I have to say, listening to you and Roy talking about Centres of Excellence is one of the modern highlights of sporting commentary. Everyone needs one, but we don’t quite know what they’re for.

Exactly. I don’t know if you know Redfern Oval, but it’s a beautiful park in Redfern. And it’s got palm trees … so they’ve moved out to a Centre of Excellence, so yesterday they had a big farewell, everyone came, Sam Burgess was there, never mind how often Sam Burgess gets busted for driving under the influence of various substances, he’s welcome back. It goes to prove the redemptive power of rugby league! So farewell to Redfern Oval. The next one is “Concussion up, despite crackdown”. Concussion is way up, despite the fact we’ve never lived in a more policed and medically worried time. This is a baffling thing. Matildas 2-0 over England, then the next item is “Bells Beach”, that’s all I’ve written. You get the idea. I’m not writing things out, I’m writing an aide-memoire.

Have you ever felt tired of the Roy and HG-industrial complex? We never get sick of listening to it, but do you ever get sick of doing it?

What an interesting question that is. A few things here. We came to it late. This is the first job and only job I’ve really had in my life. The rest of the time was a complete waste – moments of employment, but mostly not doing anything. But in showbusiness always. We realise how lucky we are to have this weird duo act that looks at the week. But you would know in 30 seconds if we were getting tired of it. You would know in one broadcast that it was all over and we wanted to pack it in.

It’s interesting though, that with what is now pretty much blanket coverage of sport, you still occupy what I think is a unique niche: sport and comedy, but you are neither coming at it from the old-fashioned Footy Show-style, or from a kind of an artsy, disdainful direction. You fuse the intellectual and passionate in sport in a way no one else does, even as the volume of coverage increases. You keep your special place in the firmament. How have you maintained that uniqueness?

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The skill is, we play major actions. The major actions are: I ask the questions, Roy answers them. Then what happens is that inside it there are adjustments to the major actions, like it’s up to me to work out whether we’ve gone too far with a topic and have to move on, or if we can have another go-round. Then we go into the sort of granular stuff – trivial-serious, serious-trivial. There’s nothing as stupid as adults taking something inconsequential absolutely seriously. That’s where we get a lot of humour from. These are hard to pass on to someone else, hard to write down and say, “now you can do it”. Then you’ve got to overlay that we’re incredibly affectionate towards all the players – even though we bag ’em. I couldn’t do what they do, I don’t want to get hit in the head, I don’t want to fall off a horse. We’ve got great affection for the players and, with rare exceptions, disdainful for those in charge. This is a trope in a lot of forms of theatre, so we think, if it’s good enough for Commedia dell’Arte, it’s good enough for us.

Bludging on the Blindside is on ABC Radio Grandstand, Saturday, 12pm, and ABC Listen app.

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