AFC Bournemouth
While 10,000 or so lucky fans may get to see each goal live, for many thousand others the job of bringing the action and its immediacy to them falls to commentator Kris Temple.
Starting commentating on the Cherries in February 2002, Temple’s voice and instant descriptions of all the action have become synonymous with many of the incredible highs (and lows) from the last two decades at AFC Bournemouth.
With that in mind, the BBC Radio Solent and afcbTV commentator was tasked with picking five of his most memorable goal commentaries, then discussing with afcb.co.uk what was behind his well-known lines.
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Hayter's hat-trick goal
1. ‘It’s absolutely unbelievable!’
I think the key point to pick out from this commentary is that we were the only people there, so it’s the only commentary anyone’s heard. I can recite that commentary now word for word, having it played back to me so many times over the years, 16 years ago now.
That commentary was played on Radio One, ‘It’s absolutely unbelievable!’ was a phrase that was taken the mickey out of by Chris Moyles at the time.
There was no way that you could see that hat-trick goal coming, even though I accidentally pre-empted it – just to fill a bit of time really, not really thinking it was going to happen. A lot of colleagues have recited Willo’s line down the years of ‘James is in again’, but it’s one where not too many words were needed.
On radio you have to keep speaking, whereas on TV you can let the pictures do the talking. You try to speak descriptively on radio and people might say I didn’t do that for this goal, I didn’t say he’d fired it right-footed across the ‘keeper into the corner, but there it was about capturing the moment.
Hayter, hat-trick, unbelievable, that pretty much did it for me, when I said it was unbelievable again it was because I really couldn’t believe it.
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Ritchie's Bolton promotion settler
2. ‘They can smell it, they can feel it, they can nearly touch it’
It was a very important goal, probably the goal where everyone realised that ‘hang on, the Premier League is happening’. Marc Pugh’s goal has been played a lot down the years but I think when Matt Ritchie made it 2-0 that was the moment that the belief – and the relief – came into the stadium.
The line ‘They can smell it, they can feel it, they can nearly touch it’ is the line that I’m most proud of in that clip of commentary. That was completely off the cuff, just coming out at the time. Sometimes as a commentator you'll have thought scenarios through. Some commentators write down pre-prepared lines, but that;s not for me. It takes away the rawness and emotion that football conjures.
I didn’t have that line written down, the first time it came into my head was when I was about to say it. As I said each phrase I didn’t really know what was coming next, when a line comes off the cuff and works well that’s when you’re proudest, managing to capture the moment fittingly with the words you impulsively choose at the time.
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Wilson's stunning Man City free-kick
3. ‘Wow wee Harry Wilson’
Sometimes there can be one line that you’re remembered for, in this case: ‘Wow wee Harry Wilson’. The commentary aficionados might ask ‘What on earth is that?’ but actually it’s about being awestruck by what you’ve seen.
I think I got the words ‘wow wee’ from my mum! It was probably one of her superlatives back in the day, but at the time it came out impulsively because the free-kick was so good, you just don’t expect anyone to bang one in like that from there, someone even changed their Twitter handle to that line. We hadn’t seen a lot of him at that stage of the season so no-one quite knew what he had in his locker.
The initial moment of this commentary is probably the surprise really, then I go into the description later on, that it had gone into the top corner. If you go with your passion and your feeling at the time, as long as you can construct some sort of sentence as a commentator that’s good. The crowd at home need to experience what everyone in the stadium experiences, which was amazement that it had gone into the net.
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Kermorgant's glorious acrobatic strike
4. ‘What. A. Goal’
Matt Ritchie had just hit the bar a moment earlier, it was only two minutes into the game and already the team was on a bit of a high from the way it had started, the adrenaline was already flowing – and then Yann pulled that out.
From a radio description point of view I’ve actually not really told anyone initially what’s happened, but you’ve got time to go back and do that, it’s about that moment when the ball goes into the net and if you’d watched that with your eyes shut you’d still be able to tell that something special has just happened from hearing.
You don’t see many goals of that quality so you rely on your instincts and mine at the time were to keep it short and keep it sweet, hopefully it did the job.
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Ritchie's incredible Sunderland volley
5. ‘A firecracker out of the top drawer’
Sometimes you have a long build-up talking up to a goal, and as a commentator you go through the gears. If I think of Dan Gosling’s goal at Southampton last year for example, that started at the edge of the penalty area, you have time to get your momentum as a commentator, going from gear one to gear five as you describe the move, having quite a bit of time to formulate the thread of the story of the goal.
Whereas, what I’m most pleased about with the goals I’ve picked out is that they mostly have no build-up, as is the case with this volley. As a commentator that’s probably your biggest test: can you react when something happens suddenly, what can you come up with?
For this Ritchie goal it was another one where I was happy with the line that came out, ‘Matt Ritchie’s pulled a firecracker out of the top drawer’. That’s not written down and I’ve not used it before, which is another thing, you can get into a habit of saying the same sort of things.
With these sort of spectacular goals I’ve managed to dig out a few here where I’ve not used the same phrase, they’re all completely different and I’m quite pleased I’ve been able to do that. The goals where you build through the gears don’t often make the headlines, they don’t make the YouTube clips. That doesn’t mean you’re less proud of them, but they can be harder to recall!
