BBC Radio 5 Live

Mark Pougatch presenting 5 Live Sport from Wembley Stadium.

Championship Play-Off Final, Wembley
Blackpool v Cardiff City - Darren Fletcher, Conor McNamara and Steve Claridge, with Peter Slater pitchside (commentary)

Saturday 22nd May 2010


BBC Radio Lancashire
Host: Gary Hickson from Pitchside at Wembley
Commentary: Phil Cunliffe (1-22), Ian Chisnall (23-45) & Andy Morrell

For Ian....

Real Radio Wales
Host: (Not sure but he is at Wembley)
Commentary: Mark Poyser & David Giles
Pitchside Reporter: Steve Flemming

I'm surprised Radio Wave isn't broadcasting the Blackpool match as a one-off. I remember they were there when Blackpool were promoted to the Championship.

If somebody could get the national stations to tell us what's happening on the pitch instead of preparing us for the pub quiz we're not planning to attend, I'd be most grateful.

Coca-Cola Championship Play-off Final at Wembley Stadium
Blackpool v Cardiff City

RTE Radio 1
Andrew Cheal

Not a bad first half!

talkSPORT

Adrian Durham presenting Matchday Live: Championship Play-Off Final from Wembley.

Championship Play-Off Final
Blackpool v Cardiff City - Jim Proudfoot and Stan Collymore, with Ian Abrahams pitchside (commentary)


Abrahams was clearly visible after the game on Sky Sports interviewing Ian Holloway pitchside. In all honesty, he wasn't hard to miss...

Alvin Martin was co-presenting talkSPORT's coverage alongside Adrian at Wembley.

Re: Abrahams, I noticed that he made the TV coverage too.

I was fortunate enough to be at the game and when they cut to that shot of The Moose interviewing Ollie, the big screen in the stadium immediately cut away to the "Congratulations Blackpool" testcard. I'm sure that was purely coincidental.

Saturday 22nd May - talkSPORT (continued)

The Sports Bar with Andy Goldstein and Jason Cundy

UEFA Champions League Final
Bayern Munich v Internazionale - Graham Beecroft

Does anyone know if talkSPORT (via Talking Rugby) had a reporter at rugby union's Heineken Cup Final during Call Collymore?

talkSPORT

Croatia v Wales - Graham Courtney

Croatia V Wales

BBC Radio Wales - Steve James hosting with commentary from Simon Davies and Jason Perry
BBC Radio Cymru - Dylan Ebenzer hosting with commentary from Gareth Blainey and Marc Lloyd Williams

The host would've been Dave Brookes


So that's how Blackpool managed to fill most of their end, by giving away tickets to fans of clubs they've played in the last 3 seasons!!

Just in case anyone is wondering, there are a number of Blackpool fans in my family and they had a spare ticket going which was kindly offered to me.

As pleased as I was for Blackpool, I have a soft spot for Cardiff City so I was sorry to see them miss out on promotion. I've long felt Cardiff was Premier League team waiting to happen and I'm sure, perhaps unlike the Seasiders if the result had gone the other way, they'll have their chance again.

I know it will probably be of scant consolation but I hope seeing the Blues win Wales' first European club rugby trophy yesterday lifted your spirits Ian.

I think my lot (Shrews) did the same, 2 finals in the last few years and 30 odd thousand become diehard Town fans of many years
Hard luck for Saturday, but at least it looks like the club is safe

Not really - I'm a Dragons fan

Cardiff City V Blackpool (Championship Play Off Final)

Morning of the Match (7-9am) - Gareth Lewis hosting back in Llandaf, and Bethan Rhys Roberts and Phil Steele at the Duke of Clarence pub in Canton. Rob Phillips was at Cardiff City's Hotel (which he gratefully didn't let slip where it was - but was a hotel costing £220 a night).

Guests included Roger Gibbins at the pub in Canton, Mike Hall (Cardiff RFC) at the hotel, Jason Perry (in Croatia) and Kevin Ratcliffe (again at the hotel).

There were reporters at the Cardiff City Stadium (Mark Hutchins) and a Blackpool view on the day ahead with someone from BBC Lancashire - think her name was Judy Hobson (?) and a travel reporter from BBC London about the possible M4 closure around Swindon.

I know the season is not *quite* over yet, but despite this I thought I'd do a "commentary analysis" type post (like the ones you sometimes see in the TV equivalent thread in the Broadcasting section) for anyone who is interested in talkSPORT's football coverage this season.

Below is a list of all the commentators, co-commentators and pitchside reporters that talkSPORT have used on their live match commentaries throughout the 2009/10 season. I have included each commentary from the Premier League, Champions League and Europa League plus five other games.

For the record, I'm including both of the pre-season friendlies they covered in August - Tottenham v Barcelona and Tottenham v Celtic from the Wembley Cup - but not the Sunderland v Bolton game they were going to cover in January but didn't after it was postponed due to the snow (Nigel Pearson and Bobby Gould were down to be the commentary team at that one).

I've also not included the commentary details we know already for their League One and Two Play-Off Finals coverage, as they've yet to take place and so may change. In case anyone was wondering, I've not included the annual talkSPORT 5-a-side game in this analysis (so that's one less game for Ian Danter)!

So, here is a breakdown of how many games each of the commentators, co-commentators and pitchside reporters did for them this season:


Commentators:

Nigel Pearson - 28
Jim Proudfoot - 20
Graham Beecroft - 7
John Rawling - 3
Ian Crocker - 2
Ian Danter - 2


Co-commentators:

Stan Collymore - 45
Alvin Martin - 4
Micky Quinn - 4
Ray Parlour - 3
Jason Cundy - 2
Bobby Gould - 2
Tony Cascarino - 1
Ray Houghton - 1


Pitchside Reporters:

Andy Clarke - 9
Simon Humphreys - 8
Ian Abrahams - 5
Graham Beecroft - 4
Graham Courtney - 4
Dom McGuinness - 4
Mike Bovill - 2
Ian Danter - 2
Dave Rowe - 2
David Brady - 1
Andrew McKenna - 1
John Temple - 1
19 commentary games did not have pitchside reporters as far as I'm aware.


Notes: It's pretty much as you'd expect on the commentary front, with Nigel Pearson - their regular 3pm Premier League commentator - and Jim Proudfoot - their regular Champions League commentator - doing the lion's share of the games.

Pearson commentated on 27 of talkSPORT's 32 Premier League games this season plus the League Cup Final.

Proudfoot did 15 of talkSPORT's 16 Champions League commentaries plus the Europa League Final, the Championship Play-Off Final, both Wembley Cup games and the second leg of the World Cup Play-Off match between France and the Republic of Ireland.

All 7 of Graham Beecroft's commentaries came from the Europa League.

The co-commentators list shows Stan Collymore's dominance over talkSPORT's live games - he did a massive 45 matches this season.

Of the 17 commentary games he didn't do, naturally he missed all 9 Europa League commentaries due to his Five commitments and also didn't cover any fixtures in January.

Looking at the rest, Alvin Martin did the Europa League Final while Ray Houghton covered the Republic of Ireland's infamous World Cup exit in Paris.

Perhaps we shouldn't read too much into which pitchside reporters talkSPORT used this season - I believe TS assign their reporters to games around a month in advance, and so the pitchside reporters on their 3pm Premier League games tend to be the people who were down to provide in-progress updates had the match not been a commentary game.

However it does look as if Andy Clarke (in the London and the South) and Simon Humphreys (in the North) are the top choices for pitchside reporters, although perhaps Ian Abrahams would have done more games had he not been required to be elsewhere to do the "Fan in the Van" feature on Saturdays.

All bar one of the 19 commentary games without pitchside reporters came from the Champions League and Europa League, 14 of which were away games for the English teams.

For the record talkSPORT have done 62 commentaries so far this season, and will have done 64 games by this time next week.

To put this into context, they will do as many commentaries during the World Cup as they did throughout the previous 10 months.

Monday 24th May - talkSPORT

Mark Saggers presenting Kick-Off: Monday Night Football alongside Alvin Martin (from Wembley) and Matt Holland

International Friendly
England v Mexico - John Anderson and Alvin Martin, with Mike Parry adding comments

Horse Racing: Monday Night Racing from Windsor
Windsor Racecourse - Ian Abrahams and Martin Allen

talkSPORT

Mark Saggers presenting Kick-Off alongside Matt Holland.

Friendly International, Wembley
England v Mexico - John Anderson and Alvin Martin

Horse Racing, Windsor
Windsor Racecourse - Ian Abrahams and Martin Allen

Tuesday 25th May - talkSPORT

Mark Saggers presenting Kick-Off alongside Neil Ashton from the News of the World and Matt Scott from the Guardian

International Friendly
Republic of Ireland v Paraguay - David Brady


talkSPORT's Scottish Football Correspondent Mark Donaldson is due to be a studio pundit on tomorrow's Kick-Off with Danny Kelly. It'll be interesting to hear how he fares in that capacity as in my opinion he is a fantastic reporter.

I'm guessing the Five Live commentary teams for the Champions League Final and England v Mexico were as Andy Rimmer posted in message #2662?

I don't think this has been brought up in here before, it's from Charles Sale's Sports Agenda column in the Daily Mail from a couple of weeks ago.


Obviously Charles has lead with whether or not Five Live will be able to retain Colin Murray as their Sunday afternoon sports host next season, but an interesting sub-plot is that Five Live are proposing to have the Sunday sports show presented "around the country" - presumably on-site at sporting events.

Given what they have done on Saturday afternoons over the past three seasons, it doesn't take a genius to come to the conclusion that they're probably planning to base themselves at talkSPORT's exclusive 1.30pm commentary games most Sundays.

Could they possibly get away with offering the kind of "non-commentary but talking about the game" type of service that BBC Radio Leeds offer on AM for Leeds United games they do not have commentary rights to? And if so, would their audience respond well to this?

It also raises the question as to where Five Live will be anchoring their Saturday sports show from next season.

Basing themselves at the talkSPORT game is now off the cards, unless they want to have Mark Pougatch presenting from the grounds hosting the 5.30pm fixture which will largely be empty for most of the time he's on air.

They could switch their base to wherever the 3pm Absolute Radio game is taking place, but seeing as Absolute are not as direct a rival to them as talkSPORT are, I could see them returning their presenters to the studio on Saturdays when there isn't another stand-out sporting event taking place (ie the Challenge Cup Final, Ascot, Aintree etc).

Doing this would be another case of keeping up with the Jones's as moving out of the studio and to the talkSPORT games was back in 2007. They could market themselves as offering an improved studio-driven round-up service to counter the return of the 3pm Around the Grounds show on talkSPORT.

Matching what talkSPORT are doing has become common on Five Live over the past few seasons (would they be doing both of this weekend's Play-Off Finals if talkSPORT weren't?) so it wouldn't surprise me if both of these things happened.

Yes he was right

5Live have had all the PO finals for as long as I can remember

Wednesday 26th May - talkSPORT

Danny Kelly presenting Kick-Off alongside Mark Donaldson and Jason Cundy

International Friendly
Turkey v Northern Ireland - David Brady

Thanks for confirming the details above Adam.

They've had the rights to them for ages but I don't think they've always done commentary on the lower league finals.

Certainly one year I remember being annoyed that they had opted against doing a League Two Final to do commentary on an England A rugby match.

Were talkSPORT doing an England post-match phone-in rather than Rotherham v Dagenham & Redbridge commentary this Sunday, I'd be willing to bet Five Live would follow suit.

Any thoughts on the possible changes to where Five Live Sport is presented from at weekends Col?

I think they might use the F1 weekends to present at those events and fill 1-4 with F1 stuff. I'm not sure on none F1 weekends how they'll fill the 1:30 KO time to be honest, unless they end up commentating on Football League matches but there aren't that many on a Sunday. Can they do games rearranged from the Europa League that kick off at 2? (just an example)

I remember listening to L1/L2 PO finals in the 90's (well, Division 2 and 3 in those days!). 5Live tend to reserve phone ins for the 606 slot, they'd never had one at that time.

The only time they wouldn't have commentary is if something bigger was on such as a British Lions game.