Diary of a Sky Sports Soccer Saturday Reporter

Macclesfield 1 Oxford 1.

No reports for me on Soccer Saturday as the timing of the two goals coincided with more important goals going in elsewhere.

Did it bother me that I didn’t get on air? The honest answer is not really. I know that even if no-one hears me, I’ve still put in a good shift. I doubt the same could be said by the tannoy announcer at Moss Rose, who just loved the sound of his own voice. I’ve never met the bloke and I’m sure he’s probably a nice guy, but he just talked and talked and talked. So much so, that when the first half kicked off I wondered how he was going to cope if it was scoreless and there were no substitutions up to the interval. He would have to stay silent for 45 full minutes!

But then it happened, after 20 minutes… not a goal, not a substitution, but… ‘can the owner of the Skoda car registration number xxx please return to your vehicle, it’s parked illegally and needs moving’. You could hear the relief in the poor lad’s voice!!! But could he last the remaining 25 minutes with nothing to say? Of course not. A second reminder blasted out quarter of an hour later, advising the owner of the vehicle that if he didn’t move his car it would be clamped.

And then, at half time, it dawned on me what was going on… it just had to be… it was his Skoda, wasn’t it?!!!!