“Shirvo” lovin’ it Live

“One of the best comments I got on Twitter during my first year on FOX was ‘Matt Shirvington is doing a great job broadcasting the NRL for a guy that’s just suffered a stroke!’” admits Matt Shirvington.

“So from that moment I thought I better step up my game.”

In hindsight, the feedback for the FOX Sports presenter was no real surprise. Moving from sports to TV presenting he found himself fronting Live to Air gigs without any formal training.

Shirvington’s move to media came in 2004, after the champion sprinter was struck with glandular fever.

“I got a call about the first series of Dancing with the Stars and my mother-in-law loved the UK version, Strictly Come Dancing. I thought ‘I’m not doing anything else, so it will be a laugh,'” he recalls.

“Off the back of that Brad Lyons and Craig Walsh and the EPs on DWTS said ‘Can you do a casting for this show we’re doing, called Beyond Tomorrow?’

“So I landed the role and did it in between training.

“Then (Foxtel’s) Brian Walsh gave me a call and said ‘We’ve got the rights to the Olympics, do you want to come and do some of that?’”

He presented during the 2010 Vancouver, 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games and 2012 London games.

“Then Patrick Delaney said FOX Sports had a new NRL deal would I like to do a role on that?

“So I’ve been there for 4 years.”

‘Shirvo’ now presents on NRL Thursday and Super Saturday, sometimes knocking off 10 hours of Live NRL broadcasting. This year he is excited by a new deal between FOX Sports and Nine for a further three matches.

“This year will be bigger than any of them and the offering we have is like nothing else we’ve had before,” he explains.

“We’ll take their pictures and commentate them but we also do pre, half-time and post-game around it. We have access to all 8 games which has never been done before on FOX.”

The FOX Sports deal will also include 8 minutes of Nine’s ads but only during pre-game, half-time or post match.

“Our commitment is to not show ads during play,” he continues.

“Our commentators, independent of their commentators, will continue commentating the pictures as they come in Live. If (Nine) go to an ad break when there is a scrum, then go for it. But we’re staying with the pictures.”

With so much Live experience now under his belt, Shirvington hopes he has made a marked improvement on being ‘the guy that’s just suffered a stroke.’

“The mistakes are rare, these days. They aren’t non-existent, but it’s difficult when you are on air for 10 hours straight to be perfect,” he says.

“A lot of people now don’t see me as a former athlete, they just see me as a broadcast host.

“I’m lucky to be able to say that every time I step on air it’s Live to Air. That’s pretty special.”