C’MON FEEL THE NOISE
Football’s return is full of simple pleasures. . .with or without sound on
They’re depending on you to lift your voices,’ declared the BBC’s continuity presenter before Bournemouth v Crystal Palace, the Corporation’s first live league game in 32 years.
It was a struggle to heed that plea. The highlights did not extend much beyond a fine Luka Milivojevic goal and roy hodgson’s lockdown hairstyle, probably resembling the one he wore when playing in Maidstone United’s midfield in the Seventies.
Sky have not exactly gifted the BBC the most alluring fixtures. On Sky Pick, where their own free-to-air games screen, they’re free to promote their TV subscriptions to their heart’s content.
But football was back, just the same. The quality of the BBC studio discussion revealed how far we’ve come since Jimmy hill introduced Arsenal v Tottenham in 1988, with the banter strictly limited to a quip about analyst Trevor Brooking’s ‘ multicoloured’ tie.
It was a blissful reminder, too, of those days when live league games were aired free and without adverts. Ten excellent, uninterrupted minutes of half-time analysis with graphics and still time to view a Liverpool sequence.
If only the economics of broadcasting could be swept away to reveal more of this. A little more in-match interaction with Alex Scott — pitchside in the stadium and close enough to hear hodgson’s assistant ray Lewington — would have made it even better.
The weekend was punctuated with myriad small pleasures, attached to football’s return. radio 5’s Sports Report, drawing heavily on interviews with those other than match reporters, introduced an individual — ‘Will’ — whose job is to broadcast crowd noises to make QPr’s players ‘feel supported’ in their empty stadium.
It turns out that the noise starts from a speaker located near the singing section and ripples out across others placed in 12 sections of the ground. There’s a ‘polite applause clip’ for the away team, which sounds in the away end, and strictly no clips of booing. ‘It’s all about supporting QPr really,’ said Will. The team lost 1-0 at home to
Barnsley, who’d started the day bottom of the Championship.
Over on Sky, the artificial crowd noise for West ham v Wolves was equally kind on David Moyes’ team after they’d been beaten by Wolves. eA Sports, who’ve provided the fan audio clips, apparently don’t stretch to a full- on West ham insurrection.
Crowd noises are a work in progress. BBC TV made them the default option, making commentary without them a red-button option. BBC radio have so far operated without them, though they amplified the ambient noise from the stadium for Tottenham hotspur’s match against Manchester United on Friday.
Sky Sports’ lead commentator Martin Tyler, whose three games so far have included that Friday fixture and the Merseyside derby last night, has been calling the games with the crowd noise in his headphones.
‘If you pump that noise up a bit, you are still fighting the crowd as you would in the stadium,’ he says. ‘you can get self-conscious and if there is crowd noise it helps. If the stadium is empty, you might also think that the players will hear you. I can’t speak for others. But I’ve recommended to others that they try it.’
It means that when Tyler called last night’s match at Goodison Park, he had four strands of sound in his headphones: the director/ producer in London, Gary Neville, the crowd and, most importantly, the sound of his own voice.
BBC 5 Live chief football correspondent John Murray has operated without artificial sound and, though you would not guess it from his delivery, has found it challenging. ‘ your voice usually rises and falls with the noises of the crowd,’ he says.
‘Normally, Pat Nevin and I would also have been jammed in next to each other but he was five yards to my right at Manchester City. There’s no doubt that match lacked a crowd. I was left feeling quite flat and cold. We’re adjusting all the time.’
The managers are feeling it too. It didn’t escape Murray’s attention that, in the interview after his team had beaten Arsenal, Brighton’s Graham Potter said the sound of the commentary had been so clear to him that Saturday afternoon’s experience was like ‘listening to radio 5.’
Above all, Tyler wants to stress the ‘extraordinary detail’ the Premier League and its clubs have gone to. ‘ Without this, the return of football would not have been possible.’
he says presenters and commentators everywhere are striving to strike a balance — capturing football’s dramas whilst guarding against triumphalism at a time when millions are struggling or grieving.
Gary Lineker deftly expressed the same sentiment, as he opened Saturday’s live broadcast. ‘We’re back,’ he said. ‘We know it’s not really important. But we’ve missed it.’