I thought the fake noise would annoy me, but what I was most shocked by was the really poor commentary. It took the removal of the crowd, to realise how bad it’s got.
You watch the game on TV, and it’s actually the pundits that are background noise, with the occasional “ROONEY! Oh, my word, that was a great shot! That was inches wide!” Which then returns to dull musings and unrelated stats.
I never realised how poor and uninformative it all is. I managed to sync RADIO 5 Live to Sky, but that was even worse! I was expecting a pass by pass account, to present the game to the listener, but even when Villa or the Blades were mounting a break, the guys on the Radio were just chatting away.
It’s a shame you can’t stream RADIO SHEFFIELD, and sync that up - it sure does make you see how great the commentary is.
So it’s the crowd, it’s not background noise, it’s the measure and indicator of what’s happening in the game, Watching on TV without it, it’s clear how difficult it is to just watch a game with such concentration - of 22 men kicking a ball - in fact it’s impossible, and your mind starts to wander, about getting a beer, making a sandwich, fixing the sink tomorrow, and SUDDENLY! BOOM! It’s the crowd that snaps you out of your daydream and draws you back in - a rise in volume for an attack, booing for a foul, a cry of “Handball!” It’s the crowd. It drowns out the boring commentators, or makes them stop talking about the amount of rainfall. I really missed it last night and the commentary team needs to sit down and discuss how they should change their tactic and make it more old school - actually describing every detail that’s happening.
I also think they need to have less ‘wide angle’ stand camera mounted shots - there’s just too much information to process. It would be better to have closer, follow the ball passages (Like Escape to Victory!) Which is what a spectator does in the ground, it would really focus the viewer on the action.
Last night when the game kicked off, the commentary was terrible, they are actually playing the game, and he’s pontificating and chit chatting, not even taking an interest in what’s going on play wise, just utter drivel.
My favourite one (to paraphrase)
”It was only 12 months ago that Aston Villa were in Minnesota, on a tour of the US, yes, who would have thought back then the significance of what is now, or even predicted that we would now be where we are, with all that’s happened. And that’s gone out for a corner.”
