Hold the back page- John Motson is retiring.

Hold the back page- John Motson is retiring.

Hold the back page everybody. John Motson has announced his retirement. Stop the presses and don't put that paper to bed yet. Today is the saddest, most sorrowful of all days. It marks the defining and definitive end of one of the greatest, finest, most precise of all British football commentators. There will never be another commentator quite like John Motson - or as he was affectionately known 'Motty'.

At the end of this Premier League season, one of the most well informed and knowledgeable of any sports commentators will finally hang up both the celebrated microphone and that wonderfully warming sheepskin coat. It brings down the curtain on one of the most illustrious and pre-eminent careers. The bouquets of praise and flattery have already been richly showered on a man who spans four decades of football from the 1970s all the way to the present day.

Motson was one of the most articulate and thorough of all football commentators and the commentaries have stretched beautifully across the years. The catch phrases have now passed into legend, the reactions to goals almost beguilingly beautiful and the timing just perfect. In all weathers and all football environments 'Motty' was our closest football friend with that almost remarkable archive of statistics, lovingly detailed observations, maybe statements of the obvious but a genuine love of the game mixed in with fastidious attention to detail.

But maybe we should have seen this coming. Motson has covered innumerable FA Cup Finals, countless European matches, many an England match, hundreds of vital old First Division and more recently Premier League games. The man now needs a long and well deserved rest. It's been an exhausting schedule but Motson's tireless energy and well researched footballing commentaries may have reached a logical conclusion.

The year was 1972 and this was the year when John Motson made his humble and modest debut in the Match of the Day commentary box. It was an FA Cup tie between tiny Hereford United and the high flying pace setters of First Division Newcastle. It was, allegedly, a walk in the park, a complete mismatch and a cricket score in the making. Hereford, so the cynics said at the time, should have spent most of that afternoon admiring those agricultural cows and sheep nearby. John Motson must have thought it was his birthday.

What followed dramatically changed the course of Motson's career. A tall, gangling forward named Ronnie Radford picked up the ball just outside the Newcastle penalty area, ran forward purposefully, controlled the ball with an almost supernatural comfort, settled himself to shoot in thick mud and then drove the ball fiercely into the back of Newcastle net, a rocket of a shot that flew past  the visitors keeper high and handsomely. It was the Hereford winner and the whole of the cattle industry applauded their heroes.

Motson's career then soared into orbit with frequent verbal masterpieces on BBC's much acclaimed Match of the Day on a Saturday evening. He became immediately associated with all of those epically dramatic and earthy Saturday matches with that incomparable flair for the right phrase at the right time. The words came thick and fast with admirable emphasis and flourish, the pronouns and adverbs flowing like butter and honeyed relish. The sentences were perfectly judged, measured and the descriptions were like sun dappled meadows, neatly chiselled into life before a warmly appreciative TV audience.

Sadly though this is the final season for 'Motty' and there will not be a dry eye in the house next spring when Motson, emotionally, hangs up the sheepskin and scarf, a misty reminiscence on the tip of his tongue and a treasure trove of great goals, astonishing accuracy, the loveliest turns of phrase and a priceless command of the literary niceties.

Personally this is rather like bidding farewell to a dear friend who always knew the exact time of every goal, the number of goals conceded and scored by every team in the Football League and all the minutiae of the game's inner corridors. Motty knew all of the intricacies of football's oddities, its idiosyncrasies, its occasionally confusing complexity. In a world of multi million pound footballers, the Internet- something he is reported to detest- and jet propelled technological advances, Motson may well be regarded as a breath of fresh air.

He quite clearly shuns the immediacy and ready made accessibility of the social media age for a glorious market research clip board studded with hundreds of Post it yellow notes on team sheets. He studies the history of football with a continuous air of fascination. The hard bitten critics - who perhaps should know better - regard him with all the suspicion you would normally reserve for the serious train spotter. But where would we be without John Motson and his vast book of footballing knowledge.

Long gone are the days when the likes of Raymond Glendenning and Kenneth Wolstenholme, Motson's immediate predecessor, caressed our ears with their well clipped and impeccably polished words of wisdom straight into a huge BBC microphone. In a world of increasingly tangled complications and the most garbled language, Motson was, and still is, a man of deeply refreshing simplicity and integrity. Hold on, he hasn't retired yet so therefore this sentence shouldn't be couched in the historic tense. Sorry Motty. You've got one more football season left.

Having read John Motson's autobiography a couple of years ago and his loyal colleague Barry Davies, I found myself drawn kindly to a man of scholarly erudition, carefully crafted commentaries and occasionally mischievous shafts of humour when a match was shrouded in a ghostly fog. Then there were the boggy allotment sites that were football pitches during the 1970s. There was the seasonal fall of rain and snow when Motson found himself safely wrapped and hooded by the famous sheepskin coat.

Then finally there was the 1998 World Cup Final  between France and Brazil when Motson was confronted with a potential crisis. Minutes before the game Motson had been given the wrong information about one of the players due to take his place. Only John Motson could have brushed aside the dawning sense of urgency with a re- assuring message and then showed the kind of extraordinary composure that only the French would later demonstrate against the one and only Brazil.

So a hearty goodbye John Motson. Nobody did it quite like you and your peers can only salivate at the memories you've undoubtedly left behind you. Now we have the bubbling effervescence of Jonathan Pearce, the equally as capable and reliable Guy Mowbary and the nicely restrained Simon Brotherton for future Match of the Day company. Much to my disappointment Barry Davies has quietly retired from football's almost ridiculously noisy bear pit. But Motty, John Motson who should have been rightly honoured by now, will pour out his insatiable passion for football for one last season. And for that we should always be grateful. Match of the Day will be inestimably poorer without those deeply dulcet tones. One John Motson, there's only one John Motson, one John Motson there's only one John Motson.