Football on the radio

Day -773. ‪#‎WorldCup2018‬

Leicester didn't "do a Leicester" yet. So the dream is still alive. The Tottenham dream. And while Leicester were busy not quite doing what the whole of the world that still believes in the little guy winning was willing them to do, I was busy looking for a way to watch their league winning match against Manchester United on my phone or on any available TV while happily doing Dad stuff away from home. With no luck I turned to online radio. As I rediscovered the joy of listening to football on the radio, I formulated a post for today in my head. It was perfect, was to be a wonderful addition to my Sunday memories posts. What a genius I am, I thought. In the euphoria of my self-proclaimed brilliance, I did not take into account my not-so-brilliant memory. And try as I may, I cannot remember what wonderful thoughts I was going to share with you tonight.

So instead it's radio talk. There was something old fashioned romantic about sitting in a crowded shopping mall, headphones on, listening to commentary of a football match. Good radio commentators have a way to describe what's going on that television commentators cannot. (In fairness TV commentators don't have to be so descriptive because, well, you can see what's going on.)
Something funny happened later in the day. In my early days of watching football on North American TV I was amused and irritated by how much the commentators spoke constantly. "They sound like they're on the radio," I thought. Today I started watching Toronto FC on TV but when I had to go out I turned on the car radio to check the score and, yes, the radio commentary was the same TV commentary. So they really are on the radio!

In the days before live football on TV, and when I was at University, I developed a superstition about listening to a match on the radio. If I had BBC Radio 5 Live on (that was good radio) and Aston Villa scored then I had to keep the radio on, even if it was a mid-week evening when I was desperately trying to get an essay written. But if I turned the radio on mid-match and Villa were winning then I had to turn it off again. I wish I could report on statistics of how true this was, but my memory was that it was a superstition with strong evidence of it being well founded.
Before there was even a hint of live football on TV, BBC World Service at around 5.30pm on a Saturday afternoon in Malta was my friend. There was always live commentary of the last 15 or 20 minutes of the day's most important match, followed by the final scores read by the man with the legendary intonation.

I had never listened to a World Cup match on the radio until 2014, when I found it necessary to have it on in the car as many of the matches were played as I was on my home. And happily, even though the pre-match was Canadian, when the match started it switched over to the BBC feed.
(Now I even thought there was something more interesting I was going to say about football on the radio, but that's it. So I'm going to fade out quietly here and pray for a memory flashback tomorrow).