LIKE a baggy old sweater, there's a comforting sense of the common-place about STV's coverage of the glittering football occasions which patches over the odd loose thread. With Archie MacPherson behind the microphone, Andy Walker acting as host in the studio and Terry Butcher and Stuart McCall, the former Rangers favourites, delivering enthusiastic support, everything was as familiar about last night's Uefa Cup bonanza as hearing a favourite song on the radio.
With much talk beforehand about an opportunity waiting in Manchester for a group of Rangers players to become Ibrox legends – an opportunity thwarted by the speed and skill of Zenit St Petersburg – it must also have occurred to the powers-that-be at
STV that this was a chance for them to reach for the stars. As well as sticking to the tried and tested, they sprinkled a handful of fairydust on the production.
It was clever, for example, to use a quintessential Manchester song, Oasis' Wonderwall in a version by Ryan Adams, as the soundtrack to pictures of how Rangers reached the final. Sir Alex Ferguson spoke engagingly about his old friend Walter Smith and there was black and white video footage of the club's Barcelona triumph. If coverage of Scottish football often looks bargain basement, this was High Street chic.
The only cheap note came when STV could not resist endless plugs for one of their tawdry telephone competitions to win a signed shirt.
More than 40 years after travelling to Lisbon as back-up for Kenneth Wolstenholme when the BBC covered the European Cup final between Celtic and Inter in Lisbon (the corporation left Archie on the bench that day), MacPherson brought his enduring tones of experience and enthusiasm to describe what was a fever pitch occasion. Archie, who also commentated on the European Cup-Winners' Cup win in Barcelona in 1972, confessed his nerves were jangling and the stadium was shaking.
After such a comprehensive preview, the game itself burned on a long fuse. It made for edgy viewing in the early stages as Andrei Arshavin took advantage of a mistake by Brahim Hemdani in midfield by showing the rest a clean pair of heels. Analyst Fraser Wishart, a former full-back himself, rightly praised the Zenit defence for a magnificent block which prevented Rangers captain Barry Ferguson getting on the end of Jean-Claude Darcheville's cut-back. But the rest of the half turned into a stalemate of Zenit probing and Rangers smothering. John Colquhoun was quick to exonerate Kirk Broadfoot for an accidental handball before half-time.
The Russians also took an inadvertent hand in the proceedings in the second half after Davis fed Darcheville and Ferguson pounced on the loose ball. There was no spot-kick, but Wishart admired the way Rangers had upped the tempo. Sasa Papac's goal-line clearance also earned praise as the final became more fluent.
Open play, though, suited Zenit and they cut open the Rangers defence 17 minutes from the end to score a superb goal after Igor Denisov worked a one-two with Arshavin. Rangers threw on attackers and Zenit picked them off with a late second. The cup was bound for Russia.
For the keen armchair viewer, a night of marathon viewing began much earlier. The five thirty show broke the news Ibrox was already jammed to the rafters with 28,000 fans who chose to watch the game on the world's largest video screen. As sunshine beamed down on Govan, Rangers supporters not already in situ were advised to keep viewing at home.
Scotland Today, hosted as always by the reliable anchor, John MacKay, in a striped blue tie, was broadcast live from Manchester where the city expected to make £25million from staging the final. The 'news' was of clear blue skies across the UK and true blue fever around the world. During the 30-minute programme, no other Scottish story was deemed worthy of mention.
A policeman praised good behaviour from most of the 100,000 fans. And John told us a worldwide audience of half a billion would tune into the match before highlighting STV as the only place to watch the game in Scotland. There was also a good luck message from Gordon Strachan, the Celtic manager, and confirmation from inside the stadium of Rangers' 4-2-3-1 formation with Steven Whittaker preferred to either Lee McCulloch or Nacho Novo.
Although BBC Scotland, who covered Rangers' early progress in the competition, missed out on live coverage of the final, that did not prevent Reporting Scotland from also decamping to Manchester for another dose of wall-to-wall scene setting. Unlike John, who reported from inside the City of Manchester Stadium, Jackie Bird spoke to camera from outside the ground and revealed only six fans had been arrested for minor offences. There were also interviews with a blind Rangers supporter, a newlywed who deserted his wife on honeymoon in Jersey – "I was devastated to leave her, but I had to come" – and a couple who travelled from Canada.
Back in Glasgow, there were girls revising for Higher English exams in the queues waiting to get into Ibrox and a story about Celtic supporters working extra shifts to allow their Rangers colleagues time off work to travel south.
Unlike STV, the BBC decided there were other stories in Scotland yesterday with a political joust in the parliament over Stirling becoming Scotland's University of Sport enjoying a mention. But there were only a few minutes of this diversion before it was back to Manchester, helicopter pictures of the Rangers hordes and what Jackie described as scenes of "celebration".
Two-and-a-half hours later, though, it was pictures of the Zenit faithful celebrating their first European success, and the tears of the Rangers support, which turned out to be the defining images of this colourful final.
The full article contains 990 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
