So, John Motson, the master of the lateral one-liner and irrelevant statistic, has decided to pack up his microphone and sheepskin coat and retire to spend more time with his Football Yearbook. The BBC's voice of football has decided not to go to the World Cup in South Africa in 2010, bringing the curtain down on an era of live football commentary spanning three decades.

And not a moment too soon.

Motty was a considerable craftsman who never skimped on encyclopaedic preparation, but in recent times he had become a parody of his former self. As he said after Spain's Euro 2008 victory on Sunday: “It's magic if you come from Madrid, it's beautiful if you come from Barcelona, it's a vindication if you come from Valencia or Villarreal and it's lovely if you come from Liverpool.” Indeed, so focused did he become on providing Motty-isms he even started to misidentify the players. It is fatal for a commentator to consider himself one of the star attractions, but Motson bought into his own cult of celebrity and came to commentate in what seemed like an advanced state of self-absorption.

But, whatever one's views on his merits, there is little doubt that his passing will be bewailed, bemoaned and otherwise mourned by the vast majority of the great British public.

We Brits have a tendency to cherish institutions that are past their sell-by date, from the NHS to the House of Lords and from the Tory Party to Des O'Connor. Familiarity seems to breed not contempt but a strange form of mass hypnosis.

Nowhere is this more evident than in sports commentary. David Coleman was kept on for ten years after he had become ever so slightly embarrassing because BBC executives feared that his axing might lead to an armed uprising on Television Centre. Henry Blofeld has consistently had his contract with Test Match Special renewed even though his irrelevant witterings have come to exasperate hardcore fans. Surely the time has come to bring on some fresh talent?

That is not to say that I am a revolutionary. I love the fact that we, as a nation, have a deep affection for the quaint and the anachronistic. Few things give me a bigger thrill than heading down to Richmond Green during the long evenings of late summer, a few yards from where I live, to watch the morris dancers strutting their stuff surrounded by old gents sipping warm beer. Passing tourists look on quizzically, failing to discern in that curious, alluring ballet, the DNA of an entire nation.

But nostalgia can be taken too far. When a football commentator misidentifies Ramos for Silva and Xavi for Senna, as Motson did during Euro 2008, is it not time to wield the axe? Very much so, I fancy.

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