TYLER MADE

OK, right off the bat ... or ball ... there are only two truly good football commentators covering the AFL. You both know who you are.

And by "good" I mean the following.

A smooth delivery and clear voice. Even when it's tight and a sense of excitement needs to be conveyed. Timing, the ability to pin down the moment. A sense of humour. Reluctance to shoe-horn a bad pun into the commentary. An aversion to self or cross promotion. The ability NOT to let the moment -- ANY moment -- get the better of you. Most of all, the realisation that the game's the story, not you the commentator. Oh yeah, and a gush limiter.

Early on during the Port Adelaide v St Kilda game Dominic Cassisi soccered a simple goal from about five meters out.

Dwayne Russell, he of the excitable, shrill overstatement and worst of all, the painfully shoe-horned pun, squealed ... "WHAT A WONDERFUL GOAL. JUST LIKE EURO 2004!"

Just like Euro? Take it away, Leapster.

Soccer's golden voice takes points in sport commentary
Leapin' Larry L

Well, it's been quite strange after a daily diet of Euro 2004 football to have a couple of days without games," noted Martin Tyler as the Portugal-Netherlands semi kicked off. "I'm sure these two teams have been glad of the rest and recovery."

Soccer's golden voice must also be a man of steel if he didn't need the break after 16 days straight.

Punished mercilessly by the time difference, the Australian fans watching on Fox Sports had been on the ropes and breathing hard, and that channel's studio host Neil Evans had all but fallen to his knees and wept for joy when the last quarter-final was completed.

Tyler mentioned that Portugal had had the longer break, that Holland had last played in debilitating heat, cited players to watch, backgrounded the teams' tournament records, sketched in some further detail on individual players and highlighted the record of the Dutch keeper van der Sar, all while continuing to call the game.

At this point, there was all of two minutes gone on the clock. Even if you had no inkling whatsoever before, you already knew why Tyler was one of the greatest solo acts in sport commentary.

A Tyler call has the knack of sounding like a civilised conversation, albeit with an air of distracted tension - as much as he likes shooting the breeze with you, he's constantly concerned that at any second the greatest event in world sporting history might break out, at which point he would clasp your hand, regretfully take his leave, and start yelling.

"And! Cristiano Ronaldo! Heads Portugal! Quite Simply! Into the lead!" was Tyler's salutation to the first goal.

"You could have lined up all three of the goalkeepers in the Dutch squad and that would still be nestling in the back of the net!" he aptly summarised Portugal's second, as Maniche blasted UEFA's tin-foil volleyball into the furthest possible extremity of the goal.

Tyler yells when there's something to yell about, which is something of a revolution in modern-day sport-calling. And while he is painstakingly fair and even-handed (excepting, perhaps slightly, England games - there was one Tyler howl of "It's THEEERE!!" greeting an England goal earlier in the tournament that registered on seismographs), he's not averse to adding a little judicious colour.

Early in the game, apparently harnessing several thousand kilopascals of English reserve, he suggested that the Portuguese media had been getting "somewhat carried away".

When mentioning local headlines that Portugal would "Make juice out of the Orange", Tyler's pause and ensuing observation that "They say the orange juice in these parts is very tasty" would have bamboozled only a neophyte.

He was clearly handing Portugal a yellow card for un-Tyler-like behaviour.

With someone as good as Tyler, or Phil Liggot for that matter, it's amazing more potential commentators don't seek to emulate them. Most of the younger ones, Jason Bennett, Steve Quartermaine, Clinton Grybas, seem to prefer the US style hipster and it comes across as un-natural and contrived.

And as for the 3AW commentators who, no matter what outlet they're talking on, AND by way of cross promotion, keep sucking up Rex Hunt ... STOP IT! It's pathetic. He's not the wackiest, maddest, funniest guy ever to "work a room", he's a loud mouthed oaf with an enormous opinion of himself, and what's more, he was "shy" as a player (extremely touchy about it now) and a bully as a commentator.

Comments

[Rob de Santos]

Of all of the commentators used by the AFL over the years as "hosts" or guides on the international highlights, Quartermain remains the most popular. He had the gig in the late 80's and early 90's, when he was just starting out. Over a decade after he left the program, he still led our survey last year. Having heard him much more recently, it's clear he is best at roles such as hosting and not at "play by play".

[Snr Nubi]

Why is it that the 'better' commentators are on the radio & they seem to say less overall during the call, with far less hyperbowl. Even Dennis Commetti is getting to me these days, with the 'centremetre perfect' references....enough already boys & call the footy. To close, the other 'blight' (not No 15) is the absolute lack of criticism of the umpiring by these so called expert commentators. For fear of losing their gigs they continue to call games, without any reference to the most absurd decisions made by the Scott Neville's....

[Rob Schaap]

All of this being importantly and manifestly true, I can but congratulate you, Tone. Oz does the best race-calling because it allowed the house style to rise from how Strines actually communicate, I reckon. If we no longer have the confidence to look to ourselves for guidance, we should at least content ourselves with emulating who does the job best. And that's the Beeb. The unfortunate departures from either of these sensible approaches may, I submit, be sheeted home to Packer: (a) #9 set the trend by bringing to sport what it had brought to news (ie. narrator as star); (b) assuming a former chempyen at the game could parlay that into chempyen calls (afaik, not a single senior Beeb commentator was a star at actually playing the sport they call - they're just chempyen broadcasters); (c) assuming the viewer hasn't the wit to match their emotions to what they see, and is incapable of engagement without the guiding shrieks of a 'commentator's' affected apoplexy.

[Tony.T]

Pretty fair take on Quarters, Rob. He does a good job of presenting, but I don't think he's the go for calling the game. Channel 10 obviously feel the same way. He's been made the presenter for this year's grand final, and replaced as called for the GF by Tim Lane. Rightly so. Lane, Hudson & Walls are doing the big game. Sounds good to me.

Nubie, I think one of the errors regularly made by us shlubs out here in listener land is to mistake TV calling and rayjo calling. They're two different beasties. DC can do both, but I agree with you, his commentating seems to be taking on a life all it's own. It's about now he needs to sit back, have a listen to himself on tape, and make a judgement as to whether he needs to cut back on the colour and concentrate more on the nuts and bolts of the call. Namely who's got the agate, and what's happening with it. Somehow though, I think this has been accentuated by Channel Nine's fixation with personality commentators. They're probably in his ear talking up the colour. And the Fox boys were appalling on Sunday whan they completely ignored some of the worse examples of umpiring ineptitude in Adelaide.

All very true, Rob. Spot on about Nine and their personalities. And about the Beeb blokes not playing the game. I always say "You don't need to be a chicken to know a rotten egg". This applies to Nine who seem to be fixated with ex-players as ex-perts. But lets face it, there are very few good commentators among their stable of players. Ritchie and Ian Healy are the best at Nine, but judging by the lifetime pass Big K's given Bill Lawry, Tony Grieg and to a lesser extent, Tubbs and Chappelli, they don't care about commentatory expertise. It's enough for the on-air people to keep TELLING us how good their coverage is. Now we're being dished up Simon O'Donnell. If that's not a salient an example of where Channel Nine are heading (down-market), then I'm John Arlott.

For the record, my ideal Nine TV (I'm excluding radio peoples and picking from roughly the same pool) cricket team would be built around Ritchie, Healy, Dennis Commeti is a fantastic cricket caller and David Gower should be groomed as the new Ritchie.

PS: "affected apoplexy". Like it. Exactly right.

[Adam 1.0]

Quarters is much better on the radio - same with Brian Taylor. They just let rip on there instead of putting the throttle on for television audiences and coming across at 75%.

[Tony.T]

Quarters IS ok on rayjo, unfortunately he's paired with the MMM B-Team of Hutchy, who has a bad voice and Paul Salmon, who has a bad everything.

BT has a good sense of humour but has a bad voice for the caper. And when it gets exciting, well, you may as well turn it off. BT becomes unintelligable in his screeching.