July 4th, was an exciting day for many football fans with the draws for the FA Cup Extra Preliminary round, the first round of the FA Vase, the FA Trophy and the FA Youth Cup being made.
I was also privileged to attend Two Football Podcasts in Sheffield as part of the Crossed Wires Podcast Festival. In its second year in Sheffield, and this year being sponsored by BBC Sounds.
Crossed Wires adds to the many festivals held in the city, e.g. ‘Off the Shelf’, ‘DocFest’ and the music festival, ‘Tramlines’. I have seen some good football related talks at the first two.
My first Podcast was John Murray and Ian Dennis, BBC radios senior football commentators, chatting about their experiences in covering football all over the world. Working from a script, the Podcast was to a live audience and recorded for later transmission this summer, ‘The Football Daily – Commentator’s View’ took their usual chatty style although without their normal third compatriot Ali Bruce-Ball.
It was unbelievably relaxed and flowed often without their script. Putting faces to voices was unusual, although I was able to recognise both of their voices. What I took away from the hour was the amount of research they put in to each team, season and game with Ian Dennis showing his red book that he produces for each season and updates each day.
Ian Dennis is the usual commentator for the Saturday 3 pm kick off game and it was great to hear how proud he was to welcome the many millions of listeners each week when the ‘World Service’ hand over to his commentary.
Later in the day I was back to hear an hour Podcast by the BBC Sheffield Football team who cover the six senior teams in the area with commentary, phone ins, interviews and updates regularly. The Podcast was called after one of their shows, ‘Football Heaven’ but this had a strap line of ‘Access all area’ with them being able to air their own views as it was not to be broadcast.
Rob Staton, Andy Giddings, and Adam Oxley were able to tell of their most difficult match, interviews, phone in, club, journey and much more. These three have had very interesting careers so far, surviving a few scrapes on the way. Great to hear peoples true and frank views on all aspects of covering local football in a mostly humorous way.
As well as two informative and happy hours of football chat they were performed in the old Cole Bothers building which is slowly being cleared and brought back to life after John Lewis abandoned the City, something locals will never forgive them for.
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