Live Football. Breathe Football. Part Five

Let Me Illustrate

Do you remember a time long ago when you had to wait until people returned from trips away in order to be subjected to their endless holiday photographs? Our new brave digital age means these waits no longer exist, and at times it appeared that the remote team in South Africa spent most of their free time (and, it seems, some of the time they were theoretically supposed to be working) taking pictures and uploaded them online.

If nothing else it gave those of us stuck back in London a chance to see how the other half lived and what their working environment was like. My esteemed colleague Stan Collymore was the most enthusiastic digital snapper, and it seemed that every time he attended a big game he was abusing the press room wifi connection to treat his Twitter followers to extensive views of the stadium and his personal broadcasting position.

Hence pictures such as this, showing you just what a commentator sees during the game:

(click any of the photos above for the full size version)

Then there were the pack shots of our entire team for the big games – this was just prior to the now infamous England v Algeria game.

When not in the stadium, our guys were broadcasting back at what became known as “The Lodge”, the sprawling Johannasburg guest house where our team were based for the duration of the tournament:

Why they felt the need to share Adrian Durham in a pair of shorts I wasn’t really all that sure.

As a kind of reaction to this, I amused myself during the other games by constructing my own travelogue of our experiences back in the studios.

	This was the thrill of the activity in the control room, taken on the evening of the first Saturday during England v USA. As you can see, producing the actual football matches involves a great deal of craning one’s neck to see the screens hung from the ceiling and waiting for things to go wrong.
The mountain of sponsored features that had to be worked through for every game included a vast sheet of in-game reads and I felt that these too should be preserved for posterity.
	…and this was the main on air studio sitting empty and folorn for a large portion of the time. A major overseas event such as the World Cup meant that the usual broadcasting facilities were almost underused at times. On many of the earlier days in the competition we were on air from South Africa from 10am right the way through until 11pm. I was almost shocked people didn’t start having meetings in Studio One just to make use of the office space.

Of all the media that was sent back from the remote base however, I think this one was my favourite. Join Alvin Martin for a guided tour of the Lodge, and a chance to see not only how the other half lives but also just what kind of state Moose keeps his bedroom in. Ugh.