clips of Jon Marks BBC 3CR commentary   Goals:  1

A late goal from Craig Cathcart denied Bournemouth a surprise victory at Watford.

Being live on the telly carries with it a few considerations. For one thing, it’s an awful lot easier to write about a midweek trip to Blackpool, for instance, internet streaming or otherwise. If nobody’s seen the game then it’s not difficult to add to their understanding of how it went down… and less likely that anyone’s going to pick me up on a sloppy detail. Consequence number two is that everyone’s performing a little bit, even now in the era of blanket coverage. This went for daughter number one and daughter number two, stopped by a Sky crew on Vicarage Road at 11.15 and eager to wave their yellow, red and black garlands around their heads for the cameras. It went for the referee as well, who was irritatingly assiduous about free kicks being taken in the right spot but missed a lot of rather more fundamental stuff, frustrating both sides into the process. The close attention of Bournemouth’s aggressive midfield wasn’t acknowledged, Ian Harte’s lethal, cynical hack on Forestieri should have been given a red card… all round, tiresome. His performance was at the forefront of the girls’ post-match account to their great-grandmother, delivered with the withering shakes of the head of seasoned veterans.