There were times during the World Cup that I was away from television and therefore needed to listen to commentary on the radio. I should say that after four weeks of listening to all the stations on the Accra airwaves which ran commentary, that if it was a competition, George Addo Jnr of Joy FM would have won by a country mile.

The Joy FM commentary team had their peculiar strengths and weaknesses throughout the tournament. Samuel Yirenkyi, the head of sports at the group has experience but he huffs and puffs on the commentary, Kwame Dwomoh Agyeman has potential that can be developed, Benedict Owusu tries hard but he gets nowhere and Ridwan Ibrahim Asante is not the commentator you look forward to listening to, as the summarizer it is fine. By the grace of God Mr. Tony Bebli was far away in Brazil so we didn’t get tortured with Fataaaaawu Dawudaaaa, Christmas tree formations and kominini. Hallelujah!

On the other hand,

George Addo Jnr was so good I looked forward to hearing him every match day. I had to change the dial to listen to Yaw Osagyefo Anaman (Peace FM) or Gatuso Gatuso (Asempa FM and Adom FM) as they presented their own version of ‘concert’ commentary when George Addo Jnr was not the one running commentary on Joy FM.

Heck, on some occasions I had to mute the television as I watched the match and increase the volume of the radio so George Addo would ran the commentary for me. Especially on days that I had to watch the free to air feed. Mute Kwabena Yeboah, increase George Addo would sound like an irony, but I did it.

What makes George Addo tick on the commentary had to be his voice, his pronunciation and his knowledge of the game. He is also up to date on the football issues and everything else about his commentary is so refreshing.

Though he has been relatively new at Multimedia Broadcasting, George Addo has been handed a few programmes. He has been the host of On the Spot, a sports debating programme and sports presenter for the evening news both on Joy FM. He has and still hosts sports shows on Multi TV including the Football Show – an hour review of  the weekend’s footballing action -and the sports presenter on the news bulletins on  the Joy News channel on Multi TV.

Before Joy FM he had volunteered with Radio Univers 105.7FM at the University of Ghana for four years and had risen to be the head of Sports. He was also the media relations officer of the Ghana Universities Sports Association and traveled to cover sports events like the 2012 West Africa Universities games in Nigeria, 2012 All Africa games in Namibia and number of university sports events in Ghana amongst others.

I knew he was but not too sure if he is still the Communications Director of the Ghana Beach Soccer Association, which ensured that he accompanied the Beach Soccer national team to Morocco last year for the African Beach Soccer Championship.

All these accolades don’t say as much for me as the performance he put up during the World Cup coverage on Joy FM. Yes he watched all the matches on SuperSport and ran the commentary on radio, but he was my revelation of the World Cup.

It is my considered opinion that if the people at Joy FM know what’s right they’ll make him the number one football commentator and Kwame Dwomoh as the number two! Congratulations George Addo Jnr., for a virtuoso performance; don’t sweat it too much to find out where I got the background information on you though.

 

By Francis Doku