"DOWN THE FLANKS AGAIN CITY HAVE PROSPERED..."

🎤John Motson, who died today, carried many of us from childhood through adolescence and on into cynical adulthood like a football mothership swaddled in a sheepskin overcoat. His voice will survive him, echoing around in our minds for all time, a soundtrack to our lives in sway to the great but simple sport he made his name describing.

Thrown in at the deep end to commentate on an FA Cup tie at Edgar Street between non-league Hereford and Newcastle United on 5th February 1972, his luck was to have his first game suddenly explode into the spectacle of what would become one of the competition's most talked about matches and containing, certainly, one of its most replayed goals. Ronnie Radford's strike for Hereford that brought the kids down from the trees and caused a full scale, parka-clad invasion of the muddy playing surface, has become one of the moments of Britain's sporting history. It was Motson's first day at work.

What an introduction. 

Ronnie Radford wheels away at Edgar Street: :"Radford again, oh what a goal, what a goal!!! Radford the scorer. The crowd are invading the pitch and it will take some time to clear the field...."

The 70s and 80s saw almost uninterrupted BBC coverage for Motson and his erudite colleague Barry Davies, as David Coleman graduated to the warmth of the studio and others picked up the pieces of the highlights games that followed Match of the Day's two main matches. Motson it was, with his earthy delivery and geeky penchant for stats before stats were a thing, that took control of every Cup Final, much to Davies' chagrin. 

His voice carried us through World Cups and European Championships, a steady flow of reassuringly mispronounced foreign names in the phase immediately before the opening of the money channels to the Premier League.

It was in the early years of the Premier League that he probably sealed his City-commentating history with a piece of work to accompany the exhilarating 5-2 home win over Tottenham in 1994 that was replete with bubbling enthusiasm and gurgling joy. For Motson, this was the type of football he loved to be present at. Just like the rest of us, he could hardly contain himself, but, and this was his consummate skill, his boyish simplicity shone through in his commentary, as he pasted words and phrases to the delightful spectacle he was being paid to witness. 

He leaves us the poorer for his absence and leaves the world of football commentary in an altogether different era of flat platitudes and cosy chit-chat. One of the quintessential sounds of football has fallen silent.