Gary Taphouse – Behind the Mic
Gary Taphouse is an experienced football commentator for Sky Sports and other broadcasters. If you have watched football on television over past twenty years then you will have undoubtedly heard Gary’s voice at some point. If you follow Gary on social media, you will know that he constantly promotes work opportunities in the industry to help people who are making their way in the football media world.
Before talking about his own career, I asked Gary about his promotion of opportunities in the industry and why it is important to him.
“It is something I am really, really passionate about. Having been in that position and having been ignored, that was actually worse than being rejected. That is rife in our industry, I’m afraid. I was determined that if people got in touch with me, I may not be able to help them in the way they want, but I was never going to ignore someone. It started after I did a lecture at a University about commentary. A couple of days later I noticed that Sky Sports were looking for a junior reporter. I thought, wow, that would be interesting for the guys I had literally just spoken to.”
Huge following
“So, I posted it on my Twitter feed and it went crazy. I was then getting messages from other people saying, can you post our job as well? And before I knew it, I was literally posting ten a day. Suddenly, I started getting this huge following from people in the industry that wanted to know about all these opportunities. Some quite canny employers were messaging me privately, realising that they didn’t have to spend a fortune on advertising. I had a captive audience of graduates and people in the industry who would fill the bill perfectly.
That was 2014 and I have been doing it ever since. At the moment, I think I average about 100 messages a month from various people asking for bits of help. I will do everything I can to try and help. I think everyone in the industry has a responsibility to do their bit because it is so tough and competitive. The opportunities are limited, even though there are more commentators and reporters needed now. It is a big passion of mine. I do a lot of mentoring as well, working with the John Schofield Trust, which is a brilliant charity. I can always do more. It is very rewarding when you see someone who has approached you flourishing in the industry, that is a great feeling.”
Early years
Gary knew from a young age that football commentary was something that he wanted to do. He recalled his early years of listening to games and realising that it was a potential career.
“The 1990 World Cup was the first tournament where I was just obsessed and watched every game. That was a proper obsession. It was the first time where I had really taken note of the commentators as much as the action. I was listening to Barry Davis, John Motson and Brian Moore. I remember saying to my dad, ‘is this their job, are they getting paid to commentate on the match’? It was unbelievable to me that was something you could do for a living. At that time, my dad was a milkman. He worked so hard and he was getting up so early. I thought the idea of just travelling around the world and commentating on football was so appealing in comparison. I never thought in a million years that it was something I could ever do.”
Voracious listener
“I was a voracious listener of football, on the radio especially. I’d went to university but there were no sports journalism courses back then. I ended up at Bournemouth University doing multimedia journalism. That didn’t have any sport element to it at all. I did try to crowbar in football as much as possible to my various tasks and dissertations. Where the commentating began for me was with AFC Bournemouth and a local production company called Hallmark Productions. They got the contract from the club to film their home matches and wanted someone to commentate on the matches. I happened to overhear their cameraman, who was dating one of the girls I lived with, talking about this. So, I just rushed in and said it was something I really want to do.
That is where it all kicked off. I ended up climbing up the rusty ladder at Dean Court for a match against Bristol Rovers. That would have been 1996. I ended up commentating on every Bournemouth home game that season but I wasn’t getting paid for it. The club wanted an end of season video to sell in the club shop and it also was for sale in HMV Bournemouth. That was a huge thrill. I had written the whole thing, presented it and helped with the editing. To be honest with you, that end of season VHS, which had my voice all over it was probably more valuable to me than my actual degree, because it was tangible proof that I could do the job.”
Sky Sports
Gary’s valuable VHS tape was just the start of his broadcasting career as he made his way from a desk at his local newspaper to the commentary box for Sky Sports.
“I thought I was going to walk straight into a job in sport but it was still a hugely competitive industry back then. I ended up taking a job as a news reporter on my local paper in South London. Actually, I was very good at reporting, but it wasn’t a passion of mine. I had been working there maybe two or three weeks when a fax came in, because back in those days there was no email.
It was from Crystal Palace Football Club and they were launching Palace Radio at Selhurst Park. Palace had just been promoted back to the Premier League and they were launching this radio station on match days from 10 in the morning, right through till 7 at night. I listened to the first game and the guy that was commentating was a fan, but he had a little bit of a boring voice if I am being brutally honest. I told the guy running the show what I did for Bournemouth that I thought I could do a really good job of doing some commentaries, if he was interested.”
A bit sceptical
“He was a bit sceptical but he said, “Okay, come along to the next game and you can share the commentary with this guy we’re using at the moment.” That game was Palace against Chelsea. It went okay, I had to learn lessons very quickly and I ended up doing that for free whilst reporting for money on the newspaper in the week.
That funded my passion at the weekend and I did that for a couple of years and what that led on to was meeting other people at the game. Our little commentary position was right next to where Capital Radio were reporting from, so I got to know all the people from Capitol and I would introduce myself and say I was really interested in climbing the greasy pole, as it were. Eventually, I was given the opportunity to cover a game as a reporter for Capital Gold after about two years of grafting.”
A long road
“Once I started working for Capital Gold I felt like I was moving in the right direction. After a few years of that, I had enough experience to finally get a job working full-time in broadcasting. I was about 25 by the time I had worked enough to be taken seriously. So, it was quite a long road to get to anywhere like where I wanted to be. It was such a thrill to finally be earning a full-time wage commentating on football at last.
I was covering every Chelsea game and we were going off all around Europe in the Champions League. It was the period where a Abramovich had bought Chelsea and Mourinho was there. I got to know the people from Sky Sports and I eventually got one of them to persuade the producer to give me a go and that is how I got onto TV. That would have been the end of the 2004/05 season. I was 29 years old when I did my first TV commentary so that is how long it took from university all the way through and I am still doing that now after 20 years.”
Memorable matches
Over 20 years of commentary, Gary has covered an incredible number of matches. To end our chat, I asked him if any matches stood out as being particularly memorable over his two decades in the game.
“I think the best way to answer that is there are certain moments that I am asked about a lot. One of the first Sky commentaries I did was Portsmouth against Reading, which I think was tipped to be the least important game of that day. It ended up being 7-4, which is still the highest scoring game ever in the Premier League. I get asked a lot about the Pape Cisse goal at Stamford Bridge for Newcastle, he scored two brilliant goals in that game and I interviewed both him and Demba Bar together afterwards. The Dele Alli goal for Tottenham at Crystal Palace which really saw him burst onto the scene. I was at that game with Ray Houghton and I get asked about that an awful lot. There are definitely a few I get asked about but they are the ones that come immediately to mind.”
Ronaldinho
“Another memorable one was Tottenham against Wigan, that was 9-1. It was 1-0 to Tottenham at half-time and Tottenham scored eight goals in the second half, Jermaine Defoe scored five. That is another one that still gets played a lot on Sky. It was a long time ago now. If I go back to my radio days there was Chelsea against Barcelona in the Champions League, which was one of the all-time great Champions League games when Ronaldinho scored that famous goal. That always comes to mind. Every season, I probably do about 130 games and if I am brutally honest, probably only about half a dozen will be memorable.”