Teesside University students Harvey Richards and Max O’Hara have been doing commentary work for Darlington Quakers for over a year now and recently had their coverage live streamed to a national audience through DAZN. TUXtra’s Layne Million got the opportunity to interview them and ask them about the story to Darlington and getting the call from DAZN.
How did you first get to Darlington?
H: I started going to Darlington games when I was around 13/14. After that, I started going with my mates and then I got a season ticket. A few years ago, I started going to away games. It was a bad season but I stuck through it.
M: My dad is from Darlington so I did know about the club but it wasn’t until I came to Teesside University that my connection with them really grew. I started going regularly to games in 2023.
H: Last season was when we started helping out by doing things like writing match previews, running cameras and we launched an app. We got our first commentary gig halfway through the season against Warrington. Now this season we do full commentary.
Where would you like to go from here?
H: In an ideal world, Darlo could get promoted to being a proper, full time club and we could do this and get paid. The plan is likely to do this part time.
M: This experience here has been quite helpful because this has shown a different side [to journalism]. Everything else has always been like you can go work for BBC but this shows there are other paths out there.
What was it like, doing the commentary for DAZN?
H: It was really weird because we had to change how we really did it. We are usually a bit biased because we do it for Darlo fans but we had to be a lot more neutral and give a lot more attention to their players. We couldn’t just say like, ”Oh this team is rubbish.”
M: It was similar, we were still summarising the game but instead of just focusing on Darlington you had to say Macclesfield town was doing well too. You had give them equal attention. There was a learning curve to it.
What is your favourite game you have commentated?
H: Spennymoor, 4-0 away. It was quite a big game, both clubs’ biggest game of the season. We had just come off a loss and they were coming off two wins on the bounce. We came in and won 4-0 and dominated them. It was really fun and the feeling of winning a derby so convincingly and seeing the lads after the win was amazing.
M: Kidderminster Harriers. They are a professional team in the league that just got demoted. They are always tough to play against and we were in a time when we just couldn’t hit form. We won on a last minute winner and I’m very impartial on my commentary. The bus was so fun as well. Everyone had to do introduction songs who was new to the team and we actually got called to do them as well.
H: We said “haha good one,” cause we don’t play for the team, but they were serious.
And what songs did you do?
H: Like A Prayer by Madonna
M: Zombie by The Cranberries
