George Hamilton

I'm looking forward to the football because it's the World Cup.

And ever since I was a child, when Northern Ireland got to the World Cup in 1958, there was no television coverage.

And I would read about it in the newspaper.

The Belfast Telegraph came through the door in the evening.

And all my World Cup experience, because it was Northern Ireland, because I got to see them as a kid once a year at Windsor Park.

This was just something sensational.

And I devoured every word.

And I think that's probably...

The match reporting of the sports editor of the Belfast Telegraph, Malcolm Brodie, that made me want to become a sports journalist.

Initially a print journalist, and then I saw it in 1962, and then I wanted to be a commentator.

But the World Cup has been part of my life, such a big part of my life, ever since I was a nipper, that I couldn't fail to be excited by the prospect.

of a tournament coming up again and the fact that I've been associated with it one way or another for so long since 1978 when I did my first World Cup.

It's a punctuation mark in the long-term calendar that every four years there's going to be this and it's going to be terrific.

The only downside of it is, to my mind, it's gone bloated at 48 teams.

And it's almost harder to get knocked out than to progress from the first stage because there are so many teams.

And I don't really think that the tournament is going to benefit from having so many teams that I think the first couple of weeks, there'll be an element of take it or leave it.

I mean, are we all going to get up in the middle of the night to watch matches?

I don't think so.

Even if we have an interest in it, because we'll know that the team that we're interested in is likely to progress and that we don't need to see every last second.

No.