Almanac Soccer: Bon Voyage Simon Hill – The voice of resurrection in Australian Soccer

In 2003 the National Soccer League and Soccer Australia were in their final pathetic chapter. To many it was now like getting to the end of a movie or book sadly lagging in its second half just to see what the ending would be for completions sake. We here in the West were glad all over for the cashed up Perth Glory finally winning a title but in the East clubs were dropping like flies and the Crawford Report loomed over all with a host of changes to be implemented under one simple modus operandi: burn the village to save it.

 

Around this time an English commentator started appearing on SBS not only on their flag ship show ‘The World Game’ that sometimes resembled a Taiwanese Parliamentary Session brawl but also calling the final NSL season. Articulate, professional and posing more questions than answers as to why he was down this way,  Simon Hill had been a journalist and commentator back in the land that sun forgot for around a decade before making the move. No one really knew why he was here commentating on our busted up league and national side. A working VISA holiday? Had he lost a bet? Were his beloved Manchester City at the time THAT terrible?

 

Simon found his feet quickly on ‘The World Game’ that was number one in the ratings for finger gesturing and old arguments never settled. The king of self-awareness, Craig Foster, was on one side and the erstwhile steadying hand of the sport of this country, Les Murray, on the other with a slew of other misfits ranging from Damien Lovelock to Andrew Orsatti. SBS was, at the time, bereft of game callers. Les hadn’t called games in years. The excellent and much missed Paul Williams had been struck down by illness while Andy Paschalidis had long moved on to pay tv. Simon gave a professional, factual and non-biased narrative to a league that was the opposite of all of this with the games given to SBS by Channel 7/Optus Vision like scraps off a dinner table as Kerry Stokes had his foot on the throat with the TV rights.

 

Simon didn’t really know anyone. On one rare visit to Perth to call a game he ended up on the couch of the presenter of Radio Fremantle’s football show as he needed someone to watch a game with. The presenter’s Southampton against Simon’s Man City. “We both realised both our teams were never going to win anything this season” was the presenter’s summing up of the game when we reconvened for the show on the following Saturday.

 

Simon covered the Socceroos disastrous Confederations Cup campaign of 2005 in Germany for SBS with the utmost effort travelling with a skeleton crew to cover the World Cup warm up event. Us depressed travelling fans didn’t see him in any cafes or bars unlike some of the players before the final game against Tunisia in Leipzig. His first cross into the lexicon of mainstream Australian sport was his iconic call of the World Cup qualifier against Uruguay in Sydney. With Craig Foster like a thunderbird on amphetamines next to him in the commentary box, Hill’s call was just on the right side of calm and balanced with a focus on what was happening on the screen rather than shoehorn in soundbites like a lot of modern commentators.  Apart from the being unable to count the penalties due to the absolute mind-mosaic confusion of the magnitude of what was happening his most memorable line had to be “Here’s John Aloisi for a place in the World Cup…” (and we knew what happened after that).

 

12 months after the Confederations Cup disaster Australia were back in Germany again to make history. Some of Simon’s great calls were here. Up on his commentary Mount Rushmore was his comment following Tim Cahill’s second goal against Japan, “He really DID have his Weetbix this morning!” (referring to Cahill’s then Weetbix campaign). Then there was the equaliser against Croatia on that steaming emotional night in Stuttgart, “The golden boy has scored a golden goal for Australia! It had to be Harry!” Some of these calls were to me up there with Norman May in 1980 and even possibly Tim Lane’s call of Freeman in 2000. Simon’s commentary made more to these moments the made us glad we bothered and glad we cared about this national team for so long.

 

Simon moved on from SBS to Fox for the A-League and Socceroos shortly after and we followed like children behind the pied piper. Here Simon teamed up with a bit of a kindred spirit in former Socceroo Andy Harper and showed some extreme patience for another ex Socceroo in Robbie Slater. As the league grew and grew Simon was the voice giving an injection of respect in a league, better for worse, trying to leave behind the old days. His one liners and calls really added a layer to derbies and the Grand Finals. In a very rare level he was respected by most in the usually fractured Australian footballing community.

 

Simon would call Socceroos qualifiers in Tajikistan, Iraq, Uzbekistan and what seemed like every couple of years in Japan. Whilst he couldn’t call World Cup tournament games anymore (and god we wished he could have) he did do some calls on our way to our famous Asian Cup victory under Ange in 2015. It seemed Simon called all the big joyous moments in the sport when Les, Paul and Andy for SBS had seemed to have called every single disastrous Socceroos moment in what was seemingly a commentary Elephant’s graveyard.

 

Simon wasn’t short of an opinion either. He was passionately (and at times pig headedly) adamant Australia could become a footballing nation. Being based in Sydney this got him normally in a slanging match with someone Rugby League adjacent being seen as someone who wanted to damage other codes which was the default action of any perceived threat. This was tough when he was employed by the network that also showed the NRL and then eventually AFL. His honest defence of the sport, especially during some of the more (and seemingly countless) incompetent times of the A-League, were always thought through and delivered with the nuanced points and wit of an overachieving Year 12 at an inter-school debating championship. As someone pointed out on social media recently, when Simon started with “..and with all due respect to..” he was going to destroy some poor bastard with some spot-on points and many of was always up for that.

 

It came to a head with his employers in 2020 when covid hit and Fox were already starting to shed anything to do with football when they knew Premier League wasn’t coming back from Optus. His redundancy meant tough times as the world and football stopped. A toxic beef on social media with former managers at Foxtel who took glee in sticking the boot into the sport’s and Simon predicament was just sad and disrespectful. Without a regular gig week in week out commentators in Australia for overseas sports can get stuck in the mire. Sure, he called some games in South Korea and a game on an international feed here and there but it wasn’t until Channel 10 took up the A-League and Socceroos rights that he was back in the saddle.

 

The magic has just never seemed to be there post covid with the league but Simon still never wavered in how to delivery every game like he was on the gantry in Mexico City in July 1970. Then, in a shock to us all, last week he announced he was heading home back to the UK for both professional and personal reasons. The professional reasons being there was just not the safety net of the Fox days in Australia for him anymore. Never would some of us see him do double kick drum in some of the metal bands he played in around Sydney. I’d never get to ask him if he ever got sick of Man City winning or what he really thought of Slater. His final call in the A-League for the Grand final was an emotional one but the game was dour. At least he got to call it with Harper.

 

When I’m at the huge Socceroos World Cup Qualifier against Japan at Perth Stadium tonight I’m looking up to the heavens for Simon. Not because he’s dead but mainly because he’ll be in a box high up in the stands calling him final game on Australian soil before one game last Socceroos game in Saudi Arabia and then back to Blighty. Hopefully his time spent here over 20+ years has meant there are more Simon’s popping up in commentary and all over the footballing community using everything he indirectly taught us. Simon was a soundtrack for a time some of us never thought would come the national team and the our busted up league that has its many faults. The Big Chill Soundtrack of Football Commentators. May we dancing around to his iconic calls in our grateful memories for years to come even if we should move on. Thanks Simon….for all of it!

 

 

More from Denis Gedling can be read Here.

 

 

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