Betsy’s Paul Tatnell sat down with race caller and Fox Footy commentator Matt Hill ahead of what will to be one of his biggest springs yet.
At 45, Hill is firmly established as the voice of Victorian racing, set to call the Melbourne Cup, Caulfield Cup and Cox Plate. But this season, he will also take his seat in the commentary box for the AFL finals series, calling the game alongside some of football’s biggest names.
In part one of the extended interview, Hill opens up about how he makes the switch from the precision of race calling to the rhythm of football commentary and how he has adapted to sharing the broadcast with former AFL champions such as Nathan Buckley and Jonathan Brown.
Paul:
Matt, thanks for joining us. They are no other broadcasters I can think of that are set for a Spring like yourself. Calling the Victorian Spring Carnival, as well as AFL finals. How do you go prepping for the big meetings? You’re going to compare prepping for a Melbourne Cup, for instance, versus a preliminary final.
Matt:
Well, a Melbourne Cup, fundamentally, I do exactly the same thing as I do a thousand times a year. Call the race accurately and appropriately, but it’s not an everyday race. It’s the Melbourne Cup. I’ve never come across something where nearly every word is analysed like in that race. The last 200 metres, my whole year is judged on the last 200 metres of a Melbourne Cup.
Paul:
Did you put the pressure on yourself ahead of them?
Matt:
No. No, I actually quite like the pressure in that I find it’s like if you’re like a footballer in Grand Final week. From derby night, I get the field, make sure I know the field and I study that for three days, and I’m looking at it all the time. I’ll print out a page of the fields and I will just continually add notes to it, so I’m all noted up by the time I get to Melbourne Cup time. But I feel like it’s like the guy that’s playing in the grand final, and all they do is talk about it. There’s functions, and there’s photos, and there’s all this training, and all this stuff that goes on that stilted week before a grand final. My three days [before the Cup] is like by the hour, and I feel like you get to the Melbourne Cup Day and I love the first race, because I’m back doing what I should just be doing, and that’s calling races.
Paul:
That’s more natural for you.
Matt:
Once I call the first horse out of the gates, because race calling is a concentration game. What we do is a concentration game. So if you’re not concentrating, it might be a race that’s not as important, that’s when you’ll make a mistake because you’re not concentrating. Fundamentally for a race caller, if you’re concentrating at 110%, you shouldn’t make a mistake, because you’re that zoned in. And the Melbourne Cup, it’s like I go into a zone for three and a half minutes where it’s just that is it.
Paul:
Do you ever catch yourself in that three minutes, thinking ‘’this is the Melbourne Cup, I better nail this?’’
Matt:
Well, it’s a very, very funny moment, because the Melbourne Cup and the Cox Plate and the Caulfield Cup, you’ve actually got to treat it like, it’s very cliched. You’ve got to call what you see, because that’s your job. And of all the analysis that goes into all of these races, they get analysed to the absolute inch of their life. I’ve actually just got to call what happened, and so I can’t really preempt anything. There’s storylines there that you’ve got some idea, but I had no idea Harry Coffey was going to win the Caulfield Cup and I had no idea that Via Sistina was going to win by eight lengths, and I had no idea that Robbie Dolan was going to win the Melbourne Cup. Do you know what I mean?
In fact I was on a Melbourne Cup preview show on the Sunday and I think we all said [Knight’s Choice] would run last. So I wasn’t expecting that, like everybody else. I’ve got to basically treat it like you live in the now and it’s three minutes, what am I seeing? It’s the most privileged job in broadcasting really, because what people don’t realise, though, is that, yeah, I might call it to 10 million initially, but then it gets replayed probably 40 million times on YouTube and everything else.
Paul:
The TV news is going to carry the finish stages and your call
Matt:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. I get in the car and switch on all the FM stations and there is the last 100 of the Melbourne Cup. But you’ve still got to get them all right. So that’s where your concentration is really important. And the race after the Melbourne Cup is important too because you don’t want to be the guy that absolutely nails the Melbourne Cup and then butchers the race 40 minutes later.
Paul:
Even those who don’t follow racing would know your voice instantaneously. Did you ever have to do much training with it as when you were growing up?
Matt:
So I had a chipmunk voice when I was a kid. I must say though, I don’t know how the voice has developed. I know I went to a voice coach when I was about 15, and I was probably too young to go to a voice coach. He was out in a little house in Brighton, and he used to make me sing and all this sort of stuff. I hated it. He was very educational about if you want to speak well.
So I guess I just trained my voice over a long time to do that. I went to radio school, as well. There was a bit of training with the voice, but I can’t actually say to you, because it’s my own voice, I don’t feel that it’s unique.
Paul:
As a broadcaster, do you recognise it as distinct?
Matt:
I suppose so. I sometimes think. My heroes when I was growing up were guys like Greg Miles, Bruce McAvaney, and Jim McGrath in England, who called for the BBC with this magnificent wooden tone. I always wanted to sound like that. I think the one thing I did study was the flow of the race for all of how it should sound. Because I treat it like it’s an art form. I treat everything I do as if it’s a musician. And even the footy call, I see it as an art form, not just going there and having a good yell, and having a good scream. I hope the one thing I can bring to a football call is it’s nuanced. If a moment is there to not say anything, don’t say anything. If there’s a moment there to go off your head, go off your head, it should be a little bit high and low.
Paul:
How did you find that confidence? I was listening to you the other night, I can’t remember the game and there was a big moment in a game and I’m like, I wonder whether Matt’s going to have the confidence here to call the significance of it, and you did of course. Is it intimidating to have former AFL stars like Jack Riewoldt next to you?
Matt:
Well, the funny thing about those guys is that I see it the other way around, rightly or wrongly. I feel that I would be more intimidated if Jack Riewoldt was watching me kick a ball from 25 metres out, whereas he steps into our domain now, which is the broadcast domain
So I’ve never been intimidated. In fact, to be honest, I’ve made more friends with them. They’re great. Like the Nathan Buckleys and the Jonathan Browns.
I’m actually more intimidated by someone like Gerard Healy because he’s called football for 30 years. Those guys that are experienced callers like Huddo [Anthony Hudson] and Dwayne Russell, those guys that you, I’ve heard them. I used to listen to Huddo when I was in my teens, Steven Quatermain and all these guys that were my heroes. They’re the guys that I get a bit more nervy around.
Paul:
Do they give you advice?
Matt:
Well overall, you get your little tidbits because the one thing that I’ve dealt with or try to deal with, which is a bit difficult is that race callers, you either can call a race or you can’t. It’s a skillset that it’s one of those things that there are levels of race calling. Whereas with AFL calling, I find that there’s no real right or wrong because look at a guy like Rex Hunt. People adored Rex Hunt and then there were some people who didn’t like him and then there were some people who adored Tim Lane but then thought he was a bit boring. So my point being is it’s quite subjective.
