Commentators Reflect on Championship Manager’s Influence on Their Work

In the newest installment of the BBC Sounds podcast, “The Commentators’ View,” BBC Radio 5 Live’s Ian Dennis and Conor McNamara discuss how computer games can impact their commentary. Dennis recounted an occasion while working at BBC Radio Leeds when the popular computer game Championship Manager assisted him in commentating on a match between Tottenham and Leeds United. Dennis stated, “It was Mark Chapman who got me into Championship Manager/Football Manager when I lived with him in the late 1990s.” He continued, “I remember doing a game with Norman Hunter when I was at Radio Leeds, and it was Tottenham against Leeds United at White Hart Lane.” Dennis further explained the match scenario: “Tottenham needed to try and get a goal late on, and they brought on Gary Doherty, – a big central defender, ginger hair, Irish, but he also had the ability to play up front as well.” He highlighted the utility of his game knowledge: “So Norman was saying, ‘I don’t understand this’, but because I’d been playing Championship Manager I could say, ‘Well actually…’. “At that point he was a utility player, he could play both at the back and up front, so I knew he was going to go up front.” Conversely, fellow commentator McNamara revealed that the Ireland international player was a contributing factor in his decision to “give up playing that game.” McNamara elaborated on his rationale: “I stopped playing Championship Manager when I started working as a commentator,” he said, “because in the game, Gary Doherty could sign for Sunderland and be a really prominent player, and in your head you think, ‘he played for Sunderland, he scored loads of goals for Sunderland’.” He concluded, “That distorted reality! I had to shut that out of my life and concentrate on the actual real world!”