On the list of trivial things that make you absolutely beelin’, sitting through Clive Tyldesley commentate on an England game as a Scot is right near the top.
ITV’s announcement they are replacing him as their senior football commentator this week won’t have been met with much disappointment north of the border.
Not because Tyldesley is a bad commentator. You don’t get to that level of your profession if you don’t know what you’re doing. He obviously does his research, is a pro and has been doing what he does for the past 22 years.
No, it’s just the England cheerleading. Not many of us switch on an England game and approach the viewing experience as a neutral. The majority of Scottish football fans want to see them pumped – or at least agonisingly miss out, especially when it comes to major tournaments.
Without getting into a debate on nationalism, for most of us that’s just how football rivalry works.
You don’t want to see your rivals succeed.
It should probably come as no surprise that Clive barely conceals his support for the Three Lions during games.
It’s the same on BBC Scotland when our national team is in action – we just have less to be smugly confident or pleased about.
The fact we haven’t reached the finals of a major tourney since we first wanted to tell Clive where to stick his mic is a factor as well.
Whether you like it or not, we’re part of the UK and England, as the dominant national team, are always the main draw when it’s tournament time. Even Wales’ and Northern Ireland’s heroics at Euro 2016 took a back seat in comparison to how Roy’s boys were getting on.
It’s not that Clive can’t accept when England have been gubbed, or toes the Ing-er-lund line at all costs. Fair enough, he’s not a club TV commentator.
It’s the little throwaway lines that get the hackles up – the obligatory references to 1966, the plotting of routes to the final, the slightly patronising analysis of opponents – especially if they have never plied their trade in the English Premier League. There was also the time he refused to pronounce James Rodriguez’s first name as “Hamez” rather than plain old James because he was “not a linguist”.
But he’s not all bad. He called for co-commentators to receive training in order to avoid unintentionally racially stereotyping players in their analysis.
Also, on a human level, it’s never nice to see someone told they’ll no longer be doing a job they love, even if he’ll still be commentating.
Sports media in general is a cut-throat industry and we’re very lucky to essentially get to go and watch the fitba’ every week to make a living (global pandemics notwithstanding).
So it was hard not to feel sympathy for Clive when he took to Twitter to explain how upset he was. OK, filming what was basically an address to the nation was a bit much.
As was insisting it wasn’t “a grave matter of State” while doing the commentator’s version of the Queen’s speech.
But I still felt for the guy.
I actually met him once. It was in the tunnel at Tynecastle before Hearts were absolutely rag-dolled by Spurs in the Europa League play-off round.
He had spent the build-up emailing me and a colleague, double-checking bits of information for his research.
Credit to him, I unfairly assumed he’d be like a number of the English press that came up to cover the game, namely not take much interest and then talk loudly among themselves while the rest of us tried to conduct a presser with Paulo Sergio.
But standing waiting in the dead time between the warm-up and kick-off he was thanking us for our help, proudly telling us about his daughter’s GCSE results received that day and asking if my colleague would phone him a taxi for full-time.
Thankfully one has now arrived for his England commentaries – but not his livelihood.
