World Cup 1998 – a familiar story

The Spanish referee blew his whistle on a warm Parisian afternoon and the 1998 World Cup was under way. It was no surprise that Brazil – the defending champions and four-time winners – were involved in the tournament’s opening match, but, thrillingly, their opponents on this great sporting occasion were … Scotland!

Standing on the TV gantry in Paris’s Stade de France that famous afternoon, I breathed a sigh of relief. The two-hour build-up to the kick-off had gone well, even though I had been dealt a major shock earlier in the programme. As planned, I had thanked my guests Ally McCoist, Gordon Smith and Willie Miller and handed over to Barry Davies, the BBC network’s commentator for the Opening Ceremony. But as the introductory music blared out in the stadium, there was only silence on the BBC Scotland feed. For reasons I never discovered, Barry’s commentary was going to the rest of the UK, but not to the huge audience back in Scotland waiting for one of the great occasions in our football history.

Panic immediately broke out in the BBC Scotland Control Truck outside the stadium, as plugs and circuits between Paris and Glasgow were checked, but eventually, I got the apologetic instruction in my earpiece: ‘Dougie – you’re going to have to commentate.’

I was only too aware from previous Olympic and World Cup Opening Ceremonies that those huge extravaganzas featured a cast of hundreds amid music, drama, lots of obscure symbolism and proud tributes to the host nation’s culture.

The commentator would have spent days preparing an explanatory script to interpret it all to an often-baffled audience, and would certainly have watched the full-scale rehearsal in the stadium the day before. I had nothing. And not a clue as to what was already unfolding in front of me. The French, after all, love their impressionists.

Thankfully, I did have – somewhere in the bottom of the bag lying at my feet – the thick wad of bilingual explanations which was the running order for the Ceremony. For some reason I had picked it up as I left the Broadcast Centre hours before, not thinking for a moment that I would need it. I was much more interested in Craig Brown’s team selection and any tricky Brazilian pronunciations.

Now that creased and dog-eared sheaf of notes was a lifesaver. As I fumbled for the right page thinking: Come on, Dougie – we need words, I tried to reassure myself with the old adage less is more along with only speak when you can add to the pictures – an old-fashioned concept now, it seems, in these days of wall-to-wall words from the commentary box.

Somehow, I got through it, the words just about making sense, if lacking the polished articulacy which I’m sure Barry gave to the network commentary. Then, and with only the briefest word of acknowledgement from the production team, we were straight into the last 20 minutes of the build-up to Scotland v Brazil.

And bizarrely, after the initial panic, I actually enjoyed it all. Unscripted, seat-of-the-pants broadcasting, with no autocue, no meaningful running order and no idea what you might have to suddenly describe.

Live television is what I do – almost all the TV I have presented in my long career has been live – and I love it.

I have never felt the same buzz on the occasions I have had to write a script and read it from an autocue. Even worse if it’s recorded. When you know you can have another shot at it, the brain immediately goes into ‘retake’ mode.

I wish I could say that once I was back on familiar big match ground with Ally, Gordon and Willie, there was a happy ending to one of the most memorable days in my broadcasting career. But this, of course, is Scotland in the World Cup.

Then, as now, the BBC and ITV tossed a coin for the live coverage of matches in the World Cup. Luckily, my long-time employers at the BBC had won the right to show the big one – Brazil in the opening match – together with our final game in the group against Morocco. Those were the two games you wanted, obviously, with ITV showing the second match against Norway.

Fortunately, our bosses at BBC Scotland recognised that the Scottish audience would want to hear from their own, familiar, commentary team rather than our network colleagues. So, although Des Lynam, Gary Lineker, Alan Hansen and co were alongside us on the Stade de France gantry, BBC Scotland were able to mount our own production from France.

That hadn’t always been the case, of course. I remember not long before in the years when the annual Scotland-England match was played at Hampden, the network production and commentary team would move in en bloc to show their country cousins how it was done. That didn’t go down well with the BBC Scotland Sports team, as you can imagine.

Happily, BBC politics had moved on a little from those days by the time I began my career.

Broadcasting exclusively to a Scottish audience at World Cup 98 also allowed us to be a little – well, a lot – less than impartial in our coverage of Craig Brown’s team. That was absolutely right – unlike the World Cup in Italy eight years before, my first as a member of the BBC Network team. I was quietly taken aside by the producer and told that I couldn’t refer to the Scotland team as ‘we’ or ‘us’, as I had been happily doing in my first few reports from the Scotland camp.

BBC impartiality was all important – or, to put it another way, Know your audience. Not everyone in Milton Keynes is a Scotland fan.

Scotland, as you won’t need reminding, played our all too familiar role of gallant losers against Brazil in Paris, going behind to the World Champions after just five minutes before equalising through a John Collins penalty. A bizarre and freakishly unlucky own goal by Tom Boyd with 15 minutes left saw us beaten 2-1 by Ronaldo and co. After recording the highlights show that evening, we needed a night out to drown our sorrows before I flew home for 10 days or so. Our highlights programme featuring Scotland’s second match against Norway in Bordeaux left us clinging to the well-worn We can still make it – really line after Craig Burley’s equaliser earned us a 1-1 draw. Brazil beat Morocco 3-0 to clinch their expected qualification.

Then it was back to France for the vital final tie against Morocco, who had only ever won once before in the World Cup – against Portugal in Mexico in 1986. To be fair, they had added two draws to top the group ahead of England! So, they at least had qualified for the second stage of a World Cup – something, we hardly needed reminding, that Scotland had never done.

There was to be no happy ending in Saint-Étienne. Scotland crashed to a 3–0 defeat and were once again heading home before the postcards had arrived. My memory of the game is dim, thankfully. I was only too used to trying to find the words to describe another huge World Cup disappointment for the huge audience (1.9 million viewers) back home.

Actually, I have far more vivid memories of the preview programme Gordon, Willie and I had done the night before.

Place de Marengo is an attractive tree-lined square in the small town of Roanne, an hour or so north of Saint-Étienne, which had been chosen as the production and commentary team’s base for what would prove to be Scotland’s final contribution to World Cup 98.

When the advance BBC party had been on their site visit a few months before, our producer spotted that this attractive square also had a lovely, old-fashioned bandstand in its centre. Showing the imagination for which BBC producers are of course renowned, the bandstand was quickly identified as the ideal location for our live preview programme the night before the Morocco match.

Permissions were sought, bookings made, and after a swift visit to the Scotland training session in Saint-Étienne, the BBC team arrived at what we had been assured was the perfect setting for our programme. ‘Very French, lads – you’ll love it!’

What the town officials hadn’t sent along with their invoice was the news that a large screen TV had been set up in the square to allow the locals to watch the Romania–England game being played that night in Toulouse. No great problem, we thought. This will provide a bit of atmosphere for the programme, which was due on air shortly after the final whistle. What we hadn’t anticipated was the several hundred-strong battalion of the Tartan Army who had also made their World Cup base in Roanne and were now enjoying the England match, along with a few beers, as they encouraged the locals to become Romania fans for the night.

As Gordon, Willie and I ran through what is laughingly known as the rehearsal for a live sports show, the big screen behind us was showing England going down to a 2-1 defeat, to the noisy delight of the Tartan Army!

I remember Willie saying, ‘Ah well, at least they’ll be in a good mood if they notice us over in the corner.’ Oh, they were in a...