely that unique Motson noise which comes out of him at several different frequencies simultaneously and can be best characterised as wheezy bellowing.

He’s commentated on around 2,000 games and has been present at 40 years’ worth of tournaments, a witness to so much football history and legend. When Tardelli scored THAT goal, who was on the mic? Of course…

Long-serving performers fall in and out of fashion but eventually get beyond that and become legendary and that’s very much the trajectory Motty has followed. Indeed, he’s the only commentator to be known by his nickname. Motty, is a brand, as much as a person, these days. Although he hasn’t done live football for some time, his is a comfortable, reassuring presence and he seems to have retained his passion for the game, even now at 71-years-old.

He’s been present at some of the great moments in football, perhaps none more so than David Beckham’s last gasp free-kick against Greece. It’s worth considering that when this goal went in, he and Trevor Brooking were leaping around amidst total mayhem.

A fan of the “that’s the third time this season a player with a ‘Z’ in his name has been sent off for a club located within 20 miles of the M62, whose wife is called Gladys,” school of statistics.

He was a bit of a pioneer in having those sort of numbers to hand. Interestingly, these days, I’ve heard him be somewhat sceptical at the expansion of stats into an art form, rightly wondering who is checking the veracity of the stat collectors.

You can’t fake enthusiasm for long in broadcasting and Motty does still seem to retain a genuine enthusiasm for the game of Association Football. There is a boyish charm to what he does, his voice still prone to going into a high squeak or breaking into laughter at moments of high dudgeon.

If he’s on 5 live’s Monday Night Club it’s always a pleasure to hear him launch off at a tangent, mid-sentence, make an aside to an aside, as ideas drop into the forefront of his consciousness. It goes something like this:

“Incidentally…you can say what you like about Wenger…and people will, I know we’ll be …but really, when you go back all the way to Bertie Mee, who incidentally wasn’t the first to…y’know…you’ve got to consider these things, but in these days of mobiles and everything is mobile these days, I’m not a computer, Mark. It’s hard to keep up and before you know it, and it wasn’t always like this, it’s all got out of hand.”

When in tandem with Mark Lawrenson, his puppyish enthusiasm is balanced out by the Lawro cynicism in a perfect double-act. When working on the radio, especially on the MNC, he often develops an excitable tone, the way some of us do after a couple of drinks, and this makes for very good listening.

Has that rather endearing habit that all older people develop of thinking things that were a long time ago now, are in fact quite recent. “These days, Mark, with three points for a win, my goodness, things can change very quickly, y’know.”

It’s a little-known fact that there is a sheep farm on the fells of Cumbria dedicated to growing animals that will eventually be made into Motty’s coats. It was this moment which really made the coat iconic. It’s odd that you can use a coat to brand yourself but John has done exactly that.

Held in a unique, universally lofty esteem, Motty has many fans for whom his voice has all but defined their upbringing and it is hard not to feel great affection towards him for that reason.

Oh I say Motty, you’ll most certainly be missed!