Euro 2008

Vienna

A modicum of stability has been restored now that we've reached the quarter-finals. For 12 days, it was a diet of game-one-day-travel-the-next etc. But that sort of schedule is something I've come to associate with covering a football tournament.

The whole thing flashes by, so you enjoy the moments of calm such as when producer Phil Wye and I stopped for lunch on the lakeside terrace of the Grand Hotel in Zell-am-Zee en route between Innsbruck and Klagenfurt. Very pleasant. It's somewhere described in my Rough Guide as "picture-postcard perfection", although applies to almost every place we pitch up. In the same way that seemingly every signpost provides a titter...

Names like Warmbad, Gumping and Hogmoos led to Phil and I devising a game called "Austrian Place Names: True or False" to pass the time in the car.

The whole contest swung Phil's way in a tense exchange over Schlosselhoffenpickel. He spotted it as made up and never looked back. If only Graham Taylor had been with us. Then it could have been "Celebrity Austrian Place Names: True or False". Watch out, Simon Cowell.

Graham received a marvellous piece of advice from the manageress in our hotel near Klagenfurt. The air conditioning in his room wasn't working, but, when Graham reported it to reception, her response was "just open the window wide and breathe in our wonderful Austrian fresh air". Not quite what Graham had in mind.

Actually, at the end of this tournament Graham is demanding a blog of his own as a kind of right to reply. I have told him that his request is being processed by the BBC, a procedure which can move at roughly the same pace as the FA's disciplinary department. So look out for that sometime in the build up to the 2010 World Cup.

The match venues in Innsbruck, Klagenfurt and Salzburg were almost ideal. Perhaps not in terms of size - all only 30,000 capacity or thereabouts - but the stands were steeply banked, the supporters were all close to the action and the positions to commentate from were excellent.

That last topic is common currency among football commentators... fascinating, I'm sure you'll agree. So after all my colleagues who had covered games at the Ernst Happel Stadium warned me that the 5 Live position was a "long, long way" from the action, it was with an element of concern that I headed there for the Austria-Germany game.

They were right, but, while it was my first live viewing of Austria here, I had already seen the Germans twice and their starting line-up is a god-send for commentators everywhere. All the players look very different from one another, something I always feel managers should be actively encouraged to bear in mind when selecting teams.

That Austria-Germany match had the feel to me of Euro 2008 stepping up a gear. After all, the game was being played at the tournament's biggest stadium and on a night which for the co-hosts was described as "alles oder nichts" (all or nothing). Sadly for Austria, it turned out to be "nichts" as Michael Ballack produced what Pat Nevin, sitting beside me, described as almost the ultimate net-buster of a shot for the only goal.

However, I did get the distinct impression that just to be involved in such an occasion was above the pre-Euro 2008 expectations of the Austrian public. That was confirmed in my copy of the Salzburger Nachrichten the following day which, if I translated it correctly, revealed that the TV audience of 2.17m for that game was Austria's 10th biggest of all time.

It probably tells you a great deal about our hosts that at number five in the list, from January 1991, with an audience of 2.47m was Crocodile Dundee. If, on 29 June in Vienna, it turns out Paul Hogan is presenting the Henri Delaunay Trophy to the winning captain, you'll know why.