Mastermind of football
HE IS the oracle, the font of all knowledge, the Human Google. As the presenter of Sky Sports’ Soccer Saturday programme, he is expected to keep on tops of scores, scorers and sendings-off in dozens of games the length and breadth of Britain, fleshing out the breaking news with rapid fire references to previous results, player biographies, impact on standings and one hundred and one other statistics.
At the same time, he has to orchestrate the contributions of a sometimes uproarious cast of grizzled ex-pros, while keeping one eye on the screen, one eye on the vidi-printer and both ears alert to the babble of voices from his production team. And as full time approaches, he has to do it all at top speed, facts piling upon facts at a rate which would surely cause information overload in your average computer, before the final whistle signals the end of another Saturday afternoon of football and, with it, a marathon six hours of live television.
The Guardian has praised him for his “exceptional professionalism and elan” while the magazine ‘When Saturday Comes’ has called him, simply, ‘the best sports presenter on TV’.
He is Jeff Stelling and, wait for it, he claims to have a memory like a sieve. Yeah, right.
“No, seriously,” he insists with a broad smile. “Like, I was flying out to, um, ah, well there you go, you see, I actually can’t remember where. No, I tell a lie, it was to Newcastle, a couple of weeks ago, and as the flight was called, I walked towards the check-in desk and realised I didn’t have my mobile phone with me. So I went back to the table where I’d been sitting — no sign of the phone.
“Then there was a Tannoy announcement asking if the owner of a mobile phone would please come and collect it. Went to the desk and they asked for some form of identity. Looked for my passport and discovered that I’d lost that too.”
Ah well, perhaps it was best that they didn’t recognise him, since Stelling’s familiar face can itself be a passport to trouble.
“The worst thing is I keep getting invited onto teams in sports quizzes,” he explains. “I apologise in advance and say, look, I’ve got a hopeless memory, but they don’t believe me. Then, after the event, I have to apologise again — and this time they do believe me.”
Of course, he protests too much, does the affable broadcaster who is known in his native north-east as Uncle Jeff. For here, after all, is the man who emerged triumphant in the sports presenters’ special edition of ‘The Weakest Link’, beating Steve Ryder in the final.
“I was the only Sky person there and it was great for us to beat the BBC, absolutely,” he enthuses. But then, in his customary self-effacing manner, he hastens to add: “Although I will say that when it got to the final stage and we were one against one with five questions each, every time Steve Ryder got asked a question, I thought, crikey, I don’t know the answer to that one and every time I got a question, I did.”
Don’t suppose there’s any chance you can recall the clinching question? (A long pause, a big smile). “Eh, no. Haven’t got a clue.”
Stelling may make Soccer Saturday look easy but, needless to say, it doesn’t all come off the top of his head. A week’s research goes into the programme, with Stelling famously installing himself in a local motorway truckstop to do his cramming.
“Most weeks I go to Winchester service station on the M3 — either south or north, depends how the mood takes me,” he muses. “I try to have some sort of system though mine’s a pretty scatterbrained one. It’s not really work is it, I mean I’d read the sports pages anyway. But the week starts from when I get the Sunday papers and I go through them with a marker, spotting interesting things, and then I do that every day throughout the week. And, obviously, I watch all the football you can.
“As the season goes on it gets easier — with the exception of the transfer window. You’d know how many goals Darren Bent has scored or that so and so hasn’t scored for a number of weeks. But then the transfer window comes along and it’s absolute mayhem, especially in the lower leagues. It makes my life a misery. Scrap the transfer window, please!”
Once the show is on air, Stelling goes into overdrive.
“I’m hearing all sorts of voices but the only one that really matters to me is our stats man, Dave Todd, who works with me as a team. I should know, for example, that Man Utd have won their last ten home games, all the basic things. What Dave will try and do is if he sees someone has scored a hat trick, hopefully within seconds he’ll find out when that guy scored his last hat trick. Lines like that you couldn’t possibly prepare for. About 80% is pre-prepared and Dave helps with the last 20%.”
That’s the audio part. Then there’s the visual input.
“I’d have access to five, sometimes six games in front of me but I can’t watch too much of them. They’re on a switch system with a vidi-printer. And the vidi-printer, giving score after score after score, is my bread and butter. That’s what I’ve got to be watching most of the time. But if I hear one of the guys squeal, I’ll flick to their game to see if I can see what’s happening before I go to them.”
Ah yes, the guys. Jeff Stelling may be the captain but Saturday Soccer wouldn’t be the cult favourite it is without its supporting team of ex-footballers who go through agony and ecstasy on screen as they monitor the ups and downs of their former clubs.
“Well, it’s a show for football fans and we’re all football fans at heart,” says Stelling. “I’m a Hartlepool fan and Phil Thompson is a Liverpool fan, Frank McLintock is an Arsenal fan, Matt Le Tissier is still a Southampton fan. I think people like that, they like passion. They don’t seem to resent it — apart, maybe from a few Evertonians who wouldn’t like Phil Thompson, obviously. But it’s all part of the fun. And, even then, they do get the chance to enjoy Thommo’s pain if Liverpool aren’t doing well. Do I milk that? Of course I do. And frequently afterwards he’ll have words with me, words which I couldn’t possibly repeat on TV.”
In recent years, Soccer Saturday — which originally went on air in 1994 and has been in its current format since 1998 — has lost two of its most famous panel members, George Best and Rodney March, in circumstances which were, respectively, tragic and absurd.
“George was the best player that I ever saw and I couldn’t believe that here I was, sitting next to him and not just working with him but being George Best’s friend. It took some getting used to. George was quiet, thoughtful, analytical. And he was a fan too because he loved watching Man Utd. He also had a great sense of humour. I remember a couple of years ago, we did a live interview with Delia Smith at Norwich. It was ten to three and she had been on a staff lunch. And she had quite clearly had a glass or two. But it took Bestie to say: ‘I think she’s been at the cooking sherry.’ And we pointed out that that’s the great thing about Soccer Saturday — the expert analysis. But George had the ability to laugh at himself.”
Best’s death came as a devastating blow to Stelling and programme team.
“George was indestructible. Or so we thought. George had been to the brink so many times. We all just assumed that this was another case of George teasing and tormenting us, stepping near the edge but not stepping over. So we were all incredibly shocked.”
BY CONTRAST, Rodney Marsh’s departure from the show — and the Sky Sports channel — was farcical. Your present correspondent wouldn’t have been his biggest fan but the worst you could say about his David Beckham joke on ‘You’re On Sky Sports’ — Marsh said that Becks wouldn’t be joining
Newcastle because of the trouble caused by the ‘Toon Army in Asia’ — was that it was suffered from poor timing.
Since he is still a company man, Stelling is understandably uncomfortable with discussing the sacking which ensued.
“I’ve got to be a bit careful,” he says. “Put it this way: I think Rodney was a bit unlucky. I was surprised by the level of complaint. I really thought that it was an inoffensive remark. But, for the viewers, Rodney was one of those love him or loathe him types. And he knew that and played the role so well. He was the panto villain; when he comes on you all boo. We had a lot of spiky moments on screen. People used to say that he was nasty to me. In fact, one radio station actually made a point of saying: I wonder if Jeff Stelling had something to do with getting him sacked? Nothing could be further from the truth. Our on-screen relationship was all part of the game. Rodney knew what I was going to say half the time. I knew how he would respond. He knew how I expected him to respond.
“I’m often asked why people take an instant dislike to Rodney Marsh and I tell ’em it saves time. In a way it was role play but, on the other hand, Rodney did have strident opinions. And he couldn’t understand that other people might not accept that they were correct opinions. But he was absolutely brilliant for the show. I had and still have a lot of time for him but we’ve moved on now and so has he.”
If Stelling could step through his dreaded transfer window and have his pick of any current players for his team of pundits who would he go for?
“Interesting question. But it’s not really realistic, unfortunately. Financially the players don’t need it the way George or Frank or Rodney did. But, let me think...”
A prompt: Roy Keane?.
“(Enthusiastically). Oh yeah. Roy Keane would be fantastic. He’s an individual who speaks his mind and he’s got the medals to show. If you’re going to have a strong opinion or criticise someone quite harshly, you’ve got to be able to say, hey, look, I’ve been there, I’ve done it myself. That’s why all our guys, without exception, have all played at the highest level and all won things.”
And when they do show off their medals, does Jeff Stelling hold up his little Weakest Link trophy?
“(Laughing). No, no. If I’ve suddenly got an opinion, they always say to me: what do you know? And I take that in the spirit in which it’s intended — mean-spirited!”
Jeff Stelling was in Dublin launching The Village, a development of residential apartments in the Valle Romano resort on the Costa del Sol.
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