[sheff71]

Anyone else heard the PaddyPower ad with 'Keith Entwistle' - i'm sure that's based on the Moose

The one that annoys me on TS at the moment is Matterface - as someone else said, it's like he's got a list of prepared quips he thinks are clever... and his commentary on Welbeck's winner was weird, verging on camp!

[m4rk1]

Originally Posted by sheff71

Anyone else heard the PaddyPower ad with 'Keith Entwistle' - i'm sure that's based on the Moose

The one that annoys me on TS at the moment is Matterface - as someone else said, it's like he's got a list of prepared quips he thinks are clever... and his commentary on Welbeck's winner was weird, verging on camp!

That was the other one I couldn't think of. Thanks for bringing it up Sheff.

Matterface sounded like the Sugar Plum Fairy in that piece of pre-scripted tripe.

[LarryHillington]

What happened to nutcase Tommy from Glasgow?

Has he been sectioned?

I haven't heard him on Talksport for a while.

[swansea steve]

Originally Posted by LarryHillington

What happened to nutcase Tommy from Glasgow?

Has he been sectioned?

I haven't heard him on Talksport for a while.

well, given that TS is now 24 hour sport, I'd guess he'd be unlikely to phone in. that said though, I'd be interested in his views on the rangers situation... or maybe i wouldn't!

[swansea steve]

Originally Posted by m4rk1

That was the other one I couldn't think of. Thanks for bringing it up Sheff.

Matterface sounded like the Sugar Plum Fairy in that piece of pre-scripted tripe.

Matterface is a strange one.
I reckon that all commentators have some kind of pre-prepared material, but, Matterface makes it so obvious. Jonathan Pearce used to do similar things when he worked on comercial radio but it sounded so much more natural than when Sam Materface does it. I think that if he just calmed down a bit he's actually quite a good commentator.

[LarryHillington]

Originally Posted by swansea steve

well, given that TS is now 24 hour sport, I'd guess he'd be unlikely to phone in. that said though, I'd be interested in his views on the rangers situation... or maybe i wouldn't!

You must be joking.

He's been ranting about the Rangers situation for the last two years. I thought the fact it's now sport 24/7 would see him obsess over Rangers even more.

As we hadn't heard from him I genuinely thought he may have been sectioned. He definitely has a screw loose.

[Billy244]

Originally Posted by LarryHillington

What happened to nutcase Tommy from Glasgow?

Has he been sectioned?

I haven't heard him on Talksport for a while.

Tommy along with all the other great regular callers were forced to ditch talkSPORT and move to other stations when boss Moz Dee ruined the station by going 24/7 football.

[Billy244]

Originally Posted by swansea steve

Matterface is a strange one.
I reckon that all commentators have some kind of pre-prepared material, but, Matterface makes it so obvious. Jonathan Pearce used to do similar things when he worked on comercial radio but it sounded so much more natural than when Sam Materface does it. I think that if he just calmed down a bit he's actually quite a good commentator.

I've never rated Matterface and he's one of the reasons I prefer BBC Radio 5, it's a strange old world though init cos some people on here think he's god's gift to commentating, that said, they are fully entitled to think that ya understand.

[Billy244]

Originally Posted by LarryHillington

You must be joking.

He's been ranting about the Rangers situation for the last two years. I thought the fact it's now sport 24/7 would see him obsess over Rangers even more.

As we hadn't heard from him I genuinely thought he may have been sectioned. He definitely has a screw loose.

He may be this, he may be that, ... but what a character the bloke is!!!.

[Billy244]

Originally Posted by pakokelso93

My once in a blue moon post here...

Have to say sadly overnights feel as if they have been there for years now. Mike doing a solid if unspectacular job. What has happened to Forde and Bovil? That guy Hunt and the American chap are awful...

I believe Forde is still stealing a living on Friday overnights although I can't confirm it as I make sure I'm mostly well away from talkSPORT when it comes to their overnight slots. Hunt seems to like to copy the other presenters, I've only heard short snippets as like I say I don't listen but sometimes I catch bits and pieces as I am moving around the stations, his latest is the Mike Graham thing when he says just before playing clips from earlier "Here's what you've missed while you've been asleep" there's more but guess what? they've gone in my head right now. Mike Graham sounds like a man just going through the motions, I've been told his private view is that HE didn't make the decision to change his show to sport so he just gets on with it, I think the biggest clue is him saying to someone I know "I have a family to look after and a mortgage to pay" ... that sounds pretty much the situation to me, he didn't want it, he doesn't like it but he's forced to do it because like the rest of us he has commitments.

If they wanted to go 24/7 sport then they should have brought in informed and dedicated sports people not expect Mike Graham a non-sporting newspaper journalist to have a go at it and do the best he can, it's just another of the many own goals Moz Dee has put in his own net how the station keeps all its listeners is a complete mystery to me.

[Billy244]

Originally Posted by m4rk1

I'd echo that. Stan sounded positive and enthusiastic.Green on the other hand is someone I now avoid like the plague.

In general Talksports approach to the Euros has been enjoyable, professional and better than anything else I've heard elsewhere. The only thing that is really annoying me is Matterface's pre-contrived soundbite statements he keeps throwing in.

Last night's "Mad moment in Montenegro" was so obviously written on his crib sheet all night in the hope of bleating it out somewhere. He should stop this now as it's getting embarrassing and ask Stan to loosen the zip on his fly to stop his voice from squeaking with all his orgasmic excitement at the scoring of a goal.

I am in agreement with all the Stan praisers on our hallowed pages the guy genuinely loves our national side and is so proud to support them, everything he says comes from the heart there's no scripts in front of Stanley it's all from the heart.

[Billy244]

Originally Posted by old oak

Does anyone really still listen to this excuse of a sports radio station ?even Brazill has realised the games up,

If you hand pick your shows there's still stuff well worth listening to Oak in my view, yes I agree there's loads of absolute garbage that's needs urgent culling (like that god damn awful, tired out, boring as hell, stale, gone-off, uninteresting, dreary, mind numbing, tiresome, lacklustre, monotonous, repetitive, uninspiring, nauseating and appalling Sports Breakfast Show) but there is still the odd nugget there if you search carefully.

[Billy244]

When talkSPORT'S usually positive Alvin Martin is telling us we're poor and haven't a prayer of getting any further in these euros it is then I really know we are in bother, cos Alvin bless him wouldn't be saying these things not in a million years if it wasn't all so true. We've been very very fortunate so far (lucky is the word I was really looking for) but luck only lasts so long and then it goes away, we got to start playing much much better than we have in those first three games or we're out against the Italians.
The squad's not good most people are now accepting that but we've got what we've got and have to get on with it, we've got to start attacking more, we've got to be more alert and put 100% effort in for every single second of the game and we've got to stop falling asleep at defending set pieces.
I'll just say one thing on the line-up for the Italians I'd let Carrol lead the attack against Italy, let him at them, with his frame and ability in the air they won't like it one bit, Welbeck seems too lightweight right now, maybe a player for future tournaments.

[Joe19]

Originally Posted by sheff71

Anyone else heard the PaddyPower ad with 'Keith Entwistle' - i'm sure that's based on the Moose

The one that annoys me on TS at the moment is Matterface - as someone else said, it's like he's got a list of prepared quips he thinks are clever... and his commentary on Welbeck's winner was weird, verging on camp!

It is a rather bizarre piece of commentary- "Oooh Danny Welbeck with a lovely little goal" while Stan is doing an Andy Gray style "YES DANNY!!" in the background.

[The Difference]

Originally Posted by Peachy Keen

On a separate note, why does TalkSPORT give out updates and results of various American sports overnight but they can't be bother to do the same for our own domestic cricket matches in the daytime?

Even though I am a fan of North American sports - specifically baseball - I would have to agree with this. We are nearly three months into Extra Time's run and while I think that overall the show is a pretty good listen with a lot of very listenable content for fans with a wide sporting interest, the "global sports updates" as they call them on the quarter hour are just not working for me. I can't imagine they are anything other than a turn-off for most listeners.

It's not so much that they are giving out updates of North American sports and not others (although when they would give out results of IPL matches that had ended hours ago I always found that felt a bit redundant, and yes there should be more coverage of county cricket during the daytime but that's a point for a different debate), it's the very dry and dull manner in which they are delivered during this section.

Usually the global sports updates will consist of little more than a list of scorelines from various sports, with no extra information or colour added to tell us about noteworthy things that have happened or particular players who have scored/performed well. It doesn't help matters that the new regular sports newsreader Sohail Sahi seems to not have much knowledge of or interest in North American sports, as evidenced by how early on in his run he'd regularly get team names and terminology wrong, or how because the overnight newsreaders end their stints at 4am they'll be no further updates on games covered heavily after 1am beyond 3.45am - which means that they don't read out the final scores of games they've spent a lot of time updating, which to me defeats the object of bothering in the first place.

A good example of where the global sports updates fail happened last week where there was a genuinely newsworthy story in baseball, when Matt Cain of the San Francisco Giants pitched a perfect game last Wednesday. For those who don't follow the sport, a perfect game is where a pitcher retires every batter he faces with no-one reaching base. It's a very rare feat that is only achieved once in a blue moon. If a pitcher is on for a perfect game, that's got to be something worth mentioning on a global sports update given the nature of them you'd have thought.

I for one am interested in rare feats and oddities in sport - OK I like baseball but I would say that if something unusual happened in a sport I don't follow (Isner v Mahut at Wimbledon a few years ago springs to mind) - and feel they are worth telling us about. Yet from checking Listen Again on the relevant night and the last global sports update there was at 3.45am, Sohail just read out a list of some of the scores from Major League Baseball (said Giants game didn't even get a mention) and that was that. Even as a fan of baseball, a sport notorious for its use of stats, a list of numbers with no colour or anything to qualify the relevance of them (telling us who is top of the divisional tables etc) is just not interesting to me.

With their updates of the NBA and NHL playoffs, things have been at least at bit more interesting here as there are fewer fixtures and each of them has an obvious relevance about them as the results are key as to who progresses to the next round of the playoffs and who will win the championship in that sport. But even here we are still getting little colour, for example I don't recall hearing Sohail telling us who the goalscorers were in games from the Stanley Cup Finals or letting us know how many points the likes of LeBron James have scored in matches from the NBA Finals.

Also, I don't like the Americo-centricty of these updates. I get that they want to tell us about sporting events that are happening live and that's fine, but why just concentrate on the one continent? In South America, we've reached the semi-final stages of the Copa Libertadores - that continent's equivalent of the Champions League - yet to the best of my knowledge this isn't being covered by the global sports updates. Last night saw the first leg of the first semi-final between Santos and Corinthians (teams possessing familiar names to European football fans like Neymar and Adriano) yet from what I heard of Extra Time, while a number of early season MLS games were updated this match wasn't. Why? I'm not expecting scorelines from the Peruvian league but surely a match of that magnitude is worth a mention.

For what it's worth, this is not a knock on Sohail Sahi - who I feel, aside from having to read the flawed global sports updates, is doing a pretty good job and has built up a decent rapport with Matt Forde in particular - or the regular America's Most Wanted feature after 2am most nights, which talks about relevant occurrences in North American sports in detail and to my mind has as much of a place being on this show as the regular round-ups on county cricket, rugby league, boxing etc does.

I apologise for this long rant of a post, but the global sports updates are simply not working, and this is coming not from an American sports hater but from someone who would potentially be interested in listening to this section if some thought was put into it.

[LarryHillington]

Originally Posted by Peachy Keen

I delete the above on a daily basis but l still can't access the TalkSPORT website. I'm still using IE8 but wary on installing another browser as l have read numerous 'horror' stories!

On a separate note, why does TalkSPORT give out updates and results of various American sports overnight but they can't be bother to do the same for our own domestic cricket matches in the daytime?

I do wonder that myself. They seem to give hourly updates on US soccer. Does anyone really care?

[Joe19]

Look on Youtube and you come across some fantastic trailers for shows. The "Dear Stan" was excellent, as was Campese Zambezi and the strangely underused "Keys and Gray" to Bill Withers' Lovely Day.

TalkSport has its critics but in terms of creativity it's superb.

[The_Sleeper]

Durham, you clown ....... You's had one shot on target the first game

Played of the park for the first 30 minutes in the third game ?

Get a bloody grip, yah eeejiiiitt ! ......... Alvin is spot on with wot he's said !!!

Jesus Wept !

[Mallory99]

More barrel scraping on Drive Time: They led the show on Alvin Martin's comments from last night regarding England's chances.

And what about the constant replaying all through the day of the Rooney interview from this morning ?Bloody hell! That's desperate.

[Mallory99]

Originally Posted by sheff71

Anyone else heard the PaddyPower ad with 'Keith Entwistle' - i'm sure that's based on the Moose

The one that annoys me on TS at the moment is Matterface - as someone else said, it's like he's got a list of prepared quips he thinks are clever... and his commentary on Welbeck's winner was weird, verging on camp!

I think the Entwistle thing is just meant to represent a nerdy character who still lives at home and is also a virgin. Can't see the connection wit Abraham's apart from the voice.

I agree with you about Matterface. Those terrible scripted quips! And the voice of a 13 year old girl when something interesting happens. The guy must need incontinence pads!

[Billy244]

The Difference was all for American Sports updates on the talkSPORT overnight show when the station switched formats, he knew practically everyone else was against it but he still persevered with the view that he would enjoy it so what did it matter that everyone else didn't. I'm glad he's finally seen the light and is now seeing sense, this station was originally set out for us British radio listeners not people living in a country 3,000 miles away what don't give a stuff about our sports, why should we have to suffer their sports.
Good to see you seeing sense again Difference.

[The Difference]

Originally Posted by Billy244

The Difference was all for American Sports updates on the talkSPORT overnight show when the station switched formats, he knew practically everyone else was against it but he still persevered with the view that he would enjoy it so what did it matter that everyone else didn't. I'm glad he's finally seen the light and is now seeing sense, this station was originally set out for us British radio listeners not people living in a country 3,000 miles away what don't give a stuff about our sports, why should we have to suffer their sports.
Good to see you seeing sense again Difference.

You've either not read beyond the first few lines of my post, or if you have you've not taken much of what I wrote in (I don't blame you for that, it was a bit long-winded).

I'm not against Extra Time carrying some North American sports content, to the contrary I quite welcome it. I think the America's Most Wanted segment that typically airs between 2.15-2.45am is quite a decent bit of radio and is every bit as good as most of the other round-ups on domestic sports.

What I'm against is talkSPORT broadcasting something that is extremely dull that is not even to the satisfaction of the people it is intended at. Which is exactly what these global sports updates on the quarter hour are.

Why bother updating live scores if you are not going to tell us their final scores when the fixtures end? There's also no attempt whatsoever to make these round-ups interesting, just endless names and numbers. People who want to read up on a particular sports score (with more information) can do so from other sources. Most of those listening must surely want a bit more, and it wouldn't take much to inject even the smallest bit of colour into these round-ups.

That's the problem I have with the global sports updates - that they are done in a deathly dull manner rather than their subject matter. And I'd say exactly the same thing if it was British football they were covering in these segments.

If Matchday Live was just Adrian reading scores off a vidiprinter without telling us any information about scorers, sendings off, the implication of scorelines on league tables etc and making relevant comment on these scores, the show wouldn't be nearly as popular as it is.

[The_Sleeper]

Originally Posted by The Difference

(I don't blame you for that, it was a bit long-winded). .

Sorry Diff, but not for the first time either, I like reading all the posts on this thread, .......... but just some time theres a little shall we say over kill !

[The Difference]

Originally Posted by The_Sleeper

Sorry Diff, but not for the first time either, I like reading all the posts on this thread, .......... but just some time theres a little shall we say over kill !

This from a guy who has posted over ten times as many messages on Digital Spy as I have.

It was one of those things I had to get off my chest in the detail I felt it deserved as it had been bugging me for a number of weeks now. The abridged version of it is in the message above yours.

[swansea steve]

Originally Posted by The_Sleeper

Sorry Diff, but not for the first time either, I like reading all the posts on this thread, .......... but just some time theres a little shall we say over kill !

I don't agree. I found his post interesting. I don't really listen to the overnight stuff (sleep seems like quite a good idea to me at that time what with it being at night) so it was interesting to read about the show. I don't agree that there isn't a market for US sports in the UK. Channel 5 baseball was a hugely popular show when it was on and 5live sports extra take live commentary of US sports which I don't think they'd bother doing if there was no interest. I think there is a tendancy among some posters on here to asume that, just because the few posters on this thread don't want something, no one else does either.
the difference's post make a change from the overwhelming negativity on this thread. he's honest about the station, praising what he likes about it and constructively criticising what he doesn't.