Snatch of the day

GREG Dyke and Gary Lineker must be just about the two glummest men in the land today. Despite doubling its bid from £20 million a season to £40 million, the Beeb's offer fell short of the £61 million tabled by ITV to screen the premiership highlights show.

It's probably the blackest day in the history of BBC sport - and a shattering blow for Dyke, who when he took over the reins as BBC Director General pledged he would bring sport back to the channel big-time.

It will be no less devastating for Lineker, the flagship show's engaging frontman since ITV poached veteran smoothie Des Lynam last year. He had actually been putting on viewers - partly, it's true, through the programme being given a regular evening slot on the Saturday with a repeat on Sunday.

The real winner today - apart from the bloated Premiership clubs who, as a result of the deals announced last night, will be raking in £1.62 billion over three years from the 2001/2 season onwards - is Des Lynam himself.

The former Match of the Day frontman, who since being poached by ITV a year ago has had to be content with presenting the odd European match, could barely hide his glee today.

"It will be like getting into a pair of old boots... designer boots, mind," he told a national newspaper.

Alan Hansen, Lineker's Match of the Day co-presenter, confirmed today the announcement had left the BBC 'gutted'.

Speaking from Holland where he and Lineker are preparing to present Saturday's Euro 2000 clash between England and Germany, he said: "We have gone from the euphoria of this competition to total gloom and doom. This is a massive disappointment for everyone concerned."

The sad truth is, though, that while the announcement is hugely disappointing for the BBC and the legions of Gary Lineker fans, it is not all that surprising. Television viewers have been accustomed these past ten years to seeing top sporting institutions wrenched from the BBC. And now it is the turn of Match Of The Day, an institution since 1964.

The Ryder Cup, Test match cricket, Formula One, just about every horse racing classic, Five Nations matches at Twickenham and so on - lay the list on foolscap paper and it would probably stretch from Shepherd's Bush to Wembley stadium.

None, though, strike at the heart and soul of BBC sport quite like this.

MOTD - as it was affectionately abbreviated - had built a reputation as the home of the most cogent analysis of top Premiership action. Sky might have shown the way technically with its extensive and in-depth coverage over the past decade, but MOTD was the programme which nurtured the dreams of little boys and their dads.

Who can forget John Motson's stirring first commentary on Ronnie Radford's goal on the day lowly Hereford beat First Division Newcastle in the FA Cup? It made a star of Motson, it saw the birth of the Motson-Barry Davies era, the like of which will perhaps never be seen again.

So many memories. The time 'Mottie' shivered, shoulders hunched, microphone freezing in hand as he attempted an interview in a blizzard.

Great lines such as the "The Crazy Gang have beaten the Culture Club" which is how he described Wimbl-edon's shock victory over Liverpool in the 1988 FA Cup final.

Or the remark as Manchester United captain Martin Buchan collected the FA Cup: "How fitting that a man called Buchan should be first up the 39 steps." Cerebral, caustic, informed, objective - that was MOTD.

Inevitably, the BBC's loss is bound by many to be seen as a victory for Des Lynam - the man with whom the show had become synonymous over the last decade - over Gary Lineker, the new kid on the BBC block.

Having prised Lynam from his BBC armchair for huge money it only seemed natural that ITV would go the extra mile, or to be precise the extra £21 million, to reunite him with the flagship show.

Greg Dyke was putting a brave face on things today. He said the corporation remained 'optimistic' it could win the rights to screen the FA Cup and insisted the BBC was 'not humiliated' by losing out to ITV.

The BBC had doubled its bid to keep Match of the Day - but ITV had trebled it, he said.

"You can always win sports rights by throwing money at it, but it has to be justified" Dyke said. "To win we had to top £61 million for something that is costing us £20 million now. We are spending public money here. Could we really justify that? I can't. There are no circumstances where I would have paid that much. It is a blow but I have been around quite a long time. You have blows like this."

A defiant Dyke, however, insisted the game was far from over for BBC Sport.

"I have been involved in sports rights for many years. It is desperately disappointing that we did not retain the rights, but we still have more sports rights than any other terrestrial broadcasters," he said.

"I am disappointed. There are a lot of people in football who are deeply disappointed. I know a lot of chairmen will be sitting at home saying 'What have we done?"

"But we have a mass of sports rights and we are very optimistic about the FA Cup. In the next two or three days the results of the FA sports bidding process will come out, and I am optimistic our joint bid with Sky will win.

"If we win that it means the death or demise of Match of the Day has been slightly exaggerated."

Exaggerated or not, Saturday night footie for millions of viewers will never be the same again.

ITV's top commentator Clive Tyldesley is an intelligent professional with a light touch and a rich humour. And its analysts and experts are drawn from the best - Terry Venables, Kevin Keegan, Sir Alex Ferguson and Ron Atkinson to name but four.

Tyldesley would sit happily with a new highlights package - as of course would Lynam or even Lineker, who might yet be lured to the commercial station in the absence of any regular soccer on the Beeb.

But Match of the Day ITV-style will never be quite the same. As Barry Davies said: "ITV have now to match the standards we have set."

It will be a tall order.