Playing a blinder – how Match of the Day beat critics
Former editor reveals all about Lineker, claims of bias and taking on Doctor Who, writes Alan Tyers
‘Fifteen out of the 20 teams think they are always on last’
Why are we always on last? A question that many a disgruntled Match of the Day viewer has asked at some point, and an excellent title for a new book by that programme’s long-time editor, Paul Armstrong. It is published today.
Armstrong was the man at the helm of the show from 2000 until he hung up his headphones before the Russia World Cup. In prose, and in person over coffee last week, he is amusing, fair-minded and projects an unfussy assurance that must have been indispensable in the high-wire act of getting an hour and a half of live broadcast out every Saturday night.
“Fifteen out of the 20 teams think they are always on last,” he said. “The other five, the big clubs, think we are biased against them and only show them first when they lose.
“‘Why was our 0-0 draw with Stoke the last game shown?’ Well, you have answered your own question. Or people complain that their players are not shown for as long in the intro as their rivals.
“But it is the BBC. People pay for it and they make demands, and that is fair enough. It is good that people care, they are bothered, they are watching. Most of the time I enjoyed that side of it, and found it amusing.”
However, as with much of the exhausting business of life in 2019, the job required tolerating or indulging those who have a hard time sifting fact and opinion, differentiating between reality and feeling.
“It would sometimes get frustrating when you would get complaints that were simply factually wrong: for instance, there was this idea around that the commentators were not at the matches. I tried to point out to people that this was just not true, but because it is the BBC you have to respect everybody’s ‘opinion’. I think the BBC can be too pure for its own good.”
The corporation’s fetishisation of “balance”, as in weighing the scientific rigour of a hundred professors against the views of one bloke with a blog, certainly seems to be doing nobody any favours in politics and news at the moment.
Talking of holding political views, one of Armstrong’s erstwhile colleagues, the Queen Mother of Football, the Leader of the Opposition, the jug-eared crisp salesman turned national treasure, Gary Winston Lineker no less, popped along to the book launch to lend his support. Armstrong said: “Gary once remarked that he didn’t truly understand his game, as a player, until he was in his mid-twenties. He knew he was quick, and if he made 20 runs into the box every game then, sooner or later, he would get a chance and that he would score it. He is a natural optimist, I suppose I am more of an Alan Hansen mindset: I’m thinking about what could go wrong, and what are the consequences if it does. We have always tried to have a blend on the programme.”
Armstrong related the team’s stress when, defying the form book, an FA Cup final turned into a thriller: the 2006 Liverpool v West Ham renewal that went to penalties. The channel controllers were fixing to yank them off air so that some Doctor Who nonsense could start on time. Armstrong hit a brick wall of protocol until Lineker texted the top man on the island and smoothed things over.
Good to have that reach to call on. Lineker, though, maintained: “Even though football delivers the biggest audiences on television, we are still perceived as a little bit second-rate by the people at the very top of the BBC.”
Be that as it may: in the opinion of this writer,
Match of the Day, and this enjoyable, revealing and affectionate book about it, are out of the top drawer.
“Why Are We Always on Last? Running Match of the Day and Other Adventures in TV and Football” by Paul Armstrong is out today in hardback, from Pitch Publishing, RRP £18.99