Jelleyman’s Thrown a Wobbly: Saturday Afternoons in Front of the Telly. Jeff Stelling
the Burnley fan.’
I'm not like Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston - I'm not one for drinking milk-and-honey concoctions before I go on air, though I do treat my body like a temple the night before and try not drink too much alcohol.
TIME: 4:45-ish
THE FULL-TIME SCORES/POST-MATCH ANALYSIS
It's a job to keep your concentration at this point. The panel are a constant distraction. Because they've finished for the afternoon, they're often talking and messing around, but generally they know not to push it too far. Still, there have been times when I've had to say, ‘Look guys, will you shut the fuck up?’ Offmic, of course. Former Villa striker Alan McInally is the worst, because he's a right old woman. He'll be sitting there with the other maids - John Salako (former Palace midfielder) and Paul Walsh - gossiping away. I always think, ‘Do you mind?’
Sometimes you can hear the research team working away in the Sky Sports studio behind us. I remember Rodney would often stand up - sometimes we would even be live - and shout, ‘Will you lot shut up?!’ Then he'd carry on as if nothing had happened. So it can be distracting, yes, but I use all of my professional experience and charm to remain composed.
TIME: 5:17
POST-MATCH INTERVIEWS
This is the most difficult part of the day in many respects, mainly because it feels like the calm after the storm. During the first part of the show you're building up to kick-off. There are a lot of laughs, the adrenaline is racing and it's really good fun. When the games start, the show and my job increase in tempo until I almost hit fever pitch at four-thirty. The pace doesn't relent until around five o'clock, give or take a few needless minutes of injury time (at Old Trafford usually) and delayed kick-offs.
After this rush and the reading of the final scores, there's a natural lull. It's important to keep some sense of momentum going, but that really depends on the post-match interviews we're picking up from around the grounds and the assessment you get from the guys on the panel. When it comes to evaluating the games, what we don't want from the likes of Charlie and Thommo is, ‘Well, in the 10th minute, this happened. In the 32nd minute, this happened …’ and so on and so forth. What we need is a succinct evaluation of the game and some recurring themes – poor defending, exposure at set pieces, the form of one or two particular players – to summarize the results. We don't want lists. We want interpretations of what has happened, just like every watching fan.
You hope these summaries are lit up by some entertaining postmatch interviews. Gordon Strachan was always a dream to get on the show when he was the manager at Southampton and Coventry City. I remember one reporter asked him if he could have a ‘quick word’. In a flash, Gordon responded, ‘Yes. Velocity,’ before turning on his heels and walking away. It was fantastic moment. In another one of his post-match press conferences, a hapless journalist asked, ‘Gordon, do you think you're the right man for the job?’ He sighed. ‘No, of course I'm not. I'm nothing like the best man for the job, but I'm the best they could get at that moment in time.’
If you ask Strach a stupid question, you're going to get murdered, but it makes for great telly. One of our guys even asked whether he became depressed after losses and poor performances. ‘Depressed?’ snapped Strach. ‘Depressed?! I get suicidal. I'm going to go home and lock myself in a dark room, I'm not going to come out. Not ever.’
This turned into a five-minute rant on what he was going to do when he got home and brightened what was an otherwise dull close to the evening. You can also rely on the likes of Fergie, Arsène Wenger and Paul Jewell to deliver good interviews. Martin Jol was very good when he was in charge at Spurs. And, of course, there was the Special One, Jose Mourinho. He was a godsend. But again, he could be miserable. During one interview he answered every question with the words, ‘Yes, no, yes, no …’ much to the despair of the Sky crew at work. Eventually Mourinho said, ‘Have you got any more of these questions?’ before walking off. But even though he was being rude to a reporter (who I believe was making his Sky debut), it was great to watch.
Managers and players can be difficult at the best of times, and even more so at the worst - when they've lost. I can understand why it's difficult for footballers to articulate their art minutes after swapping shirts and applauding the fans. They must be knackered. It's also worth noting that a TV crew would never grab Phil Collins as he walked off stage from a Genesis gig (my guilty pleasure, I apologize) to talk a live audience through a particularly powerful drum solo. So, put in that context it seems absurd to quiz a player on things they probably can't even remember. Then, of course, there is the political implications of giving a controversial answer: criticizing a referee or team-mate can land you in hot water with the club or the FA. Having said that, players and coaches are celebrities - without the public interest, they wouldn't be in the privileged financial position they find themselves in today, so they should just grin and bear it.
If it's any consolation, it's also bloody tough on our side of the cameras. I remember a radio interview I did at Arsenal when I was a reporter for LBC in London. You used to grab players as they walked through the marble halls at Highbury and I remember I'd been asked to talk to two young players who had just made their debuts - Paul Davies and Chris White. I approached Paul as he came out of the dressing rooms and convinced him to do a live link.
I said, ‘Well Paul, you must have been pleased with your contribution there …’
He looked confused. ‘Well, er, yeah …’
‘And you nearly came close a couple of times …’
‘Well, not that much, but I'm still pleased.’
‘And how do you think you teamed up with X, Y and Z in mid-field?’
‘Well, OK, but it's not really my role.’
‘Well, thanks, Paul.’
‘No problem, but why do you keep calling me Paul? My name's Chris White.’
So I understand, painfully, the difficulties of interviewing players under pressure – that was probably one of the most embarrassing moments of my career. That said, I, more than anyone, can become frustrated at the interviewing techniques of many football reporters. It really should be a simple business, but sometimes they will answer their own questions before the interviewee has had a chance to open his gob, which is really infuriating. For example, someone will thrust a mic in front of Rafa Benitez and say, ‘So great result today … well done, the way you set out your side with so and so on the left and so and so on the right, it was perfect, absolutely perfect … it worked a treat.’
And all the manager can say to that is, ‘Thanks.’
Crikey, it's hardly Sir David Frost taking down former US president Richard Nixon, is it? So generally, after the dramas, the highs, the lows, the shouting and the screaming of a Soccer Saturday afternoon, it can be a low-key end.
TIME:
6:00 AFTER THE SHOW
With the show over, we'll sort out the various bets which have been laid before the programme began. At this point, the two real challenges are to get Charlie Nicholas to pay up in something other than Scottish notes and to get any sort of cash out of Paul Walsh. He never has any! By this point, I am absolutely exhausted. I'll just drive home to Winchester and watch Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway. The likes of Charlie and Thommo get a plane home. Sometimes they'll bump into people who have been involved in the games. Referee Mark Clattenburg will often run into them. When he sees the boys, he'll often say, ‘How did I do today?’ And they'll reply, ‘Crap.’
I'm absolutely spent afterwards. I remember when Big Sam Allardyce came onto the show, he found that he enjoyed it, but he reckoned it was a long haul. And it is, especially for the boys: once they've done their match reports, they have very little to do apart from twiddle their thumbs and sit quietly. Me, I'm dreaming of my sofa in Winchester and a pint of nice, ice cold Hoegaarden.