Voices of Sport: Barry Davies - One of our all-time favourites and a link from the past to the present

In our weekly series, Yahoo Sport’s Nick Metcalfe features a famous voice of sport. This week, the great BBC commentator Barry Davies goes under the spotlight.

“Where were the Germans? But frankly, who cares.”

Barry Davies is a truly masterful commentator, one of the greatest we’ve ever known.

I’m pretty certain there will be some of you reading this now that have him at the top of your list, such was his consistent excellence, and subsequent popularity, over the decades.

Davies has been a familiar voice now for more than half a century. He started working for BBC Radio in 1963, while he was also a sports journalist with The Times.

But television would become his natural home, and Davies moved to ITV in 1966. He covered that summer’s World Cup in England, working on games in the north-east, including those played by North Korea.

I recently spoke with Davies about his long career, and he recalled that English World Cup.

“I went up early to see the North Korean players,” he said. “They might as well have been from Mars as far as we were concerned. I needed time to find out how they looked, so I could recognise them like that and not by numbers.

“I wasn’t always the best with numbers. I don’t know why. I never was any good at maths at school.

“Frank Bough and I are the only two survivors from the television teams at the 1966 World Cup.”

Davies moved to the BBC in 1969, making his Match of the Day debut at the start of the 1969/70 season. He was supposed to work on the match between Leeds and Tottenham, but David Coleman lost his voice and Davies instead covered Crystal Palace against Manchester United, as well as presenting the programme alongside Bough.

Davies was a mainstay on the iconic football show for generations, and remained a big hit with viewers throughout. There may have been changes in the format as the years went on – we started to see highlights of many more games for one thing – but the spirit of the programme remained the same. The key action from that afternoon’s football in a post-pub, before bed time slot.

Even when live sport became king, and we saw a huge increase in the number of TV channels – including some just for sport – Match of the Day generally thrived. And Davies, alongside John Motson, was top of the tree in the commentary box.

The rivalry between the two commentators has been well documented. Motson was given the majority of the big matches over the years – Davies only twice covered the FA Cup final – and most viewers had their favourite.

“Motty and I had different styles,” Davies said. “Various people said it should be Motty (to cover the FA Cup final) and not me. That was the way of it. It’s history, one of those things.

“John always only wanted to do the one sport. He breathes, sleeps and eats football. He’s done enormously well and I admire him.”

Davies did still work on a host of special football occasions. He has covered ten World Cups in all, many landmark England games and 12 European Cup finals.

But football hasn’t been Davies’ only specialist subject of course. He could turn his hand to pretty much anything in sport. Wimbledon every summer, gymnastics whenever it mattered, and hockey or ice skating at the Olympics to name just a few.

“Doing other sports gets football into perspective,” Davies told me. “I learnt more about commentary from other sports. like Wimbledon or the gymnastics.”

Now, most commentators are famous for a line or two, that resonate with viewers and stick around in the collective consciousness. Davies produced a dozen or more.

There’s his legendary “interesting, very interesting. Look at his face, just look at his face” when Francis Lee scored for Derby against his old club Manchester City in 1974.

There was the pitch perfect “he has Burruchaga to his left and Valdano to his left – he doesn’t need – he won’t need any of them… oh! You have to say that’s magnificent,” as Diego Maradona waltzed his way through half the England team in a titanic 1986 World Cup quarter-final in Mexico.

What about the marvellous “is Gascoigne going to have a crack? He is, you know. Oh, I say. Brilliant. That is schoolboys’ own stuff,” as the Tottenham man Paul smashed home a brilliant free-kick against Arsenal in a 1991 FA Cup semi-final at Wembley. Or the simple, but hugely effective ‘oh no’ when Gareth Southgate missed that penalty against the Germans at Euro 96.

And then there’s surely the most famous Davies line of all, the one at the top of this piece, that he delivered towards the end of a memorable Olympic hockey final between Great Britain and West Germany at the 1988 Seoul Games. Imran Sherwani had just put Britain into an unassailable 3-0 lead when Davies uttered the following immortal words.

“Where were the Germans? But frankly, who cares.”

I asked Davies about that fabled moment behind the microphone. ‘Everyone remembers Kenneth Wolstenholme and that commentary in 1966, but really they were three very simple sentences,’ he said.

“He saw some people were on the pitch. That was very unusual back then. He quickly thought, they must think the game is over. And Geoff Hurst’s shot goes in. So he says, ‘It is now.’”

“It was the same sort of thinking with me in 1988. I looked at the replay of the third goal and actually thought, ‘where were the Germans?’ They were cut to shreds. But without being that conscious of it, I then thought ‘why are you making a fuss of that, we’re going to win the bloody thing’. So then comes the 'frankly, who cares?’

“I suppose I was more on the British side than was considered healthy in those days.

“The style of commentary has changed quite a lot since. At the 2012 Olympics there was a lot more promotion of British names. An idea of getting behind the team. I thought ‘hang on, this isn’t written in the Olympic charter’.

“When you’re covering England or Britain, you look through English or British eyes, but you still have to have that balance.”

There was just something about those silky Davies tones – we grew up in our family doing impressions of the way he would say “Stapleton” after the Arsenal and Manchester United star Frank had scored a goal. It was a kind of strangled delight. Then there was his simple “oh, I say” or a “lovely goal” which became such familiar refrains.

There was also the occasional lapse into Davies the schoolmaster. He wasn’t shy about delivering a stern lecture. After England’s Terry Fenwick made a mistake that nearly led to an early goal for Poland in a crucial 1986 World Cup match, a rather cross voice came from the commentary box.

“England just cannot afford to make crass errors like that. We’ve got away with it twice, we cannot tempt fate further.”

It would be remiss to go any further without referring to silence. In this regard, Davies very much comes from the old school. Frankly, he has never been afraid of offering us nothing at all. Like Benaud and a few select others from the broadcasting pantheon, Davies recognised the unique power of silence.

“That was the BBC style back then,” Davies told me. “The producer might say ‘shut up, we’ve heard enough of you’. I do believe there are moments when silence is golden. It’s sometimes better when nobody says anything.

“I had a run of covering Korea at the 2002 World Cup, and when the last penalty went in for them to beat Spain in the quarter-finals, the place went mad. Nearly everyone was wearing red. I didn’t say anything. The head of department saw me later and said ‘well done for that, you didn’t say a word for 30 seconds’.

“I think about American commentators. When there’s a goal in ice hockey, the commentator shouts “goal” and then says nothing. We should sometimes just enjoy the goal, rather than being told it happened because somebody gave the ball away in midfield. Ninety nine per cent of goals are scored because somebody has made a mistake somewhere.

“I felt that my style was not the new style of the BBC and I didn’t see too much sense trying to compete.”

Davies is making reference to the period where he wound down his football duties. His last international tournament was Euro 2004, and his final Match of the Day game was Manchester City’s clash with Arsenal in the autumn of that year.

“The BBC thought conversation commentary was the way to go. That is the way it has gone. The role of commentators on television has changed. I believe it’s more like radio.

“I decided during the course of Euro 2004 that I wouldn’t accept a new BBC contract. I didn’t do one England match and I think that was a factor.

“I was never going to win without changing my style and I didn’t want to change my style. That sounds arrogant, but I don’t mean it like that. It was a positive decison for me to stop, not a negative one.”

Davies actually did return to Match of the Day a decade later, as part of the the 50th anniversary celebrations in 2014. He commentated on a London derby between Crystal Palace and West Ham, with the BBC going full on retro for the match, including the use of some very old graphics.

“I really enjoyed that, they all treated me very well,” Davies said. “I thought, ‘this is all lovely’, but also thought, ‘if I get something wrong in the first 10 minutes, they’ll say ‘he was never any f-ing good anyway’.”

Davies links the past and the present, perhaps more than any other voice of sport. He worked on the 1966 World Cup, and was also there for the 2012 London Olympics. It was his 12th Games on duty, and he guided an enormous British audience through an unforgettable opening ceremony. There seemed to be emotion in his voice, just at the time when we all started to feel it.

“Sir Steve Redgrave makes his way into the centre of the stadium. A very proud moment for him. And a very proud moment for Britain.”

Davies didn’t speak for two minutes after that. He didn’t need to. The pictures said it all. Not to mention the wondrous sounds of Caliban’s Dream, a song specially written for the occasion.

Let’s not forget, Davies is still very much working now. This article shouldn’t be seen as just a look back at a glorious voice of our past. This is about the present too. We can enjoy Davies once more at Wimbledon this summer, as we always have done.

Speaking about the grass court grand slam, Davies said: “My first reaction to getting the Wimbledon job all those years ago was ‘they’re off their heads’. I mean, what right have I got to do tennis commentary.

“I talked to John Barrett and Dan Maskell and they said, ‘don’t try to set yourself up as an authority’.

“I know the game pretty well though, and I’ve loved doing it ever since.”

You just know Davies has loved the whole shebang actually, his long career with microphone in hand. It shines through in his commentaries, and it comes over loud and clear when you speak with him.

“I said what I saw, and hoped that the foot was sufficiently clear of my mouth,” Davies says, with a rather endearing summing up of a wonderful body of work.

Barry Davies. How we’ve loved listening to him. Long may we listen.

Barry Davies is working with BetVictor throughout Euro 2016 to celebrate the firm’s “Million Pound Goal” competition, which will see a total of £1,000,000 given away – to enter visit http://www.betvictor.com/million-pound-goal/en