‘I’m not going to forget the thrill of sitting behind a mic’
John Motson cannot put a precise figure on the hundreds of matches on which he has commentated during his 47 years as a television staple. But one thing he is sure about: he can immediately identify the best game he ever worked on. “Oh, England 5 Germany 1 in Munich, 2001,” he says. “I can live every moment again. Greg Dyke, who was the director general of the BBC back then, and I were at the airport the next morning when he heard that the viewing figures were over 20million. He almost did a lap of honour round the departure lounge. I said to him, ‘It’s all very well, Greg, but what about the 30-odd million people who didn’t see it? Why don’t you show it again?’. He said, ‘Yeah, let’s put it on tonight’. And he did. It was the only time in my life I was a television scheduler.”
As he speaks, the crackle of excitement is audible in his voice, his sentences punctuated by the characteristic little chuckle that has become part of our national soundscape. This Sunday, however, will mark the last time we will hear it on Match of the Day. At the age of 72, the voice of a generation is hanging up his sheepskin coat. And he leaves, he says, a happy man.
“I’m not going to forget the thrill of sitting behind the microphone. I’m going to miss it but I’m not going to have to go far to watch a match. I’m not going to cut myself off from a lifetime’s experience.”
Mind, his departure has not been the most sudden of announcements. Frank Sinatra would have been pushed to match the scale and ceremony of his season-long goodbye, in which he has commentated on a game involving every club in the Premier League. The final hurrah will come next Saturday when an evening of programmes will be dedicated to him, as BBC Two hosts Motty Night.
“Oh gosh, it was the BBC’S idea, this farewell tour,” he sighs. “Sadly, I haven’t completed it. I didn’t get to all 20 league grounds, I only managed 16. One or two clubs have been kind enough to recognise my departure with a small gift, for which I’m very grateful.”
On the day we meet, he is sitting in Wembley Stadium, which has become, over years of reporting on FA Cup finals and England internationals, almost his second home. It is the ideal spot to reflect on his magnificent career, from the most precarious commentating position he ever occupied (“at Leeds, the ladder up was so sheer if you had fallen back you wouldn’t have done another commentary”) to the modern fashion for extravagant squad numbers (“I saw somebody the other day with 90-something on his shirt; that hasn’t made my life any easier”). And he recalls, as if it had happened yesterday, the moment when, as a cub reporter fresh from the radio, he realised he might actually make it on television.
“I feel I’m boring people with this story, but the turning point for me was February 1972 and that Cup replay at Hereford against Newcastle. When they sent me to Hereford, I think my bosses thought it would be very straightforward, three or four minutes which would make up the end of Match of the Day. Then came Ronnie Radford scoring the goal which probably changed my career. It was the first match on that night.
“I remember going back to the house of Billy Meadows, the centre-forward, eating fish and chips and listening to a record his wife had just bought, American Pie, the Don Mclean song that was leading the charts. It remains probably the most pivotal day in my career because I think people thought, ‘Oh well, Motson maybe can do a big occasion.”
Over four decades he has proved exactly that, his voice forever associated with football’s landmark moments – though he admits he has not been everybody’s cup of broadcasting tea.
“When it comes to commentators, one man’s preference is another man’s nadir,” he says. “I’m not going to deny I had my critics, there were people who probably couldn’t stand the