The late Tony Charlton, who called a dozen VFL grand finals and three Olympic Games, said sporting commentators should \u201cproduce words like bubbles in champagne\u201d. There have been some sublime sporting commentators in this country. But no one in Australian broadcasting turned words into bubbles like Dennis Cometti. Few could match his repertoire of wit, timing and verve. And few were so professional, so versatile, so fully dedicated to their craft, so capable of meeting the moment.<\/p>\n
In many ways, Cometti was an outsider. Yes, he\u2019d played and coached in the WAFL. But he wasn\u2019t a legend of the VFL who transitioned into commentary. He wasn\u2019t from the eastern seaboard. He wasn\u2019t some nuggety, phlegmatic former player. He looked like an Oscar Wilde character. He sounded like a man who\u2019d just back-announced Boz Scaggs on the radio. He had to prove himself to audiences who\u2019d never heard of him, and who weren\u2019t used to such dulcet tones calling VFL football.<\/p>\n
But he always stepped up. There\u2019s few better examples of that than the 1989 grand final between Hawthorn and Geelong. In hindsight, he may have been a surprise choice to call that game. He would have been still relatively unknown to a lot of his audience. And it would have been an incredibly challenging game to call. Pandemonium was unfolding all around him. That included in his own commentary box, where Don Scott turned in a performance that strayed towards the negative. When Dermott Brereton was ironed out and Robert DiPierdomenico\u2019s lungs were hissing, Cometti didn\u2019t flinch. He was funny, accurate, erudite. He struck exactly the right tone. The game was played at breakneck speed but Cometti nailed its cadence, its chaos, its violence, its meaning.<\/p>\n
Cometti spent 26 years at the Seven Network between 1986 and 2016. Photograph: Seven Network<\/p>\n
And he was like that for the next quarter of a century. You look back at so many defining moments in football and he did them all justice. When Peter Wilson kicks a preposterous and match turning goal in the 1992 grand final, when Nick Reiwoldt takes one of the most courageous marks of all time, and when Heath Shaw mows him down in the 2010 replay, Cometti is there \u2013 never in your face, never off beat, never over the top.<\/p>\n
And it wasn\u2019t just football. He was a terrific cricket caller. He was right at home at the Olympics. It\u2019s hard to overstate just how big Kieren Perkins\u2019 win at the Atlanta 1996 Olympics was. It must be incredibly difficult to commentate a 1500 metre swimming race, especially when all the focus is on lane 8. But Cometti read the race and paced himself perfectly, producing a call they\u2019ll be replaying for hundreds of years.<\/p>\n
Every person watching and listening knew that he\u2019d done the work, and that he wasn\u2019t playing them for mugs. It was why he worked so well with Bruce McAvaney. They were such different personalities and broadcasters. For a magazine profile piece, I once had the privilege of watching them call a game from the Channel 7 box. Bruce carried himself like a man preparing to run an Olympic final \u2013 a bundle of excitement, unable to sit down. Cometti sat there like a crack barrister, with a briefcase full of carefully colour coded notes. Bruce would watch through binoculars, bobbing from left foot to right. Dennis would watch off a small screen, and occasionally consult his scrapbook.<\/p>\n
In those notes he had extensive details on the various players, potential one-liners, and various points of interest. And he barely used any of them. That was part of what made him so good at his craft. He was prepared within an inch of his life. But he was patient. He\u2019d sit on those one-liners for decades. And at the perfect moment, in the heat of a grand final, when we all least expected it, he would reel them off.<\/p>\n