DEADLINE DAY
Sky Sports’ Natalie Sawyer talks us through the on-screen excitement
IT WAS hardly the toughest assignment of my life. Spend the afternoon in the company of Natalie Sawyer chatting football, stopping for a drink in four pubs on each corner of Brentford’s Griffin Park, all on Sky’s tab, came the call.
Dirty jobs. Well somebody’s got to do them!
While I have doubtless encountered more daunting days on the coalface, this for one half of the face of Transfer Deadline Day is very much the calm before the storm.
The clubs may not love it, but the final day of the transfer window is now an event. The football fans’ Christmas Day, with the gift at the bottom of the tree an offer of tension with a twist of the impossible. The dream of your team striking late to shore up a leaking defence, or adding the gloss to a forward line in the transfer window’s dying embers.
They’ve got a good gig, this Sky Sports News HQ lot. The snappy suits, those sharp smiles and the telling glow of being the ones feeding the public the good news they are desperate to know.
The faces of football news have it made, you could argue. But there are pitfalls that sit alongside the glamour.
Bewitched
Take the show’s foot soldiers, their men on the ground – or outside the training ground. Reporters surrounded all day by loitering locals so bewitched by the lens that it turns into a game of who can pull off the stunt that will trend on twitter today.
Then there’s the camera men, running up and down wet roads in an attempt to capture the big moment. Instead a player hidden by a baseball hat ends up careering towards them in their blacked out sports car.
After all, only Harry will ever stop and wind down his car window. Spare a thought also for those fronting the coverage. Natalie and Jim White are fast becoming to deadline day drama what Richard and Judy are to awkward mid-morning quarrelling.
Life’s not easy without a script. Having to ad-lib their way through hours of unfolding transfer business would serve only to turn most of us into a quivering wreck.
“It’s not for the faint-hearted sometimes,” explains Sawyer, a lifelong Brentford fan who is now on Deadline Day number six.
Emotions
“People don’t believe this but we build up to it pretty much from the end of the previous window. So much goes into the day. Even Jim and I think about our outfits far in advance.
“The yellow is quite big at the moment, it matches our ‘breaking news’ ticker – you have got to colour co-ordinate!
“I think it has become an event. If I wasn’t on it, I think I would be glued to my screen watching it. I’m a football fan and it’s fast moving – a lot of people love it and plan their day around it.
“The emotions are the same as those you get at a football match in a lot of ways. You’re up, you’re down, you’re nervous, you’re frustrated – and come 11 o’clock you know if you’re going to bed happy.”
From Sky trenchmen outside freezing no-go training grounds to the presenters with their earpieces ringing with developments, it’s not plain sailing.
“The good thing is that our reporters on the front line for us all over the county on the day command so much respect,” she added.
“They can turn around and shout ‘shhhh!’ to the crowds and they fall into line, they really do listen. It’s great when they get mobbed, you’re dealing with passionate people – it’s all good fun and good-natured.
“Personally I love it when the supporters that have turned up drown out the reporters! That’s the challenge they face, the excitement just takes over and a lot of the time they struggle to cope, it’s brilliant.”
There have been some legendary transfer window moments over the years which, despite the obvious hyperbole surrounding the day, still makes it unmissable television.
And Natalie has her own person- al favourite. “It has to be poor Peter Odemwingie when he turned up at Queens Park Rangers,” she said.
“I just felt like going down there and saying, ‘Peter, who’s told you to turn up here?’ and go and give him a great big cuddle.
“I felt so sorry for the guy, bless him. Somebody somewhere had given him some wrong advice but that’s deadline day for you – it makes people do things because of the pressure the clock brings. It’s intense.
“I think that’s what live TV is all about. It’s the fear that something could go wrong but it’s also why I believe so many people tune in – they want to know not only who the big last-day deal will be, but also it we will find ourselves with another Peter Odemwingie moment.
“There’s a real fascination with transfer deadline day still, even after quite a few years now.
“I get the feeling this one could be just as entertaining, it's been an unbelievable window so far in terms of the spending so surely there will be a few twists and turns to come.”
Sky Sports News HQ Transfer Deadline Day and is available online and on the move with Sky Go across mobile and tablet devices.