The World Out There

By: Rob Sedgwick
Date: 12/08/2009

IT was good to hear the commentary the other night back on Radio Humberside, even if Mariners' World did conk out after a few minutes (not Humbs' fault I presume).

The two organisations need each other. The BBC cannot pretend to give their normal coverage if they are denied access to one of the three football teams in their patch. Likewise the club need the publicity which the only major media outlet in the area which is accessible to every man woman and child in the county can provide.

It's just a pity Mariners World cannot be relied upon to work. If I'm not at the game I have to know what's going on, and there's nothing more frustrating than not being in touch with what's happening. Still the away commentary normal is available and doesn't seem to suffer from the same technical problems which regularly beset the output from Blundell Park. For someone who was brought up on Teletext and a few seconds of snatched commentary on a premium rate phone line, anything is an improvement on those dark days. The best way of course to know what's happening is to be at the game, and that's unlikely to change for a long time, but it would take a lot for me not to pay for Mariners World for the occasions when I can't be there.

Besides the obvious benefits of commentary and interviews another feature I take advantage of on Mariners World is the ability to listen to other games involving League Two clubs, invariably when I've bet on the game or it's near the end of the season and other clubs' results are almost as important as our own. As I've typed this sentence Forest have scored their third goal against Bradford in a match I've been following on Mariners World (I bet on a City win sadly). It also provides an invaluable insight into what's going on at a club I would otherwise know nothing about as the commentators are obviously experts in their own teams, and let drop all sorts of useful snippets of information which I can use when either writing about that team or thinking about placing bets in a future game. Even in these days of seemingly blanket television coverage, only a tiny fraction of games are televised, so this for me is a really handy service that Mariners World provides - and most of it ultimately originates in the BBC, whose product in whatever form it takes is invariably of a very high standard.