host and commentator: Paul Walker
summariser: Keith Edwards

5 Live

With Mark Chapman at Wembley

Cardiff v Sheff Utd Mike Sewell, Matt Jackson & Nigel Adderley

Chelsea v Man Utd Darren Fletcher, Steve Claridge, Lee Dixon & Conor McNamara

Cardiff City V Sheffield United

BBC Radio Wales - Simon Davies hosting. Commentary from Rob Phillips and Iwan Roberts (All FM frequencies)
BBC Radio Cymru - Ion Thomas (updates)
Real Radio South Wales - Mark Poyser

Edward Bevan updating the Glamorgan V Lancashire Clydesdale Bank 40 game on both BBC stations, with commentary of it on MW / Online.

Back in the day when Kevin Howells was the cricket correspondent of Radio Leeds (Sheffield/York/Humbs), I recall him spending all day reporting on a county championship game at Scarborough and then doing a full football commentary on an evening game that either Bradford of Huddersfield were playing away at Scarborough.

Whether the regular commentator was suddenly unavailable and Kevin was a last minute stand in, being in the area, I'm not sure; by this stage it would have been a number of years since he had done a live football commentary.

*Andy Clarke was reporting alongside Alvin Martin at Wembley.

Additionally, Ian Abrahams was covering the horse racing at Windsor Racecourse this afternoon.

Confirmation at the end of Football First on Sunday that today's show was their final one in the 3-7pm timeslot. To accommodate live Premier League commentaries, the Sunday schedule will now be: 12noon-4pm Premier League Live, 4-6pm Call Collymore, 6-9pm Football First on Sunday.

Saturday 7 August 2010

BBC TEES

Middlesbrough v Ipswich

Alastair Brownlee (host/commentator)
Gary Gill (summariser)
Mark Drury (touchline reporter/interviews)

Rochdale v Hartlepool

Ivan Ash (updates)

No change there from last season. I will provide BBC Newcastle and Real Radio North East details when the Premiership kicks off next weekend.

Perhaps, but I'd rather hear the same person doing commentary on two games in one day than hearing him just doing that Manchester City friendly.

BBC Radio Manchester have come in for some stick on here recently, but credit where it is due, in the absence of Premier League action it is good that they provided proper coverage of the area's lower league teams.

They picked the right commentary game too, Rochdale's first game in the third tier of English football since 1974 was clearly the standout game from those they could have done.

It's far better that they did commentary on one of their lower league clubs in competitive action at 3pm than doing commentary on their Premier League clubs in friendly action IMO, which what my local BBC station did on Saturday.

Credit also to both 5 Live and talkSPORT for focusing on the Championship and lower leagues on Saturday. They could have sent some of their reporters to pre-season games involving Premier League clubs which is perhaps more commercially friendly, but they opted to concentrate on the Football League instead which was the right move in my book.


I agree that it was good that they covered Stevenage's first game in league - but was there a reason why you picked out David Croft?

I know he is a Londoner but does he have any particular connection with Stevenage? If so, then it's pretty thoughtful of them to send him to Broadhall Way as their reporter.

Today FM have released details about the first Premier League Live of the new season this Saturday, with their coverage starting with another commentary double-header: Premier League Returns.

Their opening day commentary line-up is:

Tottenham Hotspur v Manchester City with Ron Jones and Matt Holland (12.45pm)

followed by

Aston Villa v West Ham United with Ian Beach and Frank Stapleton (3pm)

From reading the Sports Blog on their website, I also stumbled across an article which confirms that when renewing their deal, they signed a three year contract to take them through to 2012/13 (reflecting the duration of the UK national radio deals). No word on how many Saturday 12.45pm kick-offs this entitles them to do unfortunately.

I notice from the talkSPORT Predictor game on the new talkSPORT.co.uk website, that among the usual suspects taking part in the talkSPORT Presenters League is Sky Sports News anchorman Sam Matterface.

I wonder if this indicates that he might have some sort of role in talkSPORT's Premier League coverage this season?

Sam reported on games for talkSPORT a number of seasons ago before joining Sky Sports News, presented an edition of Rock & Roll Football on Absolute late last season and has been a regular Premier League Radio commentator in recent years.

Absoloute will be absoloutely delighted about their match choice

Someone told me today that they watched the Leeds v Derby match on Saturday via Sky Digital and via the red button you could pick local radio commentary apparantly - and for BBC radio Leeds Adam Pope and Andy Ritchie were doing commentary !

So Have BBC Radio Leeds regained comm rights then ? If so when did this happen, all hush hush !

Some strong coverage of Martin O'Neill's departure as Aston Villa manager around here in the Midlands on both BBC WM and Gold.

On WM, The Paul Franks Show was devoted to O'Neill's departure (the news breaking around 4pm), with an Aston Villa Special version of The Football Phone-In with Richard Wilford following at 7pm.

Franksy's guests included Ron Atkinson and Ian Taylor (the latter just an hour before appearing on Gold!), plus a number of newspaper journalists, bookmakers and Villa fan group members. Richie Anderson was outside Villa Park to gather reaction from the Villa fans around the ground.

Over on Gold, Tom Ross was presenting the first Sports Bar of the new season (complete with new title music, LSF by Kasabian, and a new sponsor, BT Vision) alongside his new Monday night co-host Ian Taylor.

No prizes for guessing the main agenda between 6-7pm, with the show being a special Aston Villa phone-in as opposed to the usual weekend retrospective.

Back to WM - during Big Ron's appearance it was confirmed that he will be co-commentating on their coverage of Sunderland v Birmingham City this Saturday, with that game being followed by commentary on Chelsea v West Bromwich Albion at 5.30pm. Not sure if that means WM have commentary rights on the Baggies back this season but they have the rights to their opening game at the very least.

Assuming nothing has changed in regards of their other rights deals, I imagine that on Saturday at 3pm it'll be Sunderland v Blues on FM, Villa v West Ham on DAB in Birmingham and Wolves v Stoke on DAB in Wolverhampton, with Chelsea v Albion commentary on all platforms from 5.15pm.

Monday 9th August - talkSPORT

Danny Kelly presenting Kick-Off alongside Stan Collymore

Carling Cup First Round
Stevenage v Portsmouth - Geoff Peters

Horse Racing: Monday Night Racing
Windsor Racecourse - Lisa O'Sullivan

ref the Leeds coverage on Sky channel 203(I think)

You can listen to it up till kick off time then the music kicks in.
that was the situation last season

Maybe THEY have negotiated a deal to broadcast on the Sky box

OR

Someone might have forgot to switch the music off and let the radio commentary be broadcast

I know they normally switch in a couple of minutes before the half time and full time with commentary

Leeds are in action on tuesday night,but the Carling cup might have different radio rights

Next Sunday Leeds are in League action,so have a listen to Sky channel 203 and see if their is commentary.

Just an update on BBC Tees from a trail I heard.
When Middlesbrough, Hartlepool United and Darlington all play:

* Full-match commentary on every Middlesbrough game on 95FM with Alastair Brownlee, Gary Gill and Mark Drury.
* Full-match commentary on every Hartlepool United game on DAB with Ivan Ash, Brian Arrundale and Eddie Kyle.
* Full-match commentary on every Darlington game online - bbc.co.uk/tees.

It was something to do with the BBC televising it making them eligible to do commentary. Will only happen if the BBC picks them for TV again.

Well, on this link: http://predictor.talksport.co.uk/def...e&n=presenters

Sam Matterface is listed as being part of the Kick-Off team.

Clearly this is not definitive, so maybe he'll be a commentator or presenter on Matchday Live?

Danny Kelly and Mark Saggers appear to have Kick-Off covered in terms of anchoring the show.

BBC Essex has signed a new deal to provide football commentary on every Colchester United and Southend United league and cup matches: http://radiotoday.co.uk/news.php?extend.6167

5Live can't be bothered with any Carling Cup 1st round commentaries. Poor.

It says on their schedule page, 5 Live will do second half commentary from one of the games.

Oh. There isn't anything on their commentaries page!

Thanks for posting that, I wondered what they would be doing. On talkSPORT I thought Durham and Gough did pretty well, obviously caught on the hop a bit, just let the Villa fans say their piece and what they thought.

I never knew E.B was a Welsh speaker

Seeing as there isn't a mini-league for Matchday Live or Premier League Live (so this one probably covers all three), it would make sense that he'd be involved in one of these shows (especially if he's to be a presenter) rather than Kick-Off which as you say is well covered in respects of its presenting line-up.

I don't think he works on Sky Sports News at weekends, so could he be the yet-to-be announced presenter of the live games on Saturday and/or Sunday?

Speaking of which, in the absence of a live pre-3pm Premier League game this Sunday, talkSPORT.co.uk's schedule page is saying that in the new Premier League Live slot between 12noon-4pm this week will be a programme called Sunday Exclusive with Alan Brazil. I'm sure that won't just be Alan and guests (it's been said elsewhere Neil Warnock will be involved).

I see Ian Danter is also listed in that Kick-Off mini-league - which suggests to me that there may a role in their live football coverage for him (I know he reports but I was thinking something more noteworthy, perhaps a commentary role on Saturdays and/or Champions League games).

If he wasn't due to have a notable role in their live football strand then I'm sure they'd have just plonked his predictions solely into the Football First mini-league, as they have done with Stan Collymore in the Call Collymore mini-league.



I'm guessing they'll do an Around the Grounds/Open Mics type format during the first half and then pick up second half commentary on whichever game looks the most likely to cause a notable upset.

It'll probably be the case that they'll have commentators and summarisers at a number of the ties which they deem to be among the better games, enabling them to switch between matches or do an extra time period if possible.

They have an International Football Preview scheduled between 7-8.30pm which doesn't look that promising, but hopefully they'll wrap that up by 8pm allowing them to concentrate on the League Cup beyond that point.

It won't be a surprise to anyone that talkSPORT are doing a full Around the Grounds programme for the first round of the League Cup tonight, with Danny Kelly (who's not the best at doing Around the Grounds when multiple lower league teams are playing, but bless him, it always sounds like he's trying his heart out to keep across all the scores) and Stewart Robson.


No worries. I didn't listen to Drive Time last night, but I caught a fair bit of Kick-Off after 7pm and thought talkSPORT did a very good job there.

It was a bit of a strange show - whoever the scheduled studio guest was must have been cancelled, as Stan Collymore came into the studio especially for the show (he was originally due back on the airwaves after his post-World Cup break this Saturday), but was only able to work 7-8.30pm with Ray Parlour, another late call-up, taking Stan's place alongside Danny Kelly for the rest of the show.

That Stan is willing to cut short a break and come down to London at such short notice demonstrates how genuinely passionate he is about both his club and football in general, and also how much he enjoys his job on talkSPORT.

Aldershot Town will continue to be a regular fixture on BBC Surrey after signing a new commentary deal: http://radiotoday.co.uk/news.php?extend.6169