when Radio Sheffield started shortly thereafter and asked the paper’s sports editor, “a fella called David Jones”, to put a sports programme together. Naturally, he got his “boys from the paper”, Motty among them, to go along and deliver the reports. “It was very much hand-to-mouth, there was no training,” Motson remarks, followed by that trademark breathy chuckle. Despite a promising career in print, it was clear that broadcast media was where Motson belonged, especially in the commentary box. Motson found his way to the BBC in 1968 via BBC Radio 2, which was then the number one sports channel, before becoming part of the Match of the Day team less than a handful of years later, and he’s been there ever since. Motty’s account of his early radio career is crystal clear – his meticulous pre-match research of facts, statistics and everything else to do with the game in question is renowned (a result
perhaps of cutting his teeth as a journalist), but he clearly has a fantastic memory for detail, too – a fact evident in his commentary. “I joined Radio 2 in 1968 and started off writing scripts as a junior member of the team,” he recalls. “They tried me out reading the racing results and I passed that test, so then they decided I was going to be a voice and I started doing match reporting. I did my first radio commentary in December 1969 – Everton against Derby County in the old First Division, Alan Ball scored the only goal – and then I settled into the radio commentary team. Not, I hasten to add, as a senior commentator; the big names there then were Peter Jones, Bryon Butler and Maurice Eddleston. “When Kenneth Wolstenholme left the BBC in 1971, they already had David Coleman and Barry Davies on Match of the Day duty, so they brought me in as the third and young commentator, to sweep
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