CamSight helping to get across a different view
Boxing Day football is a time-honoured tradition, but this year’s festive fixture at the R Costings Abbey will see the launch of a thoroughly-modern scheme.
Volunteers are limbering up their larynxes in readiness as Cambridge United become the first non-League club to provide live commentary for visually-impaired supporters.
Organised by Cambridge Fans United in conjunction with CamSight, the scheme will allow blind and partially-sighted supporters from both teams to listen in to the audio-descriptive commentary provided via short-wave radio.
The scheme grew out of a taster day at the Blue Square Bet Premier match against Tamworth last season, which helped to confirm there were supporters who could benefit from using the service.
A team of volunteers have now been trained in the use of the equipment, and schooled in the art of describing, by Phil Pethybridge, who provides the service at Ipswich Town.
Audio-description differs from radio commentary in several ways, but the key is to describe everything in real time – to let visually-impaired fans know what has happened at the same time as everyone else in the stadium, so they can react at the same moment.
A listener should know where on the pitch the ball is at any moment, and simple, short descriptions are more important than names. Pauses in the game can then be used to fill in descriptions.
So, a passage of play might be described: “United in the centre circle moving forward, short pass to the right, dribbled forward, shot – saved – corner!”
In the pause before the corner is taken, the describer might say: “Tom Shaw picked up the pass about 40 yards from goal, took it forward 10 yards and unleashed a low right-foot shot, which the visiting keeper got down to, to his left, and pushed comfortably around the post.”
Good describers will aim to work this way to build a sense of anticipation or disappointment that a visually-impaired fan can share with any other spectator.
United are fully behind the scheme. Fans’ director Colin Proctor said: “It’s a fantastic operation and another dimension for the club and CFU.”
A dry run at the recent CRC match against Newmarket gave volunteers their first experience of match description, the first step on a road that aims to include every home match at the Abbey, and beyond to a new stadium.
CFU spokesman Nick Parker explained: “Part of our community remit is to have things like this in the plans for the new stadium, so we are as inclusive as we possibly can be.
“It’s about fulfilling the community role of the club – we have to do things that confirm that and not just talk about it.”
That ethos unites the describers, although they have differing initial motivations for getting involved.
Adam Maisey, a Sheffield United fan and freelance radio broadcaster – Pethybridge was his lecturer at college – hopes the scheme can help him realise an ambition.
“I want to be a football commentator in my career, so I came along to the training,” he said.
“I’ve worked for BBC Radio Suffolk as a match reporter, but this is very different. we don’t summarise what’s happened, we have to keep up with play. It’s different, it’s a challenge, but I’m looking forward to it.”
Mark Streather, 21, a U’s fan since he was 14, got involved through his mother Anne, who is chief executive of CamSight.
“I do some sports reporting and commentating at university and I really enjoy it,” he said. “So when my mum said they were looking for people to commentate, and I’d done it before, I came along.
“I met a guy at the taster day who said he’d really enjoyed it, so we knew then that there were people out there we could be helping.”
Another volunteer told of being inspired by having shared a hospital ward several years ago with a Press photographer who had literally gone blind overnight.
But James Taylor, 32, perhaps sums it up best.
A U’s fan for 25 years, he said: “We feel it’s a Premier League project at our club – if we can make it happen, it’s actually an honour.”
