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“Interesting… Very interesting!”

Wednesday, December 20, 2006 by

In a cliched fashion, these days I spend most of the weekend, and a couple of weeknights, watching football on Sky Sports. In fact in terms of hours I probably watch Sky Sports more than any other channel, which I’m not proud of.

Fortunately, this figure didn’t get any bigger last night given the scheduled Liverpool vs Arsenal match was called off. Only Sky could turn the announcement of a postponement into a full half-hour programme, including an ad break, with interviews with the referee, the stadium manager, both managers and the assembled pundits. Sadly situations like this always bring out the pompous worst in Richard Keys, asking everyone why they couldn’t play it 24 hours later, when not only had this been explained (boring reason – the police need more notice) but if it had been, they wouldn’t have been able to show it because another match is scheduled.

In any case, the highlight of the week, and the season, on Sky Sports, came from Ian Darke’s commentary on Everton vs Chelsea at the weekend. I’ve never been crazy about Darke as a commentator – though at least he has a bit of life about him, unlike his monotone colleague Rob Hawthorne – but when Didier Drogba scored the winning goal, he hollered “Look at that, look at that!” This is a quote from one of the most famous lines by John Motson and it was great to hear what I’m assuming was an obvious homage from Darke.

If you’d like to know more about commentators, then why not take a look at this thread on Digital Spy, now nearly two years old and featuring 270 pages of incredibly intense commentator discussion, including a regular weekly sweepstake on who’s commentating on what for Sky. I find this absolutely fascinating.

Ooh, I wish you could post here anonymously.

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