Sam Matterface’s love of football commentary came from the back seat of his father’s car. Driving across London every Saturday in the 1980s to visit family, Pete Matterface’s soundtrack would be Capital Radio’s sports coverage.
Matterface would also go with his dad for his weekend work as a painter and decorator. The radio would be on there, too.
‘These were some of my first voices,’ says Matterface. ‘Obviously I watched TV so I had John (Motson), Barry (Davies) and Brian Moore. But it was Jonathan Pearce on the radio for me. And maybe, on the BBC, Bryan Butler, Mike Ingham, Alan Green. Those voices inspired me. I think radio is fantastic and always have. It takes you away somewhere. And more importantly, my dad thought that too.’
Matterface – talkSPORT’s lead commentator and the voice of ITV’s England World Cup coverage this summer – lost his father last month at the age of 74. Driving his nine-year-old son Herbie home from tennis club one Friday night, he got the call we all dread.
‘It was Mum,’ reveals Matterface. ‘And I could tell straight away from her tone of voice. Dad was driving out of Lingfield races and had a massive heart attack.
‘They did their very best. It was a public place. Congested. Hard to get an ambulance in, far from a specialist unit. I drive down to the Royal Sussex. They tried to get us in to see him but couldn’t. He died about two o’clock in the morning.’
Driving his nine-year-old son Herbie home from tennis club one Friday night, Sam Matterface got the call we all dread
Matterface (left) with his dad. ‘I think radio is fantastic and always have,’ he says. ‘It takes you away somewhere. And more importantly, my dad thought that too’
Sitting across the lunch table at an Italian restaurant near his home in south Manchester, I ask Matterface a very simple question. How are you?
‘The truth is I don’t really know,’ he says after a pause. ‘OK… I think. They talk about the seven stages of grief and I think acceptance is one of them. Well I don’t think I am there, yet, really. I may be in that sort of situation where you think you’re fine but underneath you are not. I guess we will find out.’
Our two hours together covers much ground. Football and work and family and grief and the strange and confusing places it takes you. Matterface’s father – ‘Little Pete’ as he was nicknamed by talkSPORT’s Alan Brazil – died on a Saturday morning and his son was back at work a few days later. It felt right at the time.
‘Dad would have wanted that,’ he says, ‘I went to Spain for TNT for that amazing Real game with Bayern. I was with Steve McManaman and Steven Gerrard and they looked after me.
‘I try not to obsess about the whole thing but then something does trigger me and it becomes rather tricky, especially if I am on air. I still think he will be listening and then realise he isn’t. It leaves you feel a bit little bit… hollow? Deflated? Something like that.
‘It’s all happened so quickly and I can’t really get my head round it because he is why I am sitting here. Deep down we all want to make our parents proud don’t we? And I think if you drill down and analyse it, probably the reason that I do this job is because I thought he would like it.’
Matterface told talkSPORT listeners of his father’s death on air. The response from within football humbled him. He doesn’t wish to name the players and managers who reached out for fear of forgetting someone.
‘It means everything to me,’ he says. ‘Our producer printed out all of the messages from listeners. They were lovely. I am so grateful.’
Matterface told talkSPORT listeners of his father’s death on air. The response from within football humbled him
After our lunch, he is off to Manchester City versus Crystal Palace, commentary game number 140 of a season that will not end until the World Cup final on July 19. That morning, he had done four hours of preparation for the game at the Etihad.
‘I like the reading and the research,’ he says. ‘I am a nerd.’
Matterface, 48, doesn’t commentate like a nerd. His is a style shot through with freedom and joy. Chosen by ITV as Clive Tyldesley’s replacement on England games six years ago, the call was a big one but the truth is that Matterface has great respect for the art and its traditions.
He talks for five minutes about the genius of the BBC’s racing commentator John Hunt. ‘I just couldn’t do that,’ he says.
Subsequently he marvels at the thought of 1970 World Cup commentators working off tiny monitors with their voices sounding like they were ‘coming down crackly telephone wires’.
‘We have a bit more back-up now,’ he smiles. ‘But there is definitely a massive responsibility with England, you’ve got to take care of it. That comes from my old man, too. Do it properly.
‘I’ll do the FA Cup final on Saturday and will do even more work for that because the FA Cup final should be treated with reverence. And the bottom line is that you can’t cheat the audience. If you aren’t ready, they will know.’
Tyldesley didn’t take the change in the order that well back in 2020 but Matterface offers fresh insight now.
Chosen by ITV as Clive Tyldesley’s replacement on England games six years ago, Matterface has great respect for the art and its traditions
‘I’ll do the FA Cup final on Saturday and will do even more work for that because the FA Cup final should be treated with reverence’
‘When I was coming through Clive once listened through one of my early TV commentaries for me,’ he explains. ‘He gave me a report. Three pages of A4. It was the best feedback I’ve ever had.
‘Ever since then, I’ve used a lot of that structure to help me. He has also been in touch in recent times. We are good. He is a fabulous commentator.’
Matterface’s England debut was a game against Wales at Wembley behind closed doors in 2020. With Covid restrictions in place, he spent the previous seven days isolating in a hotel opposite the stadium.
‘I drove a microwave down in the car,’ he smiles. ‘Seven days of pre-prepared meals in my room, I just couldn’t take a risk. Maybe I am a bit more relaxed now. I think a room service burger would be OK…
‘It takes a while to get comfortable, whatever you do, doesn’t it? I used to get crippling nerves as a match reporter for Capital in the ‘90s. To the point where I was almost unable to do it.
‘Jonathan Pearce throws it to you and you’ve got 15 seconds to say your piece. I was scared. Even talking about it now my heart is beating out of my chest, and I think for the first England games, I was very, very nervous. But I’ve tried to taper that down because it wasn’t helping anybody.’
Not everybody has been thrilled by Matterface’s gradual elevation. I note that he hasn’t posted on Twitter since Euro 2024. At times the ‘feedback’ was a little much.
‘I haven’t missed it and I don’t need it,’ he says firmly. ‘You just have to keep going, do your job and try and be positive. Concentrate on your lane. If you’re going into 25 million people’s homes, one per cent are going to be upset because you said something they didn’t agree with. It’s just life.
‘If you’re going into 25 million people’s homes, one per cent are going to be upset because you said something they didn’t agree with’
‘My experiences are that I go to football and meet people and they are very, very nice. I go to the pub and someone will come over and be nice. To me, that’s more real.
‘I would never say controversial stuff on purpose. All I want to do is be part of something that we all enjoy, an England success. And as I found out recently, there really are more important things to worry about.’
Matterface’s perspective comes not only from recent events but also from a long road travelled from hospital radio as a teenager through stints at Radio Kent and beyond.
‘I was such a saddo that I wrote to every radio station and one replied,’ he says. ‘I did find the date of my first game the other day. It was 25 years ago. February 3, 2001, my granddad’s birthday.
‘Stevenage 2, Margate 1. I think it went OK. I got the goalscorers’ names right anyway.’
He is a cancer survivor, too. His testicular cancer was discovered after he covered John Hartson’s fight against the disease for Sky Sports in 2009. He throws both light and shade at this particular story.
‘I was scared witless waiting for the op,’ he smiles. ‘And the doctor says: “I’m gonna get a marker out. You’ve got two b***s and we don’t want to take the wrong one out.” So he gets this massive sharpie out and starts drawing on my leg. I went: “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you doing? It’s the other one.”
‘And he looked at his notes and went: “Oh, you’re right.”
Matterface’s perspective comes not only from recent events but also from a long road travelled from hospital radio as a teenager through stints at Radio Kent and beyond
‘I have had my children since then. That may have been tricky. It’s a personal story, that one. But I don’t mind because the messaging is obviously so important. It’s a treatable cancer but you have to catch it early. I did but I had to force it. They wouldn’t let me have a scan because they didn’t think there was a problem. I insisted and went back.
‘The doctor rang me and said: “You definitely haven’t got testicular cancer. Do you know how many patients I see every year and how many people are diagnosed with this?” And of course I did have it. It was only when I threatened to go for a private scan that she sent me. It’s a real worry.’
Having cried every time he practised his dad’s funeral eulogy, Matterface made it through without tears on the day.
‘I felt a responsibility to do it well,’ he says now. ‘I had this big thing about that.’
I ask him, simply, what his dad was like. ‘You know, I focus on a very specific period of our lives,’ he says. ‘My parents split up when I was 16 and I stayed with my dad. My brother did as well. So our house was a boy’s house. We didn’t have a dining table, we had a pool table. It was great. It was so good. And I felt secure and safe. That’s how he always made me feel.
‘We went to Chelsea sometimes. It was actually 39 years ago last weekend that we went to our first game. It was Liverpool 3, Chelsea 3. I always think your first game’s really important, isn’t it? Whether it bores you or whether you stick with it. For me it was just absolutely b****y brilliant.
‘It was weird because we had stopped doing Christmas presents but this last one he gave me one. It was an old Trevor Sinclair Chelsea shirt of mine he had found up the loft. The numbers are died pink! He must have washed it wrong! But it’s going up in my house now.’
Ever since he was 13 or 14, Matterface had an idea where he may be heading. Now he’s having to walk a bit of the track on his own.
Ever since he was 13 or 14, Matterface had an idea where he may be heading. Now he’s having to walk a bit of the track on his own
We talk a little about loss and it how it feels and how it’s not always how we expect. We swap stories of our fathers. Mine, now 87, putting together tournament scrapbooks of my cuttings and pointing out punctuation errors. His offering a similarly gentle and occasional critique. It is common ground and easily found.
‘He talked to me about it all the time,’ smiles Matterface. ‘He just always had it on in the background. I trusted his judgment. It wasn’t very often but he may say to me: “Do you think that was right?” Or it would be: “Did you mean to say that?”
‘He would never, ever say something was brilliant or fantastic. It was never overpraised. Just every now and again. And that would probably mean more. And it’s just because I’d spent so much time with him listening to it. That’s how it all started. In the car. At work.
‘The whole thing just reminds me of him. It always will. He was only 74 and it feels a bit early to me. I think it’s OK for me to feel that.’
