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Inside an England O.B.

• Paul Atherton - Match of the Day journalist
• 28 Jun 06, 01:07 PM

IBC, MUNICH - Match of the Day’s studio base during the World Cup is in Berlin. But for a few of the big games Gary Lineker and the team broadcast live from the stadium. Here Suzanne Whiston explains one of the key roles at an outside broadcast (OB)

Hi I'm Suzz, a Match of the Day producer. On Sunday I was lucky enough to be on day release from Munich to work on the England game, from a compound outside the stadium in Stuttgart. The temperature when we arrived in Stuttgart was a steamy 30 degrees (five hours pre-match) and by kick-off it must have been closer to 40. Imagine a space the size of a long supermarket freezer compartment, add 11 frantic people (producers and editors) and a wall full of equipment driving all the coverage you see pre-match, half-time and full-time. Even with the air conditioning cranked up to maximum, by kick-off the heat was getting to everybody. How the England boys managed to play in that heat and win amazes me. One of the key roles at an outside broadcast is the half-time and full-time match analysis. The producer’s role is to monitor the main camera angles (there are 25 cameras around the stadium!) and find good examples of whatever the pundits in the studio and the editor of the programme want to highlight. As the first half progressed Alan Hansen and co felt that Michael Carrick’s influence on the England midfield needed analysing, so we had to clip up the relevant camera angles that best illustrated this. Throughout the second half we concentrated on David Beckham’s dead-ball play. It was felt that his free-kicks and corners had been poor all day – until he pinged in the winner! The biggest challenge working on analysis is time constraints – getting action clipped up and ready to play into a live programme can be quite stressful! And of course everything can change very quickly – a late goal or incident can change the whole focus of the analysis and you might have to scrap everything you’ve been working on for the last 45 minutes and start again! Luckily Sunday’s game all went smoothly – but I’m glad I wasn’t working on the Italy v Australia match!