Geoff Shreeves Shows How

If you want to learn how to conduct a pre or post match interview, you could try asking Sky Sports Geoff Shreeves, because he’s been doing them for years and in any case ‘how’ seems to be his favourite word. But we wouldn’t recommend it.

Take his recent chat with Bryan Robson for instance, before West Brom’s game with Newcastle. We had ‘How pleased are you that Shearer’s not on the Newcastle team sheet?’, then ‘How crucial is the first goal?’, then ‘How important is it to build on…?’

If he’d got the answers ‘Very pleased’, ‘Very crucial’ and ‘Very important’, or percentages, or marks out of ten, it would have been no more than he deserved. Worse still, Bryan could have said something along the lines of ‘Pleased? Well actually, Geoff, we’re gutted Shearer can’t play’ and followed up swiftly with ‘The first goal doesn’t matter at all’. In which case, bad luck, Geoff. Serves you right for asking such stupid questions.

Memo to Geoff Shreeves. All that stuff beginning with ‘How?’ They’re invariably what we call ‘closed questions’ because they direct you to answer in a certain way rather than inviting you to give your opinion. In other words, you’re supposed to be pleased about Shearer’s absence, to think that the first goal is crucial, to believe it’s important to build on recent success etc. Well, if it’s as obvious as all that, what is the point of asking the question?

Fortunately, there is an alternative. It’s called, surprisingly enough, the open question and the good news is, it’s open to everyone – even Geoff Shreeves. So, for example, if you can’t resist using the word ‘how’, you could try ‘How do you feel about Shearer’s absence?’ This has the advantage of not directing the subject’s response – though when it comes to Shearer being out of the Newcastle team, the response is so obvious the question is pretty pointless however you dress it up.

What it all amounts to is this. If you want to conduct an interesting and meaningful interview, you need to choose the right subject material, ask the questions in the right way and listen carefully to the answers so that you know when to follow up and probe a little deeper.

Get that sorted Geoff and in no time at all you could have your own chat show.