Having presented the post-match phone-in across BRMB, Beacon Shropshire and Mercia from the Stadium of Light until 6pm, Tom Ross is now presenting the post-match section of Beacon 97.2FM and Gold's coverage from a particularly attractive location - the Moto service station in Chester-le-Street.

He's having terrible trouble as well - they've dropped off-air twice so far, initially after a particularly irate opening call from Lee the Baggie (an infamous caller to the phone-ins on Beacon, WM and talkSPORT), and secondly after Tom's chat with Bomber Brown, their summariser at Stamford Bridge. Tom's back on-air now, broadcasting from his mobile phone. The calls are coming over clearly but his line is very poor.

When they crossed to Bomber, you could hear Stan Collymore presenting Call Collymore loud and clear from near him in the Stamford Bridge press box.
Edit at 8.10pm - Bomber has since joined Stan as a guest on his talkSPORT phone-in now the Orion coverage has finished.

That Lee is a legend. I've heard a few of his calls to BRMB and I don't think anybody becomes more and more irate during his call than Lee. The only person who comes close, though he doesn't call Radio Sheffield as often these days, is Jason the Blade. I would love to hear the call you alluded to.

You had a go at me for doing this before...seriously, what's the problem?

It doesn't do any harm putting things down twice in order to group all commentators from one station into a single post.

Radio 5 was fantastic this afternoon, John Murray and Jimmy described the Blackpool game fantastically well

I enjoyed listening to it on iPlayer, but they did nearly miss the first goal.

TalkSport's Football First show isn't as good as it used to be. They talk about the late kick off and have analysis while goals are going in.

Their 3pm KO next week is Arsenal vs Blackpool, Stoke vs Spurs was the only other option really

Clarkey was not the only radio regular to pop up on TV as a commentator yesterday. BBC Radio Sheffield's Paul Walker did (dubbed) commentary on Charlton v Leyton Orient from Friday night for BBC One's Football League Show. He is one of the regular voiceover reporters on that show, but I think it's the first time I've heard him commentating on it.


I don't tend to remember callers who ring up to radio football phone-ins, but Lee is one of the few who stands out. He tends to be among the first on to whichever phone-ins he calls, is always incredibly wound-up and barely stops to draw breath.

He was banned from calling BBC WM's phone-ins by Daz Hale a few years ago, although he's been let back on now that Rego and Franksy do most of them.

I can't help you with last night's call - it was as especially irate as you might imagine - but funnily enough, one of his calls from last week has been uploaded onto YouTube. Here he takes Ray Parlour to task about flair players.


Not sure I agree with you on this one.

I'll be the first to admit that as I was channel hopping yesterday afternoon I am probably not the best person to judge, but from what I heard of Matchday Live (we could split heirs about the show's name but I know what you mean!) yesterday it sounded like the fast-moving show that was an absolute Godsend to me during my student days.

Having Ray Parlour offering general analysis in the studio is nothing new - Alvin Martin, Ray Houghton and Gary Stevens had all been used in this role over the seasons before 2004/05 to 2006/07, during which point they settled on having Alvin and Gary watching 3pm games on their studio monitors Soccer Saturday-style, which was the show's best format IMO.

But then I didn't really mind the extra bits of analysis during the lulls between going Around the Grounds or reading out news of goals and scores, so long as Adrian is allowed to take control to give us the news and cross to reporters when he sees fit. Apparently Stan Collymore was on between 3-5pm, presumably to build-up to the late kick-off, I didn't hear him myself but I hope his input doesn't take up too much time on top of the team news and preview piece.

All in all though, it's really good to have the Saturday afternoon Around the Grounds format back on the airwaves. I know regular readers of this thread will be fed up of reading this, but I do think having a show like this on national radio provides an important service for a lot of fans, one that is particularly important now that Sky Sports News is disappearing off Freeview and BBCi's Score isn't always on the red button.

A few details about the changes to talkSPORT's Saturday format which I noticed yesterday. Probably only of interest to talkSPORT anoraks like me.
[LIST][*]Not only are Sky sponsoring all of talkSPORT's 64 live Premier League commentaries this season, but also their Saturday afternoon 12-5pm show Matchday Live. This brings the curtain down on the station's long-standing deal with Vauxhall Vans, who had been sponsoring what was Football First since at least 2003/04 (maybe before then), right the way through to the last three seasons of Matchday Live.

[*]The Matchday Live name remains for Saturday afternoons, although there seems to be some confusion as to how the live games will be titled. Do they come under the Matchday Live banner as well? I've seen the programme name listed as "Premier League Live" on most online listings, just "Premier League" on the new talkSPORT website's schedule page and it was described as being "Matchday Exclusive" on the Freeview EPG yesterday. I know the Sunday show - at least part of it if not the commentary itself - is being called Sunday Exclusive.

[*]As alluded to above, the new Matchday Live format has Adrian Durham presenting from the studio alongside Ray Parlour between 12-5/5.15pm. Bobby Gould remains in his role from the last few seasons of offering analysis alongside the reporter at the early game between 12-3pm, with Stan Collymore then popping up at points between 3-5.30pm ahead of the live commentary game.

[*]As for the stewardship of the first live Saturday night game, as you would expect Adrian stayed on-air right the way through until handing over to the commentary team ahead of the 5.30pm kick-off. He also stayed around to present during the half-time period and in the ten minutes or so between the end of the game and the start of Call Collymore.

[*]Earlier in the thread I said that I hoped the window between full-time in the 3pm games and the start of the late commentary game would provide an opportunity to bring back the considered results service, which was a feature of The Final Whistle between 2004/05 and 2007/08. Well this did not happen yesterday; after the full-time reports were done around 5pm we got a full classified check of the day's results, a full-time report from the Derby-Cardiff game that finished a bit later than the others and then we went straight into the build-up to the 5.30pm kick-off.

[*]However, we got to hear the considered full-time reports from all seven of the earlier Premier League games during half-time in the Chelsea v West Brom commentary. I felt talkSPORT used the half-time period very well, as not only did we get the consider full-time reports from those games but also a second reading of the classifieds, a sports bulletin, reports from the cricket and the golf plus some thoughts from Stan ahead of the second half kick-off, all on top of the requisite adverts. I thought they used their time wisely, aside from during the ad breaks I wasn't tempted to turn over at all.

[*]On another note, having listened over the past few weeks it looks like talkSPORT are now going with the uniform Kick-Off name for their evening football programmes. The Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday Night Football suffix to the show's name on the respective evenings seems to have been dropped, as has the Matchday Live Preview title for the Friday night show.[/LIST]

BBC London had Emma Jones reporting on Chelsea v WBA last night. I did not hear who reported for IRN.

Today FM had Ron Jones with Matt Holland commentating on Tottenham v Man City and Ian Beach with Frank Stapleton commentating on Villa v West Ham. Unfortunately, I did not catch who reported on the other Premier League games.

Another talkSPORT observation I forgot to mention in my last post.

During Call Collymore last night, Stan mentioned that Dave Earl was alongside him at Stamford Bridge and would be his producer for the phone-in (and so the live games) this season. I'm not sure if he just meant the Saturday games or both those and the Sunday games as well.

Dave's producing credits include Kick-Off and Jeremy Kyle's Sunday programme (I guess the latter indicates that he might be doing the Sunday games as well). I'm a little surprised that they have gone for him on the live games ahead of the likes of Antony D'Angelo and Jon Norman, who produced their live commentaries from South Africa during the World Cup.

Nottingham Forest v Leeds United
BBC Radio Five Live Ian Brown, Conor McNamara and Leroy Rosenior (commentary)
BBC Radio Nottingham Robin Chipperfield (host) with Colin Fray and John McGovern (commentary)
I think that it is fair to say that John McGovern is enjoying Leeds losing.

I must say I've enjoyed hearing Ian Brown commentate again, really good goal call this afternoon. He suggested he'll be commentating on Leeds again next Saturday which will already be his third Leeds commentary of the season! I hope we will hear on Premier League matches again soon.

Another match for Conor McNamara, a strong start to the season for him in terms of number of matches. Along with Fletcher and Murray really dominating the coverage at the moment.

Presumably Green/Ingham/Dennis are all still on holiday which is a little odd as it's five weeks since the World Cup ended. All the TV commentators who covered the World Cup seem to have managed to show up for the start of the season but 5 Live start the season without their strongest line-up, I can't imagine any other broadcaster doing that.

Alan Green always used to take August off, I remember he used to have a column in Total Football about ten years ago where he said he never commentated in August because nothing that happened in August was of any importance in the grand scheme of things.

[quote=IanFergus;43081191]Nottingham Forest v Leeds United
BBC Radio Five Live Ian Brown, Conor McNamara and Leroy Rosenior (commentary)
BBC Radio Nottingham Robin Chipperfield (host) with Colin Fray and John McGovern (commentary)


Yorkshire Radio (DAB), official Leeds United website, and Minster FM)
host: Michael Weadock
commentator: Tom Kirwin
summariser: Eddie Gray

BBC Radio Leeds (FM and AM)
coverage: Gareth Jones and Noel Whelan until 3:15 PM

Applogies for late commentary details but these are mine from Yesterday:

Sat 14th August: BBC Coventry and Warwickshire Watford v Coventry City:

Stuart Linnell presenting from Coventry Studios (Priory Place) with live commentary from Clive Eakin and Geoff Foster from Vicarage Road

Mercia: Tom Ross Presenting with Commentary from Joe Holt and Dave Bennett

Key103 also covered this game, though it was only online. Toby Gilles commentating.

BBC Radio Scotland

Sportsound introduced by Richard Gordon

Motherwell v Hibernian (810mw) Rob MacLean, Craig Paterson and ?, Kenny MacIntyre trackside

talkSPORT

Alan Brazil presenting The Sunday Exclusive with Neil Warnock, Ray Parlour and Tony Cascarino, followed by Call Collymore.

Premier League
Liverpool v Arsenal - Graham Beecroft

Championship
Nottingham Forest v Leeds - Geoff Peters

USPGA Championship: Final Round
Whistling Straits, Wisconsin - Bob Bubka

If it's the Michael Williiams I think it is then I "half know" who he is. He's a recent starter in broadcasting/journalism having trained and qualified as a broadcast journalist this summer.

Liverpool v Arsenal
BBC London 94.9 Mark Taylor
Newstalk in Ireland Dave McIntyre and Ken Earley (commentary)
RTE Radio John Keith

A notable lack of the name "Sportstime" and John Sinclair from Radio Leicester this season.

Off topic heard you doing a very good job of the travel a couple of times last week. Well done!

Thanks. Back on the early shift tomorrow and also doing a couple of sports shifts this week too.

But, yes, the powers that be have changed certain aspects of Radio Leicester's live sports coverage. You may also have noticed that Charles Dagnall, this season's regular presenter, has been presenting the programme live from each ground as well as keeping the pre-recorded content both before and after the game to a minimum.

You may also notice changes to the Football Forum on a Monday night over the next few weeks as well.

? = Peter Houston

(/Prolog)

The other reporter from the Sky Sports ISDN cupboard for Absolute Radio yesterday was Joe Michalczuk, a Sky News Radio / IRN staff member.

http://twitter.com/joemichalczuk

Saturday 14 August 2010

BBC NEWCASTLE

Sunderland v Birmingham Nick Barnes/Gary Bennett (commentary)

REAL RADIO

Sunderland v Birmingham Chris Cooper/Gary Rowell (commentary)