Three cheers for Jeff Stelling

Posted by me on August 24, 2007 7:34 PM | Permalink

UP until last season, I spent most Saturdays at either Preston North End's football ground or at the football ground Preston were playing away at.

Cold, frequently uncomfortable and (if it was on the other side of the Pennines) unfriendly 'stadia' would become my home for 90 minutes, and if not in a Press box, I'd be fleeced for cash as I hunted out a programme or a pie.

Despite Preston's good run of form in previous seasons, I did begin to think there was a better way to enjoy football on a Saturday afternoon. Especially as the bright lights of the Premier League seem a million miles away from your Oakwells, Hawthorns and Portman Roads.

And then I found the alternative. It's called Soccer Saturday with Jeff Stelling. And before the season-ticket holding football fans of Everton and Liverpool throw their hands up in disbelief at someone who has become an armchair fan, I say this to you: Try supporting a Championship club for a season.

In terms of revolutions in football, it's up there with the ITV Digital fiasco, only in the opposite, good, way.

And it's addictive.

And, like most things on telly which work well, it's incredibly simple when you think about it. Rightly or wrongly, the football authorities in this country won't stand for live televised football between 3pm and 5pm on a Saturday, because it would put people off going to the match.

So Sky gets a handful of ex-pros - some good at commentating, others called Paul Merson - into a studio with Jeff, a kind of sophisticated Statto (given that most of his stats come via an earpiece and he wears a suit not an anorak) - to tell us what is happening. And because there's a running commentary of games which you'd otherwise have had no interest in if you only got the results at the end, such as Torquay v Bristol City, you find yourself enthrawled, largely because you find out that striker Jones has got his 15th of the season.

I know you can get premiership games in the pub on illegal foreign channels on a Saturday, but I'd still rather watch Soccer Saturday. I've watched it in New York (at 9am their time) and in Prague, and even in Tunisia. It's like a televisual Cadbury's Chocolate finger - you see it and it reminds you of home.

It lacks the slickness of Match of the Day, and sometimes it sacrifices the calm composure which you might expect. But that's because it's live. It's passionate. It's football without the expensive pies, the unfriendly home crowd, and, with guaranteed excitement

And its influence is such that the Beeb now replicate it on its digital service. So while it's only August, and far too early to be thinking football, it's all worth it because we've got Sky's soccer Saturday (Sky Sports 1, Saturday, 3pm)