When I think of John Motson, I don’t think of the sheepskin coats or the statto image. I think of John as the first broadcast journalist in football commentary.
When you’re recalling the great voices of television in sport in the ‘60s and ‘70s, there were richer voices with richer vocabularies. But John was already moving beyond that style to accuracy in his preparation and identification during commentary.
He built contacts as a journalist would in order to get to the story of the game that he was covering. He was as well connected as he was researched. And managers trusted him like viewers trusted him with information on their teams and tactics prior to games.
As a result John could make a contribution to any heavyweight football debate. He was not only informed but he was authoritative and qualified. He was not only a talker about football, he was a thinker about football.
I remember saying this to him: he was wrong to play along with the Swotty Motty image because he had so much more to offer than that.
John was the ultimate professional in terms of preparation. He had a love and passion for football but he could also capture the moment with the right words. It was not a robotic performance, it was a man with all his feeling for the game.
Even when people thought he’d made a mistake, he had instead absolutely nailed it.
I always remember him appearing in Coleman Balls, the Private Eye segment, during the 1982 World Cup after he said that the “Argentina squad was numbered alphabetically” as if it was an error.
But it was the most concise possible description of the way the squad was numbered. Ossie Ardiles was No.1. The reputation of sports broadcasters was so low that this appeared to be a mistake. Instead it was the most accurate use of the English language you could possibly have.
John became a friend in my early local radio days. From being the teenager who essentially wanted John’s job, I graduated to becoming a friend of his within four or five years.
I was working on Merseyside at the time and whenever he visited for a big game, he’d make it his business to drop by and have a glass of wine on the Friday night. Partly to check up on the latest from the local scene but also a mark of support for me in my early career.
I copied both his style and depth of preparation. My commentary charts are a complete steal from his, compiled in much the same style in three different biro colours with impossibly, alarmingly neat handwriting.
John and Anne, his wife, were at the christening of our daughter. I’ve lost a friend as well as a fellow professional that I’ve always looked up to until the final day I saw him.
He liked a lunch and a glass of wine and he persuaded me a long time ago that it was not the worst thing in the world to have one glass on the day of a night match. I gleefully followed his example. Only one glass but it was part of the preparation to feel as relaxed as you can and bring your personality and love of football to the broadcast.
The enthusiasm always came through the screen in every game. Through that he could form a relationship with people he never met and that is why the sense of loss is felt right through the game.
Millions of people who never met him felt like they knew him. All I can say to those people is that he was the same off the mic as he was on it. There was no front, his love for the game was always apparent.
