Emotional Steve Parish was ready to erupt – shame BBC did their best to contain him

Telegraph

03-03-2025

No question as to what was the most dramatic moment of the weekend: Millwall goalie Liam Roberts attempts to remove Jean-Philippe Mateta's head from Jean-Philippe Mateta's body, Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish charges down from the stands in a rage, Millwall fans chant 'let him die', Parish agrees to be interviewed at half-time by the BBC 's Kelly Somers. How did the TV coverage do?
Pitchside, Somers could have let the situation play out more: Parish was clearly livid and there was, briefly, a whiff of cordite about the live interview. What a golden opportunity: to have a gobby and furious chairman talking live during the actual match!
With the right poking, the sky was the limit: we might have had a 'ban him from football for life' or an 'if you did that in the high street you'd go to prison', maybe even offering Roberts a full and frank exchange of views about it in the Selhurst car park afterwards.
I genuinely feel that Somers might have denied us something to match John Sitton's epoch-defining ' and you can bring your effing dinner' outburst. Parish was ready to pop.
Instead, she kept touching him supportively on the arm, like a sympathetic undertaker or a classroom assistant trying to explain why we don't throw the poster paints. Gently but firmly moving him on to new topics, maybe Somers thought she was saving Parish from himself, which is neither her job nor her problem, especially as Parish explicitly said he didn't want to think or talk about anything other than 'the most reckless challenge I have ever seen.'
"That is the most reckless challenge on a football pitch I think I've ever seen."
Crystal Palace chairman and co-owner Steve Parish has spoken about Millwall keeper Liam Roberts' challenge on Jean-Philippe Mateta. pic.twitter.com/gkcR9IMSEI
— Match of the Day (@BBCMOTD) March 1, 2025
An opportunity missed, albeit well-meaningly. It's always difficult for TV to cover anything involving a player getting badly hurt, and caution is understandable when the live production can't be sure whether to be charging the Millwall goalie as a bloody idiot or charging him with manslaughter.
Troy Deeney pointed out that the stricken player's family would be there, 'panicking' and watching their loved one being treated. Given that Deeney has done three months inside for affray, you obviously have to sit up and listen when he has his say about the old ultraviolence.
Deeney insight on point
I enjoy Deeney as a pundit, he was quite good talking about Eddie Nketiah's positional pros and cons here and all in all seemed on safer ground than when he memorably went on Celebrity Mastermind and managed a grand total of zero correct answers on his specialist subject.
That topic, in fairness, was the famously trappy 'The Life and Works of Piero della Francesca, specifically his time spent in Urbino around 1455–1470.' Oh all right, no it wasn't. It was Spiderman films. But only the Sam Raimi ones. Still, a lot to bone up on (that's literally three movies and long ones at that) and the point is that Deeney very much didn't let his head drop and has come back all the stronger for it.
On that theme, something seems to have happened to Alex Scott: once such a sparky presence on the BBC, she has lost or mislaid her poise on screen, staring glassily at the camera as if on a hostage video, gurning at the wrong moments, acting as neither glamorous star player nor the selfless water carrier for the others. She didn't inspire confidence here with this handling of what could have turned into a major news story. Perhaps she needs a change of scene. I hope she is OK.
Mixed report card, then, for Scott, Somers and Deeney but no doubt it was yet another 'F' for the Millwall supporters. The institution itself boasts 'a club like no other' and it sure is hard to argue with that. It's not rare to hear a 'let him die' chant every now and again, generally further down the pyramid, but it's more often deployed humorously, like when an opponent's amusement-arcade winger is rolling around on the floor trying to win a free-kick or waste time. Not when a player had been kung-fued in the face and, who knows, might even actually die.
Jonathan Pearce rightly mentioned it in commentary at the time but it wasn't properly addressed by the coverage. You can certainly argue that sports TV should focus on the sport rather than the controversies and drama around it but all things considered, this was the moment and the story of the weekend and the production could have made more of a genuinely outrageous, water-cooler incident.