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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Tom Garry

Pien Meulensteen: ‘Commentary was never something I thought I was going to get into’

Pien Meulensteen
Pien Meulensteen sounds like a seasoned veteran but the 27-year-old’s career has evolved rapidly. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Clipboard in the centre, teamsheet at the front and Rowntree’s Randoms to the right. Pien Meulensteen likes everything to be in the correct place and jokes that her commentary setup is almost as meticulous as Rafael Nadal’s water-bottle arrangements.

Most striking is what is on the clipboard: carefully crafted notes, printed on sticky paper using a document template she formatted to ensure everything fits precisely. The substitutes’ details, attached to a monitor to the left, flap gently in the Arctic-temperature wind, and as each one is brought on, that player’s sticky note is carefully placed on top of the player they replaced.

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