YOU don’t get much football on Radio 3 as a rule. More’s the pity. So kudos to Between the Ears last Sunday evening which offered some kind of surround-sound access to the Emirates Stadium in London and Westfalenstadion (officially Signal Iduna Park, but no one calls it that) in Dortmund.

The presenter of And the Crowd Roars, Mark Burman, is an Arsenal fan but we’ll not hold that against him (well, not too much). And as the Gooners pushed for the Premier League title last season he took microphones into the Emirates crowd and recorded the noise, before going on and doing the same in Dortmund.

“An architect once told me that a football stadium is a machine for generating noise,” he suggested. And certainly his recordings bore that out.

There was quite a lot in this on top of the football chants though. There was an exploration of the acoustics of stadium architecture, issues of identity and even some Ultra violence to gee things up. In terms of the latter, we heard from Marcin Dudek, a Polish Ultra who rejected that identity to become a multimedia artist.

Perhaps understandably given his experiences. “One of my friends died,” Dudek explained. “He was pushed by the opposite fans out of the train. He was 21 years old. And then my brother was also attacked with knives … he almost lost his hand.”

It’s only a game, right?

Both Arsenal and Borussia Dortmund came up short in their league campaigns last season. “We finished second and won absolutely sweet FA. But next season, maybe, just maybe,” Burman suggested.

This was an entertaining half hour but if I’m honest I enjoyed 5 Live’s coverage of the North London Derby earlier that afternoon a little more. But then I am a Spurs fan newly in love with Angeball. Thanks for that, Celtic.

5 Live is obviously the home of football. But it's mostly the English kind.

 That said, Falkirk’s old ground Brockville got a mention on 5 Live Drive on Monday evening. Brockville is the site of a Morrisons supermarket these days and if you visit you can see pictures of Falkirk fans taken at Brockville back in the day on display on the supermarket windows. One of those fans in the pictures got in touch to tell 5 Live where to find her image. Wonder if Morrisons has seen an uptick in football tourists this week.

Later on Monday night you got a real insight into what it’s like to be a top-level footballer at the end of their career. Andros Townsend, formerly of Spurs, Crystal Palace and Everton, is looking for a new club. So far he's been unable to find one. A contract at Burnley fell through at the last minute. But he's not the one most affected in the family.

 “The toughest part for me at the moment,” the player told Mark Chapman on The Monday Night Club, “is I’ve two young kids and I’ve taken my daughter out of school in Liverpool. I told her, 'Yeah, you’re going to go to school in Burnley.' And then That didn’t happen. I’ve told her, 'We’re back in London. I’m going to put you into a school, but I don’t know how long I’m going to be in London.' So for the kids it’s tough.”

Football exists in the real world too.

On Sunday night Oppenheimer was doing some DJing. OK, Cillian Murphy, if you insist. The Irish actor is back on 6 Music for a short run (10 shows). And it’s good to have him back. 

The tunes here do most of the heavy lifting, but, when he deigns to speak, Murphy has a lovely late-night radio voice - all grit and Guinness - which is designed to drift off to. I still think Iggy Pop would be the best fit for the 10pm shift on the station rather than pushing him up against the football at 4pm, but if Iggy isn’t available, Murphy is a decent alternative. Even if you can’t see those cheekbones on the radio.

 

Listen Out For: Ramblings, Radio 4, Thursday

Clare Balding is taking a walk around Portpatrick this week in the company of a couple of walkers from a local walking group.