John 'Motty' Motson: The man who created the art of tv commentary
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A little known fact about John Motson, who has died at the age of 77, is that he was actually a Mancunian by birth, born in Salford, the son of a Methodist minister. The words ‘institution’ and ‘legend’ are bandied around lightly in football, but Motty was both.
He was heard on Match of the Day from 1971 - 2018, but unlike that other commentating legend Barry Davies, Motty only covered football and thus became the warp and weft of BBC coverage. He was ingrained in all our football DNA, his voice as familiar as a member of our own family’s.
Let’s be clear about this; he all but created the art of TV commentary as we know it today. No doubt about it. His preparation of various facts and figures predated the now commonplace reliance on in-game statistics. So many great moments of high drama in football have come complete with a Motty “Oh I say!” or a “Danger Here!” or merely that unique Motson noise that can be best characterised as wheezy bellowing. He commentated on around 2,000 games, a witness to so much football history and legend.
Much of what the art of football commentary was to become, was influenced and shaped by what John Motson did for 40-plus years behind a BBC microphone. He was an unlikely revolutionary, albeit one wrapped up in a huge sheepskin coat, but that is exactly what he was.
He was the first to put in a lot of research before a game - something that is now absolutely a basic commentary requirement - and he could come out with obscure stats about everyone from the goalkeeper to the groundsman.
He became renowned for it and even affectionately mocked for it. But it showed the passion he had for the details of the game. A passion that, again, is de rigour in 2023. These days, his old school swotting up of facts in the Rothmans Football Annual has been totally superseded by the world of Opta stats, but it was Motson’s popularising of the more granular details in football that was the foundations on which the stats industry was created. Ironically, later in life, he felt this reliance on statistics had gone too far, questioning who was checking the accuracy of some of the more obscure statistics.
After covering over 200 England games, 10 World Cups, 10 European Championships and 29 FA Cup finals for BBC, he left behind a huge legacy when he departed the BBC in 2018, his last commentary being a regulation 2-0 win for Crystal Palace over West Bromwich Albion. Widely loved, he was a part of all our childhoods and an absolute broadcasting institution.
He was so distinctive and that can’t be said for every modern day commentator. Today the trend has swung in favour of voices that are somewhat bland. The quirky voices of the past have been abandoned in favour of people who could be anyone really. But everyone knew who Motty was, even people who didn’t follow football. He became definitive.
His breakthrough happened when he covered the famous Hereford win over Newcastle in an FA Cup replay in 1971. Listen to the rising excitement in his voice and the astonishment as Ronnie Radford’s long-range strike hits the net. It could be a 2023 game, not because he was ahead of his time, but because he was around for so long that he radically influenced what became the football broadcast industry.
Everything he became renowned for is all present and correct even in 1971, his voice breaking into a slight squeak with the drama and excitement. And that was crucial. His love of football came through the microphone into our front room. There was nothing fake about his work, no pre-scripted lines, no forced emotion, sometimes no actual words, just an “ohhhh!!” as the ball hit the net. That was why he was so loved.
Basically, he invented the informal and chatty style that has become the default for modern football broadcasting. If Barry Davies was the crisp, slightly starched and judgemental headmaster, Motty was the clever schoolboy sniggering at the back of the class. There was always boyish charm to what he did but that’s not to imply he was anything less than 100% professional. He took super seriously what had previously been largely unregarded as an artform.
He had a wonderfully idiosyncratic way of speaking, sometimes launching off at a tangent, mid-sentence, making an aside to his own aside, before, like a jazz musician, returning to the original riff.
It’s odd that anyone can use a sheepskin coat to brand themselves, but Motty managed it, famously standing in a blizzard of snow at Wycombe Wanderers’, Adams Park in December 1990. Later, the coats seemed to get bigger and longer and heavier, almost as a kind of self-parody, being worn whatever the weather.
For so many years he was a comforting voice; an anchor in an ever-changing world. And although he’s gone to the great commentary box up there, he will always be with us and we will keep hearing his distinctive voice as old footage of big moments in football history are broadcast, simply because he was present at most of them.
If we close our eyes now, we can all still hear John, his voice, distinctive and memorable, is burned into our synapses. A legend in his own lifetime, he will always be held in the affections of millions.