John Motson dies: Commentator's love of football and journalistic rigour made him recognisable even from behind a microphone

Motson, who died on Thursday aged 77, is the most famous commentator English football has produced.

That "Motty", who did the vast majority of his work off screen, had his own Spitting Image puppet at a time when that was practically a certificate of fame said it all.

That we even knew him as Motty spoke volumes.

The affectionate teasing of his voice, sheepskin coat and undimmed encyclopaedic knowledge of obscure facts made him a national icon. Very much so, I might add.

Some behind the mic try to scream their way into our consciousness, others burble on incessantly or treat it as an audition to be a stand-up comedian, but with Motson it was like being led by a tour guide who could not disguise his undying affection for the sport he was lucky enough to watch for a living, and knew so much about, but realised it was about them, not him.

He had his moments, never more so than at the 1988 FA Cup final, but Motson's most famous clips were less about phrasemaking like Kenneth Wolstenholme's "They think it's all over... it is now!" more often explosions of excitement about the game he clearly loved so much, and which loved him back for it.

That he worked for the BBC for 50 years was a huge part of his appeal. No matter how good a job ITV or later Sky and the rest do, at times of national significance, TV viewers tend to instinctively turn to Auntie. If it was a big football match, that usually meant Motson's familiar voice.

He covered 10 World Cups, 10 European Championships and 29 FA Cup finals, and felt omnipresent on Match of the Day for decades. He is thought to have commentated on over 2,000 matches for TV and radio.

Des Lynam saying “And now over to our commentator John Motson...” was the audio equivalent of a comfortable pair of slippers. You knew that for the next 90 minutes you were in safe hands.

Even when he retired from the BBC in 2018, to tributes galore, he could not leave it alone, taking a job with TalkSport.

Often the great sportsmen and women, particularly in individual sports, had rivals to push them to greater heights. Motson had Barry Davies, who commentated on the 1994 World Cup final ahead of him.

Davies was more of an all-rounder but although he covered two Olympics, Motty was a football-obsessive. It shone through whether he was getting excited about how "the Culture Club had beaten the Crazy Gang" – as he summed up Wimbledon's shock 1988 FA Cup final victory over Liverpool – or being laughed for standing in the snow at Adams Park before a first-round tie between Wycombe Wanderers and Boston United two years later. Both would have been big occasions for him.

If loving football was all it took, there would be millions of John Motsons. There was only one.

That was because he combined his enthusiasm with journalistic rigour.

As a wannabe journalist in the 1990s, much of the literature I received from the National Council for the Training of Journalists would proudly name-drop him amongst news heavyweights like Sue Lawley and Michael Buerk as one of its graduates.

His research was about so much more than painstakingly-compiled notes of statistics and facts about all the possible actors in the upcoming performance. In the days when you could do that much more easily, he would ring up or meet the leading lights before each match.

The journalist in him was never more important than when he returned to Sheffield, where he learnt so much about the trade, in 1989.

It was Motson on the mic as the Hillsborough disaster unfolded on a day which should have been an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. His safe pair of hands were essential.

Motson began as an 18-year-old on the Barnet Press in 1963, covering council meetings and court cases as well as sport.

But after four years his desire to concentrate on his passion saw him join the Morning Telegraph in Sheffield, where he was at last able to cover the Football League with Wednesday, United, Rotherham United and Barnsley.

But the making of him was when Radio Sheffield began in November 1967, relying on freelancers in the absence of permanent staff.

“My voice, in the opinion of one or two on the newspaper, was certainly better than my writing ability at the time," joked Motson later.

From there he quickly became a sports news assistant on Radio 2 and in 1971, a Match of the Day commentator, the first step on the road to national treasure.

For someone whose job was to be heard and not seen, it was some achievement.