Sky Soccer Saturday enjoying post-Jeff and the boys ‘second wind’
Presenters. A lot of shows have them, though the increase in volume and breadth of matches broadcast has meant the widespread use of just the match, excluding presenters. To be honest, it makes little difference, simply because they are largely but not totally there to encourage pundits to say things and look awkward in front of the big screen. Take that away and you don’t really feel much loss. That said, if we look in detail at their performance, there is a marked difference between what is achieved.
We kick off on Friday night with Jonathan Sutherland at Raith Rovers v Dunfermline. A familiar face on BBC Scotland, he’s always fronted up their Championship coverage. His interaction with pundit Leanne Crichton, head poking out of a substantial coat, and James McFadden is always good, often amusing and doesn’t seem forced in any way. The key is, for the presenter, in an admittedly artificial position, to conduct discussions with the pundits in a natural way that doesn’t sound like a job interview.
Jonathan passes with flying colours on that basis, usually looking pinched with the cold, this time on a frosty night in Kirkcaldy for the Fife derby, during which I was surprised to learn Dunfermline actually have Ultras. He has a pleasing tendency to say a match like this is rubbish if it is. At these times he sometimes seems distracted and bored by the football. He’s back on Thursday to do the Scotland game, made easier by them playing well and winning.
On Saturday the EFL coverage is presented, a little awkwardly in a how-long-do-I-have-to-be-exposed-like-this way, initially in front of the big screen by David Prutton. He chats to Stuart Dallas, Michael Brown and Jobi McAnuff ahead of Millwall v Stoke City. The general default style is to treat everything like it’s just four lads out for a pizza. And though three pundits is perhaps two too many, they set up the football well in a fresh, first pint-of-Saturday-afternoon sort of way.
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Alex Scott is with Fara Williams (who has such a great and distinctive voice) and Faye White (who has a lovely big wool coat) for the Women’s League Cup final played on a rather knackered pitch at Pride Park (a tribute to the Old Baseball Ground which would be a golf bunker by this time in the season).
It strikes me as they’re talking about the game, how times have changed and how brilliant it must be for girls to see women doing what men have done for so long, not just as a one-off thing, but as a normal regular part of football.
To learn that your voice and presence is as valid as any other is not just important but crucial in building a fairer society. There’s so much negativity and nastiness around, without ignoring the problems, it’s basically a really uplifting and positive development, that even the gainsayers cannot crush or debase. We are all made better by it.
Simon Thomas presents Soccer Saturday for a marathon of six hours. The show, which had appeared for a couple of years at the end of Jeff Stelling’s reign to be dead in the water, with people lamenting the defenestration of three quarters of the panel, (where has Charlie Nicholas gone?) coupled with Jeff’s retirement, was hollowed out of everything that people enjoyed.
It’s in no small part due to Simon’s ceaseless enthusiasm that the show is enjoying a second wind. He’s as rapid fire as Jeff ever was and explodes as Mansfield takes the lead in the Stelling style. Admittedly Mike Riley is an unnecessary presence, which Mike appears to recognise and which they prove when he takes a break.
He manages to cope with Paul Merson, who somehow survived, with his angular sentences, mispronunciations and name-mangling. All this and he has an engagingly light touch, which you need when you’re on for six hours. Thomas deserves much praise.
Kelly Cates fronts Saturday Night Football between Bournemouth and Brentford in front of that cursed big screen. The future Match of the Day presenter is really experienced. Someone in the industry commented to me that ‘the reason Kelly appears to be so nice is because she’s so nice. There’s no side to her.’ That says it all really. You can’t fake niceness in such a role, same as you can’t convincingly fake enthusiasm. A star of football broadcasting on TV and radio too, an often unremarked quality is her evenness and consistency. She must be a dream employee. You always know what you’re going to get and she doesn’t bring what must be inevitable personal difficulties into her work.
I note that the usual sexist language and attitudes which all women in football apparently have to suffer, though it’s still there, is markedly less, both in volume and nastiness directed at Kelly. An interesting phenomena in itself. It might be just talking about football, not nuclear negotiations, but she’s set standards at a very high level and resides at the top of a very tall tree, Queen of all she surveys.
Eilidh Barbour hosts Celtic v Rangers, always a game like no other in Britain, which means regularly dealing with Lenny, Boydy and Faddy. At times it seems like there’d be an argument waiting to break out without her calming presence.
In such a testosterone-fuelled context, it all benefits from being diluted by her presence. She’s remarkably smooth without any stumbles and sits very upright in her chair, almost in a school mistressy Jean Brodie manner. If you watch Scottish football regularly, it feels like you see more of James McFadden than most mates. Same with Boydy.
Mark Chapman presented the Carabao Cup final for Sky. Weirdly, the same broadcast was on ITV too. He’s very good at being light-hearted and easy-going, especially with the usual pundits. He always seems so likeable and that’s a quality you can’t manufacture or contrive.
I think he’s so successful because his style is exactly how we’d like to think we’d go on in a similar role. His not serious/serious balance is excellent and he’s quick to find the humour at any given moment. I do enjoy him, even though the punditry treads familiar ground.
It just shows how a good presenter can lift a programme. It feels like he’s a football fan doing a job he loves. I think he understandably gives social media a swerve, but anyone who takes against Mark should take a look at themselves. I can’t imagine what else they’d want. An excellent broadcast albeit with unlistenable commentary and a shameful silence about the bonesaw-wielding, autocratic, human rights-trouncing, environment-terrorising owners.