[ Background ]

As a child growing up in Dublin, especially early and mid ‘90s, football was massive, you couldn't escape it. English football wasn’t really a thing until the ‘70s in Ireland, when it made it onto TV and we got Match of the Day. In the ‘90s, the Premier League era had just started and a lot of Dublin was supporting English teams by then. You had a lot of Leeds fans because of John Giles and Jack Charlton in the ‘70s, a lot of Arsenal fans because they had Niall Quinn and David O’Leary in the ‘80s and just lots of Irish talent in the big English teams.

My first memory of football was probably when I was 2 or 3 - Italia 90. Obviously, being Ireland’s first World Cup, the whole country stopped, you couldn’t really not be a part of that party. My parents aren’t big sports people and don’t really like football but I have memories of my parents painting the curbs outside the house, green, white and gold. From then on it just stuck with me.

A few years later, in 1995, I was at a friend’s house and his family was watching the FA Cup Final between Liverpool and Manchester United - the one that Liverpool lost and Cantona scored the only goal - and one of them just shoved a Liverpool top on me! So, I became a Liverpool fan, much to my uncle’s annoyance!

Yeah, so through my teen years until my mid 20s I suffered quite badly with depression and that kind of stopped me living my life for a while. I had a period of not really doing much in the way of what I wanted to do. Like a lot of things during that time, I lost sight of football for a while.

I moved to Edinburgh in 2010 and one of the first things I did was get a Hibernian (Hibs) season ticket. In Edinburgh you have two clubs, Hearts and Hibs - and with Hibs being created as a football club for Irish immigrants, that was always going to be my choice!

That sort of reinvigorated me and got me back into football. I started going to pretty much every single game every season. I’ve been through heartaches and relegations but also great times. In 2016, when Hibs won the Scottish Cup for the first time in 114 years, that was probably one of the greatest moments of my life to be honest.

[ How did you get into commentating? ]

My journey into commentating started when I was a lot younger. When I was a kid and playing FIFA on Playstation on FIFA 97 or 98, I would always switch off the commentary and do the play by play myself. This was something I’d done for years. Never around anyone else but always when I was by myself. I did that for years and years, decades honestly, even into my adult years.

I started doing some audio commentary on Facebook Live. You couldn’t show the matches of course, so I would just do audio commentary for Premier League or European games. Anyway, I recorded a 3 minute clip of my commentary from a Liverpool - Arsenal game and just put it in an email with a cover letter to the Head of Media and Communications at Hibs.

There was no opening or job ad. For these kinds of positions, there are almost never job ads, you just have to take a chance. I knew Hibs had a club channel which was doing quite well at the time, people were even showing the games in some of the pubs on the club channel, so I knew they had a whole setup. I found the Head of Media’s - Kenny Miller - email and took a chance.

About 2 days later, I got a reply. He told me he liked what he’d heard and brought me in to shadow some of the commentators who were already there. I did maybe 2 or 3 games just shadowing, getting to know the guys and seeing how I’d fit in.

Then, one day, I think it was a Tuesday night, there was an away game at St. Johnstone and the lead commentator, Cliff, couldn’t make it. I got the message quite late on, I was on the bus home from work, and they asked me if I could do the commentary for the Wednesday night game. My wife was sitting next to me and she goes, ‘if you don’t take that, you might never get another opportunity!’

I got there early, I’d known the co-commentator, Keith, for about a month at this point, and it was quite easy to work with him. That was my first taste of doing it properly, of being live to however many people around the world were watching on Hibs TV.

From there, I became almost like a ‘backup’ for Cliff when he couldn’t make games. Cliff Pike is still doing Hibs TV, he’s been a kind of mentor from then on, he’d been doing it at that point for over 15 years. I just tried to soak in everything, ask a lot of questions and he taught me absolutely everything. I’d even occasionally do co-commentary as well when Keith couldn’t make it, which is completely different to what I was doing before.

Once I got started - all from that random email - I just wanted to keep doing it. This is probably what I’ve wanted to do since I was a child.

[ Sounds like you were thrown right in! Was there some kind of ‘training’ or feedback? ]

When the COVID lockdown hit, I’d been doing Hibs TV for about 2 years. All football, all sports were off - and in turn, all the media around live sports. I was furloughed from a job and literally just sitting around during lockdown, trying to make the best out of a bad situation.

Anyway, I went on a bit of a mad messaging spree across social media. I contacted pretty much every player, manager and commentator I could think of to see if I could get an interview. I was planning to post them on YouTube during COVID. I wanted to keep learning in some way and at that time, I’d never interviewed a player before!

I was pretty surprised with the amount of responses I got! I started off with a few former Hibs players, like Kevin Thompson and Jason Naismith. Probably the biggest player I interviewed was Matt Holland, who used to play for Ipswich and the Irish national team and was, well still is, a very well known footballer and media personality - he got back to me and said he’d love to do an interview, I never expected that.

One of the other big things I did was start to send my commentary around to other commentators to get feedback and advice. One of the people who helped me an awful lot was Ian Crocker at Sky Sports. He’s always been there for me to pick his brain, giving some advice here and there and generally being a huge help. That was massive for me.

Adam Summerton is another person who has helped me a lot. He’s a phenomenal commentator and has gone from the National League all the way up and is now doing Champions League games and a lot of the Italian league games for TNT Sports. He helped me understand the importance of silence in commentary. When I started, I thought, ‘you can’t leave silences, you have to keep talking, keep the audience engaged,’ but it can be really helpful to allow the atmosphere to come through and not ‘over saturating’ the game.

And lastly, Clive Tyldesley, helped me a lot with research. He’s even started selling his commentary notes as a side business! I think that’s genius because he’s commented on so many famous matches. The research part is so important, you want to be literally pouring hours and hours into researching every player from both teams. It sounds crazy to spend 4 or 5 days researching for 2 hours of work but that’s the job and what it takes to be prepared.

Those 3 were the biggest help in getting me to where I am today and to look at commentating from a more professional level.

[ How do you prepare for a match or for a season? ]

Before the season starts, I like to get down to training and get to know the manager and his style of play, formations and the new signings. That’s something I never thought about because I didn’t want to be encroaching or overstepping but we were encouraged to do that.

Before the start of last season with Hibs Women, I did a couple of interviews with the new signings and the new manager, Grant Scott. He’d had a successful stint at the club in 2018-19 back when everything was voluntary, you know, nobody was paid and women’s football in Scotland had no professional teams. So he came back and before the season, before training started, he was coming in to welcome the new players I was interviewing and I thought, great, here's an opportunity for me to speak with him.

I spent a couple hours with him, learning about his style, the new players coming in - how they compared with last year’s squad - and just getting into his mind about how he viewed the game and how he was approaching the season. It was fascinating and now I have a massive knowledge of the players, why they were brought in, their strengths and so on. That has really helped with every single game that I do for Hibs Women now.

[ How do you balance being a fan of the club with staying professional and neutral on the club channel? ]

When you’re a fan of the club you’re working for, you have to keep your emotions in check when you’re doing the commentary, you have to be as impartial as possible. That was one of my mistakes in the past and I’ve learned from it.

There were a few games I came away from thinking, I shouldn’t have done that or said things like that. One time, after a loss to Hearts in the Scottish Cup Semi-Finals at Hampden Park - it was a massive event, one of the biggest matches I’ve ever done - I let my emotions get the better of me and said some silly things. Then, the opposing camp gets a hold of it and next thing it’s on TikTok and for half a minute you start to become a meme for the opposition fans.

Looking back now, I can see the funny side of it but at the time, it was so stupid. That was one of the big learning points in my career, you have to keep your emotions in check. Now, one of the things I pride myself in, it doesn’t matter if it’s Hearts or Hibs, if a good goal goes in, you give credit where it’s due.

[ Switching from Hibs men to Hibs Women commentary ]

The women’s team used to play at Ainslie Park, which is a nightmare to get to - then they moved to Livingston, which is even worse! But then, the new Meadowbank Sports Centre opened not far from Easter Road and all of a sudden it was really easy to get to. I called Callum, the media guy at the time (he’s now the team operations manager) and asked if they needed anything done on the women’s side. He said, actually, we need a stadium announcer!

I’d never done that before but I figured I should give it a try. I remembered that’s where Ian Crocker made his start before he went into commentary, so I sent him a message asking if he had any advice. I got a script from the club and went through it, tweaking it and making it my own.

I was doing that for about a year. The club was streaming the games on YouTube without any commentary. I thought, you know what, I’m not doing anything apart from the announcing, they were already streaming the games and had quite a good audience, maybe we can build something. We started testing out different things, like pre and post-match interviews with the manager and players.

Ultimately, it was just a natural progression, women’s football in Scotland has grown at a really astronomical pace. Hibs became one of the first teams to give professional contracts, they became part of the full club (before they were under the Hibs Community Foundation charity) and now, I would say, at least half of the clubs in the league are professional and paying players and staff. We wanted to evolve the product into a full match experience for fans.

Now, you can start watching a quarter to two, I do the intro, we play the manager’s pre-match interview and then straight into the game. After, we do post match interviews and a review to tie it all together.

I’ve been really privileged to have the opportunity to have a hand in all that and to work with some amazing videographers and photographers.

Looking back, switching from the men's to the women's was a blessing in disguise, because it allowed me to evolve as not just a commentator but get comfortable and competent in the stadium and learn new skills.

[ Are you in the stadium home and away or are some matches done remotely? ]

For Hibs Women, I do the commentary home and away. I’m very lucky to travel with the entire media team on the team bus, it’s a big privilege to be able to do so. Sometimes we don’t stream the away games (on the club channel) but I still do the commentary as if it’s going out. Then the videographer has an easier time just chopping the audio and the video to make the highlights.

On the back of the commentary at Hibs, I got an opportunity to commentate for Shelbourne FC in Dublin on League of Ireland TV - an online streaming service for the League of Ireland which has a massive audience, tens of thousands of people every game. That was a game changer for me, I was flying back and forth for matches and it was a real step up in production - different camera guys, a director and producers in your ear, they want to make a perfect product.

I’d show up about two and a half hours before kickoff, with a professional cameraman, we’d interview the managers. There was 10-15 minutes of pre-match coverage either with your co-commentator or a former player, usually quite big names in Irish football.

[ Working with a co-commentator ]

In my role with Hibs Women, I rarely had a co-commentator, although sometimes an injured player would do it. Some players were exemplary at it - some even went on to do some commentary for the BBC - but some didn’t really want to do it or weren’t comfortable, which I totally understand.

An important thing that commentators like Ian and Clive taught me was to speak to your co-commentator before the game and let them know how you work, your style and then they can slot into that. In the beginning, I used to leave gaps that I’d leave as a solo commentator for the stadium atmosphere and now this space would be filled in by another person doing analysis.

Having a good relationship and being able to have a little bit of a laugh or bit of banter with your co-commentator is really great - and it endears the people to you and makes them want to hear you more often.

The perfect example is Peter Drury and Jim Beglin - I would try to tune into the American feed instead of the English feed because those two were just completely honest and had a great rapport. They don’t sugarcoat anything - which is sometimes a struggle to do on English television - but they aren’t afraid to give their opinion!

I’ve been lucky to have worked with great guys and made some great relationships over the years. Building those relationships and that rapport is really important in building your network. Football, unfortunately, can be a business where who you know is often more important than what you know.

[ Do you practice pronouncing player names before matches? ]

Yeah, that’s one of the things you have to be careful of, both as a stadium announcer and commentator.

It’s easier if you’re in the big leagues because you can just go on YouTube and find out exactly how to pronounce a player’s name. But at lower levels, there are lots of players who haven’t had much media exposure. Then, you might be stuck using Google Translate - which isn’t always the best - or you can ask directly, either to the player or someone at the club. It’s important to get it right, the pronunciations are a massive thing.

One time at Hibs, I had a case where people were messaging me on social media, saying I wasn’t saying a player’s name right - Mykola Kukharevych - but in that case, I’d learned! I knew exactly how to say it.

[ How do you find new opportunities as a commentator? ]

You have to market yourself. I don’t do this very well at the moment, I don’t have a ‘brand’ - that’s another thing I have to learn. I didn’t know it was common to have a show reel until last year, I was looking at other commentators on LinkedIn and saw they had their show reel from last season!

You have to strike a balance though between promoting yourself too much and not doing it enough. You don’t want to just throw things at people over and over, that can come off the wrong way and just annoy people.

Recently, I did a couple of pay per view commentaries for Ross County in the Premiership. They’re up in the Highlands in the north of Scotland and they had a game against, I forget maybe Aberdeen or Hibs or Heart, where the commentator for their club channel couldn’t travel down. I knew a guy who worked for Stream Digital, which handles all the club channels and outgoing media like live streaming, he recommended met to fill in. I got 5 pay per views a season from that.

Those were my first remote games as a commentator too. You go into the studio and there’s a booth with a screen and a microphone and do the commentary. You have to be careful not to pull the curtain back, I would still say, ‘welcome live from (stadium name)’ - even if it’s a little silly, you don’t want to lift that mystique in football. Now, it’s a bit more commonplace because Sky Sports will put up pictures on their social media of the EFLs iFollow platform which streams every game across English football and it’s just a line of booths that’s about 200 long!

It was really fun working for Ross County as well because you’re completely neutral. That makes it feel like you’re really doing it professionally.

[ You’ve also had a couple of additional football roles including Head of Media at Edinburgh City? ]

That was completely different. That wasn't commentary or interviews or anything on screen. I took that role on to learn, especially to learn about what it’s like dealing with players and managers every single day.

I was running the club’s social media, putting out posts and that. It’s a lot of work, some of it was very enjoyable but social media, for me, it’s crazy to think about how much goes out on a minute to minute basis in football alone. There’s so much content so quickly that you have to learn or you’ll fall behind. I spent a good few years learning how algorithms work and looking at lots of different metrics.

[ You’ve started relatively recently as stadium announcer at Shelbourne too? ]

Yeah, so League of Ireland TV did a deal with Premier Sports and a lot of the matches are on Irish television properly - where the commentary is done by people who are further along in the game than me, so the commentary opportunities for me went down after that. So, Shelbourne offered me the role, in their words, as the ‘voice of Tolka Park’. I thought, why not, I’ll take that!

So, I’m there doing the stadium announcing, the lineups, halftime announcements, the substitutions, everything from start to finish. I’m there with a professional DJ as well who does all the music - he’s a regular on Irish radio, which is pretty crazy but we’re working together on matchdays! The crowds are amazing, honestly before this, I never really understood what people meant by ‘feeding off the energy of a crowd’. With all due respect to Meadowbank (Hibs Women’s ground), they can only fit about 500 people in, so it’s a very small crowd and it’s a different challenge to really get the atmosphere going, but when you have 5,500 people in a stadium, you feel it. I probably lose my voice half the time there’s a goal scored, I’m absolutely loving it!

They’ve got European games coming up in the summer, Champions League qualifiers, and I can’t wait to do those, those are going to be sellouts, it’s guaranteed.

[ A lot of jobs in football seem to start on a volunteer basis, it seems to me you’re working at a pretty good level now! At what point/what level is it possible (or common) for this to become someone’s full-time job? ]

To take that major step of getting rid of my 9 to 5 job and taking that big risk, you'd want to be doing it for a national broadcaster, BBC, Sky, TNT or the English feed for the Bundesliga or Serie A for example.

You’d want to be earning from maybe one or two games a week what you’d make weekly in your day job. If I could earn enough to live on, I’d be more than happy and could go all in on it. It’s still a risk because it’s freelance work and it’s not always guaranteed but you really have to take the leap at some point and trust yourself and believe in what you’re doing.

One thing I learned a few years ago was knowing your worth and not being afraid to ask to get paid if you feel that your work is worth something. I’m always very flexible, not every team has hundreds of pounds to throw out on commentary - especially because they can often find somebody who’ll do it for free - that’s just the reality. If they can’t afford to pay you, they’ll tell you or they might pay your travel or expenses.

I'm a lot more confident now than I've been before because I've gotten feedback from people higher up than me that I’m on the right track, I’m doing a good job. If they’re doing this week in, week out, internationally and at the highest level are telling me this, that’s enough for me. I’m 37, which maybe doesn’t sound so young but in media, lots of the people ahead of me have decades more experience than me. I’m still quite early, I know I just have to grind it out and keep learning and keep improving.

[ What are you aiming for in the future? ]

Right now, for me, it's just grinding away and taking every opportunity that comes up. The dream situation would be to be working with BBC, TNT Sports or Sky Sports, or in America with CBS down the line. That’s the big aim. But, I would love to just do it for a living, it doesn’t matter where it is, or what league, if I can make a living, that’s me set, dream achieved, that’d be.