WE MUST FIGHT FOR THIS ICON
TO begin with, a personal tale. A dark December night in the Lake District and an hour in a deserted pub with onebarman and a TV screen for company. Liverpool at Southampton in the Capital One Cup couldn’t hold the interest for very long.
A little later, however, and the final half-hour was caught on the radio in front of the fire. Suddenly the whole event seemed a little more beguiling and for that I thanked BBC Radio 5 Live and, on that occasion, Alan Green.
Green and his colleagues have been doing this for almost 22 years now. Bringing sport into our homes, cars, gardens and, more recently, on to our iPods, tablets and home computers. Certainly, we have changed the way that we listen but, regardless, we still listen.
How to react, then, to news — contested by the publicity arm of the BBC — that 5 Live is in danger of falling victim to budget cuts? Incredulity will have been the default setting of many I would imagine. It certainly was with me. The modern fan loves the satellite and cable television companies that have opened up sport in so many marvellous ways to those who can afford it.
If they were to go, we would miss them and the brilliant minds who drive them forwards into new territories.
To lose 5 Live, however, would represent something more grave, more fundamental. It would be the severing of an English sporting tradition that has its roots in the old Radio Two commentaries of Peter Jones and Bryon Butler.
It’s remarkable to think that, back in the 1970s, the second half of a football match was all that we got and the modern 5 Live paints on a much broader canvas these days, of course.
Sport is only a fraction of what it does so well and live sport an even smaller percentage of that. Sport remains core to what it brings us, however, and in this age of competition from all corners it has managed to keep its standards of comment, investigation and analysis unstintingly high.
Authority. It is an easy word to say but somewhat harder to claim. Swivel the dial to 909 or 693, though, and you will often find it.
Green, irascible as he can be, remains at his divisive best and a group of brilliantly talented younger commentators — who I will not name for fear of missing someone out — provide the gentle, lilting balance that has always been part of 5 Live’s charm. And that, incidentally, is just the football.
The station has, as a public service broadcaster, remained true to sports without football’s mass appeal. Cricket, golf, racing, rugby — both codes — tennis, boxing and athletics are served with the knowledge, enthusiasm, gravitas and, of course, humour that they very much deserve.
There have been some mistakes. The station has on occasion gambled on Colin Murray, Ian Wright and even a DJ called Spoony in a search for mass appeal that it probably should have realised it already owned.
On the whole, though, anchors and programme hosts such as Mark Pougatch, Mark Chapman, Eleanor Oldroyd, Phil Williams and Garry Richardson have stuck fast to the traditions of what sport on BBC radio has always been about.
Now talkSPORT — a serious rival these days it seems — has a dedicated following I am told and an improvement has been noticed. There are adverts, though, and shouting and gimmicks and, more importantly, there is no Jimmy Armfield, no Graham Taylor and no David Pleat.
The retention of older analysts such as these, combined with the assimilation of newer voices, is reflective of 5 Live’s intelligence, bravery and indeed its confidence in itself.
FOOTBALL,golf and rugby commentator Conor McNamara is a good example of the station’s talented, versatile young stable but he still recalls Armfield’s hand on his knee early on his debut commentary.
‘It was just his way of telling me it would be OK,’ said McNamara, ‘and it was.’
Perhaps that, in many ways, nicely represents what 5 Live sport continues to mean. England may flunk at Euro 2016, Andy Murray may never win the Australian Open and Jordan Spieth may yet prove himself better than Rory McIlroy over the coming years.
But there will always be another day, another event, another match, another broadcast. Everything, in sport, will eventually be OK. It is, after all, just sport.
If we lost 5 Live, though, that would not be OK. Nor would it be OK if it became just an online service. It would then become semi- exclusive, the antithesis of what it is supposed to be about.
No, we must fight for 5 Live, just as hard as we would fight for the future of sport itself.
The alternative is a life staring upwards at a wall in the pub.