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Schweinsteiger - oh nooo!

Commentator Peter Drury is currently in South Africa covering his fourth world cup for ITV and he’s as nervous as me and you. In part one of an exclusive interview with Goalfood, Peter took time out from his preparations to talk to Simon Harvey about trainee accountancy, national stereotypes, audio wallpaper, the dangers of flamboyancy and why his ideal footballer is a ginger-haired, red-booted, short-sleeved dwarf . . . .

Speaking as someone who commentated on his own Subbuteo games, I’m delighted to hear a professional commentator ‘fess up that he regularly provided a vocal backdrop as well as analysis and background information on his own flick to kick efforts as a child.

“It was always in my psyche - as a six-year-old boy I used to commentate on my mum doing the ironing and on my Subbuteo matches. I used to commentate all the time as a child although that doesn’t necessarily mean I thought it was going to be a career because you don’t think like that at the time. Even when I got to university I didn’t think it would be a career but towards the end of my time at Hull I did some holiday relief on the Kent Cricketcall phone line and that was my first professional commentary job back in 1988.”

Peter’s a former trainee accountant but he hated it, gave up after a month and used his only month’s wage to buy his wife’s engagement ring.

“I told my dad I’d quit and he was furious. He asked me what I was going to do and when I told him I was going to be a football commentator he was even more furious and quite rightly so. After firing off letters applying for journalism jobs I got a break with Hayter’s news agency just off Fleet Street and my career went from there.

“I went on to local BBC Radio in Leeds when Leeds United were good, before arriving at Five Live in its earliest incarnations. With Sky Sports starting as well there was a big expansion of opportunity at that stage and I was fortunate enough to be the young, up-and-comer as Brian Moore of ITV announced his retirement just before the World Cup in 1998. ITV came and got me so I started France 98 as an underling for ITV.”

So what about nerves as the competition fast approaches? Do they get better with time?

“The same nerves as ever, if not more. There are two reasons really – like the players themselves you get more aware of the pitfalls. Two or three years ago we used to talk about Rooney being fearless and playing like he was a kid in the playground, almost unaware of the big stage he was on. But the older you get the more aware you become of what can go wrong and also, truthfully, the world has changed a bit and everyone, including the players, feels so much more scrutinized than you used to be – everyone’s got a blog or a column in a newspaper and there’s nowhere to hide these days.”

You have in the past come in for some harsh criticism for your flowery metaphors and alliteration.

“Sometimes, yes. The thing is you get some nice critiques and some not so nice but the truth is that you have your way of doing it and one person’s favourite commentator is another person’s pain in the neck and that’s just the way it is. Unfortunately you can’t please everyone. I suppose my strength is my weakness and that’s words. I like to use words and some people appreciate that and say they like the way I express things, which is all very flattering, and other people say I wish you’d just shut up!”

After Bryan Butler died you wrote an article praising his use of words and the need to avoid slipping into national stereotypes at events such as world cups. Do you work hard to avoid Teutonic workmanlike Germans, French Gallic flair and Brazilian beach football?

“Yes, I do. And during the course of a long world cup it gets increasingly hard to express yourself because, ultimately, in terms of the mechanics of the game, there’s only so many ways a centre half can head the ball away, never mind national stereotypes. There’s a finite number of words you can use and in the end, you’re bound to be repetitive. Over the course of the world cup you hear yourself day after day and you think ‘oh my goodness, I said that yesterday or I said that the day before’ and if you’re not careful you actually start to get bored of yourself and that’s a dangerous state of affairs because that’s when you’re inclined to get a bit too flamboyant with the language, at least I am, just out of boredom really. It’s just another trap you can fall into.”

Do you have any rituals of preparation?

“Like all other commentators at the moment I’m spending hour after hour on the internet and reading reference books and material to do my fundamental research on players and teams. In terms of the day of the game, ideally, it would be nice to see the two teams train but in the world cup you’re usually commentating on another match while training is taking place. But I would hope to have seen a video of both teams in action before kick-off so that I’m up to date with who’s who facially. Once I’ve got my words ready for the opening it’s down to the hour before kick-off and that’s the most important time. In a world cup schedule you can be talking about Argentina and South Korea one moment and Cameroon and Denmark the next. They become names just whirring around in your head but in that hour before kick-off that’s when you’ve got to get one lot of useless information out of your head and another lot in.

“It’s also the hour when they’re warming up in front of you so you’ve got your bins on the pitch. Once you’ve got the starting 11 you pick them out one by one, try to assimilate them mentally and see which one’s wearing red boots and who’s had his hair cut, who’s wearing long and short sleeves. In large world cup stadia you’re often a long way from the play and identifying the players, which is what you’re there to do, is not always easy. I try to pick up as many of those clues in the hour or so before kick-off. You can stare at the little pen pictures in magazines all you like but once the player’s running around 75 yards away from you that picture is pretty useless because that’s not what he looks like.

“Three or four years ago I did a Champions League fixture in Rome and Cristiano Ronaldo scored for Manchester United and you’d think that’s the easiest call a commentator could make – one of the world’s most famous footballers rises in the penalty area to head home. But in fact he came through a great crowd of players a hundred yards away from me and all I saw were his red boots flashing through the air and if I hadn’t spotted those before the game it would have been an untidy goal rather than a crisp clean identifiable goal and I’d have had to delay in order to work out who’d scored. A few of us used to get Raul and Figo mixed up when they played for Real Madrid and there’s two very famous players. My ideal would be a team made up of blond, ginger, black-haired players and a bald player perhaps.”

Is it any more difficult commentating on England matches?

“It’s more stressful because you really do know you’re being scrutinized because 20 million people are watching. It’s a whole different thing. At least you’re familiar with one team and the England players’ names should trip off the tongue but just how you articulate it is a different ball game because there is the issue of the degree to which you’re partisan. But then broadcasters have a different view on that. I remember on the BBC we were told never to use the “we” or “us” when describing England and use the third person instead. I try to stick to that rule because we’re also broadcasting to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But I don’t think it’s wrong to express pleasure at England scoring and displeasure at the opposition scoring. Who could blame a commentator who, after England are knocked out of the competition by a last minute German goal, says something like: “Schweinsteiger . . . oh nooo!” That’s natural and you’re just reflecting what the vast majority of your audience are thinking. It’s defensible for an Englishman to be disappointed if England go out of the world cup.”

When you sit at the microphone do you ever think back to those days of commentating as a child?

“It is a thrill being able to commentate but because of those frantic last minutes before kick-off I don’t often have time to think those thoughts. Once in a while I do and I must say, that the other night when I did the England/Mexico match at Wembley I did look round as the teams were preparing to come out and St George’s flags were waving all around the ground and I imagined my family sitting at home watching the match and I did genuinely think what an incredible privilege this is – I have the best seat in the house for a sell-out game at Wembley as the nation prepares to send England off to a world cup. How lucky have I been?

“I still have my ambitions – I’m number two at ITV which means that there are certain games I never get to so I spend my life being knocked out in the semi-final. But I don’t say that with any bitterness or regret because I’m just about to do my fourth world cup, I’ve commentated in all the major stadia of Europe and if I stopped doing it tomorrow I’d have had some experiences which other people could only dream of so I do have a very great sense of how lucky I am.”

Are there are any particular pitfalls waiting for commentators in South Africa this time round? Any tricky pronunciations?

Well, the Poles aren’t there thankfully. They have the least logical pronunciations from an English perspective. I usually just approach a couple of journalists from an opposing country before the game and run down the list of the difficult ones. But pronunciation is not really an issue any more, it’s much more about identification.

Did you have your own favourite commentator or someone you admire?

Growing up in the radio era as I did, it was people like Bryan Butler’s other half Peter Jones and he was, for me, one of the most evocative commentators there ever was, a brilliant wordsmith. But in our day it was either Motty, Barry Davies or Brian Moore. I can’t choose between them but all I can say is that at various times all three have been very kind to me and supportive. Motty has given me great encouragement and help, as has Barry Davies. I was privileged to get my job as a result of the great Brian Moore’s retirement and if ever I have a bad day at the office I have a letter in a box at home, from Brian, which tells me that I’m alright actually. Those are the sort of people I look up to and admire.”

Wolstenholme’s iconic “they think it’s all over” tag is oft repeated but there’s much to recommend Brian Moore’s BBC radio commentary on the ’66 final and Hugh Johns’ ITV version of the same game.

“I think that it’s just a fact of life for whomever does the final for ITV that more people will watch it on the BBC, they just do. People tend to go to the BBC at historic times so it’s likely, not certain, but likely that in a head-to-head between ITV and BBC the BBC version will become in the nation’s psyche the definitive version. There’s so much more commentary now that you’re less likely to make an impact in such a way. But it’s important to say that I try to remember as a commentator, that nobody, apart from perhaps your mum, is turning on for you. They are turning on for the game and you can only spoil that game. I suppose that’s not true, you may also enhance it, of course, but if you start to believe people are turning on for you then you’re on dangerous territory because it ain’t about you. It would be lovely to come up with a line that people will talk about in 50 years time but that’s not why we’re there.

“The vast majority of people tuning into Argentina versus South Korea won’t care or notice that it’s me commentating; we find that lot of people don’t even know what channel they’re watching because they’ve just looked for the football and there it is, let alone know who the commentator is. It’s a relatively small percentage of people who are sufficiently savvy to really care who the commentator is. I believe commentating is really audio wallpaper.”

So what of England’s chance this time round?

“I know it will sound repetitious because others are saying it but England are one of the country’s which has a chance of winning, that’s all. If England don’t get through the group it will be staggering – I think that’s a given . . . well, I hope it is. After that we all know it’s a knockout competition and anything can happen. In England’s knockout competition this year Leeds beat Manchester United and Reading beat Liverpool but I really do believe that, on their day, England can beat everybody, they really can beat everybody, and there are a few teams that can beat England.

“At some point on the night there will be a hero or villain for England, a future knight of the realm or a fall guy. I know they’re multi-millionaires and I know people’s perception of footballers is not great these days but the pressure those guys are under is incredible. It will all be settled on moments but it could be argued that it really is England’s turn this time.”

Schweinsteiger - oh nooo!

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