Covering Chelsea's keeper injury drama
The events at Reading on Saturday reminded us all of the importance of keeping football in perspective. First and foremost, horrific though the injuries sustained by the two goalkeepers were, it's a huge relief to see that both appear to be on the road to recovery.
, but the initial reports on Saturday were more frightening still. Miraculously, despite a blow and fall reminscent of a boxer walking onto a haymaker, Carlo Cudicini appears set to return next Saturday.
As a result Saturday's Match Of The Day was one of our more subdued programmes, particularly since we had little more information about the welfare of the two players as we went on the air.
We led the programme with that game, and relaxed our normal rules about the preceding news bulletin having access to the action. The story had clearly moved onto the news agenda during the course of the evening.
In purely logistical terms, we have to decide the durations of match edits at around five o'clock and keep a certain amount of time aside for the 1715 kick-off. This then tends to be edited as a "running edit" with incidents added as the game is in progress. With eight games to juggle, I'd allocated around nine minutes for the Reading game. In the end it was something like 11 minutes plus the best part of two minutes to cover the post-match interview with Jose Mourinho, and Steve Coppell's response.
Given the seriousness of what had happened, we watched the interviews as they came in and checked the package pretty much as soon as it had been edited. This was not the usual case of asking the producer to hit a certain duration; what mattered was that we told the story fully and in a balanced fashion, with everything covered and both sides given room to express their version of events. Which messrs and Coppell certainly did.
Assuming there are no legal implications, the pundits are always given free rein to express their honest opinion. Sometimes, as with , they see an incident in black and white terms, demanding immediate action from the authorities. This was felt to be altogether less clear cut. We analysed both injuries separately, wished the two injured players well, then moved on. It seemed trite to analyse anything else about the game in the circumstances.
All of this meant that we were well over duration, something that usually only happens on a fast turnaround Wednesday night show, and the only easy way to claw the time back during a live show is to cut some of the later chat.
So I'm afraid we probably didn't do full justice to , or the two penalty claims they had. Nor did we expand much on the two pundits' view that Liverpool now have too much ground to make up to win the Premiership.
Of course our minor tribulations are as nothing compared to what happened to the two keepers on the pitch. We all wish them both a speedy recovery, and hope for an enjoyable European midweek, followed by an injury-free Premiership fest this coming weekend.
