Top 10 Things Sports Pundits & Presenters Will Never Say

21st Jan 2019

10. Ulster is the real reason Gaelic football is gone to the dogs

Most of us would rather sit on the wall on French’s Quay and watch the excitement of the Event Centre being “built" across the river on South Main Street than have to spend more than five minutes watching fifteen men trying in vain to break through a cordon of fifteen men using up to a thousand hand passes. But nobody can really say that. Except maybe, Pat Spillane. And he’s from Kerry so nobody takes much notice.    
 

Armagh football senior team setting up for training

9. This match will definitely be a dull nil-all draw
Don’t you dare say that! Take your lessons from Andy ‘I’ll tell you what, I think it’s going to be a great game’ Townsend who is a guiding light for any pundit thinking of saying what they really feel about a drab midweek, mid-table borefest between Bournemouth and Brexitford that will have no effect on their league positions regardless of the result. But it’ll be a great game!

8. To be honest, Ryle, they change the rules so I often I haven’t a clue why that’s a penalty
Pretending you know the latest rugby rules are all part of being a quality pundit: Yeah, Ryle, it looks like Peter O’Mahony’s calf muscle came in from the side while he was off his feet after the ruck was set BUT before the opposing player came through the gate to initiate the collision which is always a clear penalty…to one of the teams.
 

CLEAR PENALTY! Four blue is using his pinky finger to clear out while off his feet and leaving  the gate open after the ruck was formed above the neck. Idiot.

7. Lads, we’ve been talking about a hypothetical contract issue at second rate Spanish football club for fifteen minutes…should we advise people still listening to get a life?
Even when Premier League players are off on holidays carousing with each other’s wives and throwing gold bars off nightclub roofs, the best sports pundits can waffle for hours about hypothetical player transfers when there’s nothing else to talk about. The main problem with the brilliantly branded, ‘Transfer Window’, however, is that we can’t take a hammer and break it!  

6. It’s more or less the same thing year after year though isn’t it?
You spend the whole season wondering who’s going to win. You read the hype, the previews, the reviews, the online banter, and watch all the highlights. Some team lifts a silver cup into the air at the end of it all and then a few weeks later it just starts all over again. Amazing isn’t it?

5. To be honest it’s Tuesday so there’s very little to talk about here at the sports desk
Are you kidding me, Adrian? What about all the players who limped off pitches over the weekend? Their “scans” will be back today and their team doctors will rate their chances of training tomorrow ahead of next weekend’s “crunch” game. Any sports pundit worth their sponsorship fee could get five minutes out that: “there’s dramatic breaking news coming out of Fly-Low-Cost-But-Bring-Plenty-Bags Stadium with news that third choice goalkeeper Bruce Schmeichel has a sore hamstring…”.  

 

Oh please Lord, after that briefly exciting sequence of play may the odds be lowered on me making a successful first half assist for the second goal as long as Pogba scores in the second half for Man United away to Huddersfield. Or my money back.

4. Is it a bit inappropriate that we’re promoting gambling even though lots of our listeners are underage?
Slipping the “crazy” betting odds on a game into a question posed to a pundit right after an advert for a betting company makes you a top professional sports presenter. You’re so good you’re 5/1 on for an IMRO radio award and a bonus from the boss.  

3. Sorry, I don’t want to be pedantic, but a player can only give 100%, not 110%.
Unless, of course, he or she grows another limb and that improves their game in some way – goalkeepers could give an extra ten percent if they had another arm to fling at a penalty and Russian athletes obviously get another 10% from the special injections that Doctor Vladimir insists on after each training session. But besides that nobody can give more than 100%. Except Daniel Kearney obviously.

2. We’ve got the latest results from Musgrave Park and Lansdowne Road…
Presenters and pundits know what side their bread is buttered on when it comes to controversial naming rights of old stadiums. In the pro-game “coin” always trumps history and heritage: Dublin Newspaper Park and Pricey Insurance Road are the churches Cork rugby devotees pray in these days.   
 

"Note...to...self...tell...Hooky...to...ramp...up...the...war....metaphors.....if....the...game...is...another .....low.....scoring...borefest"

1. Their second-row has superb ball skills….for a rugby player
Catching an oval ball and not letting it drop might be described as a competent display of age-appropriate motor skills for your average twenty-something, but not for rugby pros.
If you’re slogging it out on a wet Sunday morning in some wind swept field near Bandon nobody’s going to sing your praises for not dropping the egg but if you’re on television your actions may be dressed up as some sort of divine miracle the viewer is privileged to bear witness to. Bow down!