The Perfect Punter Week 27: What if I'm just a bad punter?

Premier League / Perfect Punter / 10 February 2010 / Leave a Comment

"But maybe I need to take into account something that I can’t change. Maybe the ability that I have to talk the hind legs off anything, and banter until daybreak, is counterbalanced my basic inability to punt."

Dave Farrar is all of a sudden filled with uncertainty and self-doubt and begins to wonder if it just wasn't meant to be...

Earlier on this year, when I was doing my other job of commentating on football, I worked with a new summariser. I'm not going to name him, but he's someone who had a very good career with a top flight club, and is also a person who happens to analyse football matches exceptionally well. Normally, when you work with a new co-commentator, you make an effort to bond with them, find some common ground, even discover a weak spot about which you can have a laugh on air.

Essentially, it's a fake relationship which lasts for ninety minutes, and it's our job to sustain that for the benefit of the listener or viewer. So far, so easy. Until the new summariser said to me: "I should let you know Dave, that I can't do banter." Obviously, this caused a double take, and I asked him to clarify what he meant. "Well, I know that a lot of commentators like to do a few jokes, have a bit of fun, that sort of thing, well, I can't do it."

My initial reaction was that I was being wound up, and that this guy was SO good at banter that he was going to make mincemeat of me if I fell for it, so I smiled and nodded and said fine, and then about half an hour into the game I tried a weak, fairly obvious line that all of you must have heard a million times. A striker tapped in from two yards out, we analysed the goal, and then, brilliant incisive wit that I am, I said: "Two yards, eh, that was your sort of range wasn't it?" To which he replied, without a word of a lie: "Well, Dave, I did get a couple of thirty yarders in my career, but no, I never scored from two yards." It was going to be a long night.

After the next sixty minutes of deadly serious analysis had gone by, I thought about how hard it must be to have played football for twenty years and not been able to banter. Dressing rooms would have felt like sitting in the front row of endless stand up shows, always able to smile weakly at the jokes, but never to actually respond. Did it bother him? How did he survive? I'd have asked him if I'd thought that he had the wit to answer me. And then I wondered how it could be possible to be exposed on a daily basis to banter, and not get better at it. Wouldn't you pick up a line or two, learn how best to react, at least get into a habit? Clearly not.

And then I thought about a friend of mine who said to me last week that maybe the reason for the poor couple of months that he's had on the horses isn't because of luck, or failure to put up a lay in running, or poor research, but simply because he's a bad punter. "That could be it," he said: "I could just be terrible at punting." Given that this column is supposed to result in me turning myself from a poor to average gambler into a good one, the idea that you can just be unalterably bad at punting sends a chill through me.

Surely, as Malcolm Gladwell would attest, if we practice then we'll get better at it. But if practice made you better then my summariser would have developed at least a working knowledge of playground knockabout, and if he can't come up with one liners then maybe, after years of doing good and bad things, I can't punt. Maybe you can't learn what someone like Patrick Veitch does, perhaps it's instinctiveness and being born under the right sign after all.

It's worth thinking about, because I'm going through a spell of not being able to do anything right at the moment. I'm trying to get the right blend of analysis and instinctiveness, of research and using my eyes in running, but I seem to keep trading when I shouldn't, not trading when I should, nailing the trebles and then missing the doubles. I carry on remorselessly, trusting my judgement and knowing that, if I keep on doing the right things, then it will turn my way. But maybe I need to take into account something that I can't change. Maybe the ability that I have to talk the hind legs off anything, and banter until daybreak, is counterbalanced my basic inability to punt. And if that is the case, then maybe I should just pack it in. For the moment, I'll keep trying, and I hope that you keep reading, but the road is looking longer now than it's ever done.

You can follow the Perfect Punter on Twitter. In the user friendly framework of a social networking site, he's confident that he'll be able to be a bit less morose. But, the way things are going at the moment, if he says back then get lay, and if he says lay then you know what to do. Go to www.twitter.com/perfectpunter and sign up.