Sam Matterface on being ITV's first new lead commentator for 22 years

When Sam Matterface was 11, he had a clear idea of what greatness looked like. In the Seventies and Eighties, Brian Moore was the king of the commentators, smooth and unflappable, courteous and authoritative, practised, amiable and knowledgeable. His voice was synonymous with the excitement and glamour of football for 20 years or more. He was the gateway to the game for millions of ITV viewers and when he led us through that gateway, it was into a magical land.

Moore was also the president of Orpington Rovers football club in Kent, which ran a number of kids’ teams, and when Matterface and his family moved to the area, his younger brother played for them. They went to the end-of-season awards night and Moore was giving out the prizes. Matterface summoned the courage to go and shake his hand but, for once, he was lost for words.

‘I didn’t say anything to him because I was too scared,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t quite believe it was him. He was my hero when I was a kid. I wanted to be a commentator from when I was nine years old and it was him I looked up to. Because ITV seemed to do most of the big matches at the time, I wanted to be him.’ 

When England play Wales at Wembley on Thursday, Matterface will realise that ambition. After Moore retired in 1998 at the age of 66, Clive Tyldesley took over and his brilliant, emotive commentaries, too, became the soundtrack to matches that will stay with the fans of Manchester United, Liverpool and others for the rest of their lives. Now Matterface has been given the top job, the latest in a distinguished lineage.

He has commentated on the highlights of England matches before for ITV but the match against the Welsh at an empty Wembley will be his live debut in the lead role. ‘When the teams walk out and I am talking to seven or eight million people, maybe a lot more because of the situation we are in, then the heart will go,’ he says. ‘If it doesn’t, I shouldn’t be doing it anyway, should I? You should be excited by it because it is a great thing to do.’

The elevation of Matterface, already a highly-respected broadcaster who has been talkSPORT’s chief football commentator for 11 years, comes at a time of upheaval in sports broadcasting across the BBC, ITV and Sky Sports that has seen the replacement of commentators and presenters who have become national institutions. 

The BBC have not renewed the contracts of several of their most accomplished correspondents on Radio 5 Live as it seeks a younger market and announced recently that Sue Barker, a pioneering sports broadcaster who has presented A Question of Sport for 24 years and is still regarded with great affection by the show’s millions of loyal viewers, would be stepping down from the role.  

At the same time, Sky caused consternation among the devotees of its popular Soccer Saturday show by announcing a cull of long-time panellists Phil Thompson, Matt Le Tissier and Charlie Nicholas, who had developed a cult following because of the unique brand of bonhomie, friendship and excellence the programme has developed under the dazzlingly brilliant marshalling of Jeff Stelling. 

And then, in mid-July, Tyldesley, 66, made an emotional statement in a video he posted online, expressing his dismay about the fact that ITV were replacing him. ‘I’m upset, annoyed, baffled,’ he said. ‘I would have been entrusted with commentating on the Euro 2020 final… but now I won’t be commentating on any of the big England games in the coming year and I’m going to miss them. I love this job, and it’s gone.’

Tyldesley’s outburst, intentionally or otherwise, threw Matterface into the heart of the debate about the changing of the guard in sports broadcasting. Tyldesley is the same age Moore was when he stepped down but some saw it as part of a wider agenda. ‘Oh, I forgot, Clive, you are 65,’ Stelling wrote on Twitter. ‘Ageism alive and well in UK broadcasting.’

Any suggestion that Matterface is somehow an undeserving beneficiary of a socio-political fad does him a grave disservice. He may be only 42 but his elevation is a product not just of talent but also of dedication and an unwavering work ethic. He has walked more hard yards in his industry than most, starting at 14 when he began work as a volunteer for hospital radio. ‘It was actually a derelict hospital,’ he says. ‘It had close to zero listeners but I absolutely loved it.’

He is a superb commentator, too, not just a hard worker. He prepares diligently and he has a gift not just for recognising the story of a match but for transporting listeners and viewers into the action as if they were there. Some thought Tyldesley ruined Matterface’s big moment but Matterface, who has not watched Tyldesley’s video, disagrees.  

‘It was Clive’s day,’ he says. ‘Not my day. Clive is a brilliant commentator. He is a commentator who is editorially fantastic. He knows how to hit the mark and how to deliver a line. I think it’s right that people had the opportunity to pay tribute to him and to say how great he has been. He is not going anywhere. He is still going to work with ITV and is still going to work with talkSPORT. He is still doing a lot of work and quite rightly so.’

The voice of a favourite commentator is like an old friend for sports fans. It transports you to a stadium. It carries you into a world you love. You hear it and it brings a heady mix of anticipation and joy. It heralds moments in the life of supporters that they will never forget.

It captures the essence of the contest you are watching, or listening to. It means familiarity. Often, it provides subliminal comfort: as soon as you hear that voice, you know that it is nearly time for the main event. You associate it with enjoyment. And escape.

It is a visceral thing. Even now, if I hear a recording of Dan Maskell, it takes me straight to Wimbledon. It takes me to the happy summers of my childhood, watching Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe and loving Maskell’s mellifluous voice and wise observations almost as much as the game itself. Maybe that’s the magic of a great commentator: to be not separate from the action. But to be part of it.

It was the same with Richie Benaud. Benaud made watching cricket so much better than it would otherwise have been. He illustrated it. He taught it. He enhanced it. He made you love cricket even more than you already loved it. His voice took you to Lord’s and the brilliant green of the outfield and the vivid beauty of a player’s whites and the thwack of bat on ball. He has worthy successors in men such as Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain.

Moore could do that. David Coleman was my own favourite but that feels like ancient history now. John Motson’s enthusiasm was infectious. Mike Ingham was an urbane, compelling voice and I loved Alan Green’s passion. The world turns and voices change and I love the football work of John Murray and Ian Dennis on Radio 5 Live now. And of Matterface on talkSPORT and ITV. 

‘People have grown up with these voices,’ says Matterface, ‘and there is an instinctive defence mechanism when those voices move on. Quite rightly so. People like comfort. In broadcasting in particular, longevity is really comforting and safe and it reminds you of greater times. Sometimes a voice on the radio or the television is a safety blanket. It is normality. It is something that happens every day.

‘At the moment, especially with what is going on in the world, the idea of change unsettles people. It unsettles me. I’m used to turning on the TV and seeing Sue Barker on A Question of Sport. I was used to listening to John Motson doing a live game on the BBC. It doesn’t happen any more. I used to listen to Capital Gold Sport with Jonathan Pearce and I remember him leaving just before the 2002 World Cup and it was different. It was somebody else. It wasn’t the same.

‘That’s just part of life. Things change. People switch jobs. Things alter. We should appreciate the people who have done those jobs for so long, their longevity, their experience and their craft and I know I have to try and live up to that expectation and I know I have to work incredibly hard to succeed and I will do that because I am not afraid of it and I want to do it.

‘I hope I am good enough to do it. I have to take advice from others who have been doing it longer than me. We are lucky with the commentators we have. Martin Tyler, Darren Fletcher, Jonathan Pearce, Steve Wilson is fantastic, Robyn Cowen is brilliant, Vicki Sparks. The fact I am getting to do England games live is a major privilege and an unexpected honour and I know that that means I have to work every day to earn that.’

Matterface’s promotion also comes at a time when there is more and more scrutiny of the language commentators use and awareness of unconscious racial bias. The BBC held an ‘avoiding racial bias’ training session with their sports commentators some weeks ago, listing the words and phrases they had to avoid in the new season.

Reports said that ‘cakewalk’, ‘nitty gritty’, ‘sold down the river’ and ‘uppity’ were on the banned list, along with ‘blackballed’, ‘blacklisted’, ‘black mark’ and ‘whiter than white’. Matterface has not attended any seminars on the subject but he has taken the time to try to educate himself about the issues that provoked the debate. 

‘I like to think I take care with language,’ he says. ‘I grew up in a multi-cultural area and was brought up in a way where language and the way you spoke to people and about people was valued. I know in the role I have that what you say lands straight away. You haven’t got a second chance. There’s no safety net. There’s no dump button.

‘You have to make sure what you say is not going to offend, it’s the proper use of the words and I have to spend time looking at that. Language evolves and I have spoken to people whose opinions I value like the journalist Darren Lewis and my colleague Trevor Sinclair and when I learned some of the etymology of the words and phrases we casually use, I was surprised. I’m going to push those aside.

‘Nobody made us discuss it. I decided to educate myself. Whether you are a commentator or not, that is not a bad thing. As a person, I wanted to educate myself. I have spent time reading different books: Natives by Akala, and Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race. They take you into a world you have not walked in.’

In the world of football commentary, that is what Matterface is trying to do, too. ‘With TV,’ he says, ‘you have to be a bit more editorial, you need to be more deliberate in when you speak and how you speak. You are an annotator of pictures rather than a painter of pictures. I am still learning and trying desperately to keep watching people who are more experienced than I am. 

‘I can’t claim my commentaries are all totally spontaneous and it would be a dereliction of duty if they were. My job is to tell a story and I believe you have to catch the narrative right. I spoke to Ed Chamberlin when I was working at Sky and he would always say to me: “What’s the back page going to be? That’s what your story is, think about it carefully, and then we will work back from there.”

‘I might write 10 lines in advance and not use any of them. I might write two lines and use both of them. I don’t think you can plan most of what you are going to say because you have got to react to what you see but I do mentally rehearse how to react if a particular event happens.

‘If Harry Kane scores his 100th goal, say, I will have something in my mind about that, a relevant statistic or a turn of phrase. I did have a line in mind for if Mason Greenwood scored when he played for Manchester United against Crystal Palace a fortnight ago in his first game back after he was sent home from Iceland.

‘It was: “And that’s the way England and United want to see Mason Greenwood get his teenage kicks.” But he didn’t score. So I saved it for United’s tie against Luton Town instead.’