Celebrity Deaths 2023

Things
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The beauty of the Motson/Davies rivalry, if you could call it that, and I think you can, because all of these commentary legends were friendly rivals, was they drove each other on.

There isn’t a really a single noteworthy game either did where you wished that the other had been commentating.

And had it been reversed, and the other one been commentating on a game the other did, you know you wouldn’t have wished that that had been reversed either.

The Lennon and McCartney, the McCartney and Lennon of football commentary.

And yet that analogy doesn’t ring quite true, because you can add the great Brian Moore into the mix.

You can add in the radio commentators, your Bryon Butlers and Peter Joneses.

And the cruelly underrated George Harrisons like Tony Gubba and Gerald Sinstadt.

The Greatest Generation.

These giants never knew what contributions they made to the lives of us.

Classic football commentary, classic sporting commentary, it is the lost, almost dead art.

Like great pop singles, we thought it would always be there. You have to look very hard now for great examples of either.

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242

The title’s up for grabs now!!

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I’ve a vague childhood memory of Davies being selected ahead of Motson to cover the World Cup USA ‘94 Final. It was a big thing in the newspapers in the lead up. Jack Gleeson next door would buy a couple of tabloids daily and my auld lad would buy the Indo & the Cark Examiner & they’d swap them in the evening. I’d always have a look at the diddies on page 3 & then skip to the back pages to read about the football. Brian Woolnough & those Fleet Street types would be putting the football world to rights.

Has that Guy Mowbray chap been lead BBC football commentator since Davies retired & Motson was eased down the pecking order (like George Hamilton in RTÉ these days)? The years sure fly by, I think it was Mowbray commentating in the Euro 2012 shoot-out when Hart was jaw jacking to the Italians and Pirlo quietened him with a Panenka. But he’d probably have been main commentator for some years before that?

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244

Willie Hegarty of Shannonside Northern Sound will be bulling over his omission from this august list of notable commentators. Raging :rage:

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245

Here’s another I’ve seen which would tally with my memories of Motty

Like Murray Walker, he was not only endearingly quirky and gaffe-prone, but he was the voice of his sport for more than a generation. Legend.

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246

I heard he was up to his usual carry on last Sunday during the Armagh match. He’s unlistenable.

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@cheasty your stuff is easily the match of this. Shoot your shot

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An absolute creep

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This was the genius of the classic BBC stable of sports commentators. The variety which ran through it. All of these styles were totally authentic. None of them were trying to be anybody else but themselves.

Like any record collection, it was totally eclectic in terms of style.

The gaffes committed by the likes of John Motson (“Steve McCall is in there, owwww and Everton have equalised and there are people on the pitch!”) and Murray Walker, Peter Alliss etc., you loved them, they were part of the charm, because they were borne of such deep love for their sports. Momentary short circuits of confusion, of which we have all had, which added, not subtracted to the whole.

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250

Bill McLaren.

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Dan Maskall and Ted Lowe ,along with those already mentioned,will always be the voice of their sports to those of us if a certain vintage.

Was no reference to pointless stats back then, and they knew that sometimes just let the action speak for itself

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Great shout.

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Barry Davies getting the 1994 World Cup final (and the 1995 FA Cup final) was indeed a big deal. But it didn’t feel like Motson was being downgraded. It felt more like Pairc Ui Chaoimh being given a couple of overdue Munster hurling finals after Thurles having had them for the last five years.

I could be wrong but I think 2006 was the point at which Motson ceased to be the number one commentator.

He’d have been 60 or 61 at that point. It feels shockingly young for him to have been moved down the order, in retrospect.

My favourite late Motty commentary is one I heard on radio, it was Chelsea v Cardiff City in the fifth round proper of the 2013 FA Cup. I was listening to it on stereo sound via the television box as I cleaned the house because we were having a very important new guest arrive to the house for the first time later that day.

This was a totally humdrum tie in a dying competition, with an inevitable outcome, played by a mixture of first teamers and second stringers, and he made it sound like @mickee321’s fabled “The Match” of Monday morning water cooler chat. “The Match” that everybody had seen and everybody wanted to talk about. He made it seem like the premier sporting event of that month, if not of that year.

I don’t know the difference between Guy Mowbray and Steve Wilson and the other fella whose name I can’t remember.

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The BBC’s depth of commentary talent was what set it apart. It wasn’t just the number one commentators. There was strength down the order, as they say in cricket.

Like for football, you had a lineage there going from Wolstenholme to Coleman to Motson and Davies. Under them you had Tony Gubba and Gerald Sinstadt and later Jon Champion, who made a fatal move leaving BBC. In studio you had Des Lynam and Jimmy Hill and Trevor Brooking.

For rugby, Nigel Starmer Smith was a superb understudy to Bill McLaren. Eddie Butler later took up the ball and ran.

In cricket, there was Tony Lewis’s Welsh lilt complementing Richie Benaud’s old Australian seriousness, and that chap with a lovely voice whose name I can’t remember who I associate with the 1981 Ashes.

In golf Alex Hay was the perfect partner to Peter Alliss. Dave Marr for a while added a third string. In more recent years Ken Brown took up the mantle.

BBC’s snooker team had exceptional depth. The departure of the great Ted Lowe was barely felt because Ray Edmonds, Clive Everton and Dennis Taylor were there. Jack Karnehm was another master.

Sid, Tony and later David Croft on the darts.

Coleman, Ron Pickering, Stuart Storey, Brendan Foster and Steve Cram for athletics.

For tennis you had Bill Threllfall, John Barrett and Barry Davies (especially when Jeremy Bates was playing) backing up Dan Maskell.

Julian Wilson was an able and affable back up to Peter O’Sullevan for the horse racing.

The phrase “Made In England” was always associated with quality and the phrase “Made In England” (and Scotland, Wales and Australia) was a phrase that summed up the quality of BBC sports broadcasting.

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255

Apart from Brian Moore I can’t remember any other ITV commentators (apart from Ken Walton, one for the grapple fans)
Did BBC have an almost monopoly on UK sport coverage in 80s,

Edit: Reg Gudderidge was itvs boxing commentator, but that might have been more 90s onwards

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Martin Tyler was with ITV at some stage?

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257

My memory of England league football coverage began with ITV having the league and BBC with the FA Cup.

ITV had Saint and Greavsie on Saturday afternoon, a live ‘Match’ on Sunday. I don’t recall a highlights show.

Des Lynam, Terry ‘McGrat’ Venebles and Jimmy Hill were Auntie’s crew.

RTE showed live matches on a Saturday afternoon delayed by 30 minutes. Now sure if that carried into the Sky era where football changed of course.

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Martin Tyler was almost equal number one ITV football commentator with Brian Moore throughout the 1980s, though Moore always had the final say.

My understanding is that Tyler did the 1982 World Cup final for ITV because Moore was the studio anchor back in London.

Moore flew out to Mexico to do the 1986 World Cup final having anchored from London for the rest of the tournament but this was apparently his first ever time to commentate on any World Cup finals match.

Tyler is said to have got itchy feet after this and moved to the newly formed BSB around 1989/90 and was nowhere to be heard on British television for the 1990 World Cup.

Alan Parry was Brian Moore’s main back up after Tyler left - I think he had been gradually moving ahead of Tyler in the pecking order because I can recall Parry doing some live commentaries when ITV got exclusive Football League rights from 1988 on, but not Tyler.

Parry also did athletics commentaries for ITV from places like Crystal Palace and Gateshead. ITV covered the 1988 Olympics but did not cover the Olympics again.

ITV covered a good bit of snooker in the 80s, and just about into the 90s. I think John Pullman was their main commentator.

Boxing was another big ITV sport, and they were strongly associated with the Eubank/Benn/Watson head to heads. Reg Gutteridge and Jim Watt were a great commentary team with Jim Rosenthal anchoring. I’m pretty sure the Nigel Benn-Gerald McLellan fight of February 25th, 1995 was the last big ITV fight, Eubank was already on Sky by then and it all went to Sky after that.

I don’t ever remember any cricket on ITV but they got the Rugby World Cup from 1991 on with John Taylor who did a good job as lead commentator.

The late Dickie Davies and British wrestling on Saturday afternoons (Big Daddy and all) was probably my first embryonic memory of ITV coverage of any sport alright.

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259

Wonderful English name.

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A lot of Saint and Greavsie clips have been doing the rounds online lately, including one where Greaves had to cry off sick and was replaced by his Spitting Image puppet, voiced by Peter Brackley.

BBC and ITV shared live football coverage from around 1983 when more regular live football began, up to 1988. From the start of the 1988/89 season, ITV got exclusive league rights and BBC exclusive FA Cup rights. ITV had the League Cup as well.

Everton v Manchester United on October 30th, 1988 was the first game of the ITV exclusive rights era.

At this point, neither ITV nor RTE bothered broadcasting live games until the clock went back at the end of October, on the basis that people didn’t want to watch live football until the clocks went back. ITV changed this policy in 1990.

English teams were out of Europe at this stage and only the European Cup final was covered live, usually by BBC.

The deferred games on RTE only came in when the Premier League started. Up to that it was all live.

Off the top of my head, some live Sports Stadium games were:

West Ham 2 Wimbledon 3 December 27th 1986
Spurs 4 Watford 1 FA Cup Semi-final April 11th 1987
Liverpool 3-1 Everton April 18th 1987 (Rush scored two and Sheedy gave the two fingers to the Kop after scoring a great free kick)
Arsenal 2 Manchester United 1 FA Cup Fifth Round February 1988 (Brian McClair skied a penalty into the North Bank very late on which would have equalised)
Liverpool 2-1 Forest 1988 FA Cup semi-final (RTE had to break coverage for the Grand National)
Crystal Palace v Blackburn April 30th 1988 (last day of the second division season, I think both teams missed out on the play offs, Palace definitely did anyway)
West Ham 0-2 Liverpool October 29th 1988 (Rush scored with a left footed shot)
Aston Villa 0 Wimbledon 1 FA Cup Fourth Round January 28th 1989 (winner by Eric Young?)
Derby 2 Everton 2 I think it was Feb 25th 1989 (Wayne Clarke scored for Everton)
Manchester United 0 Nottingham Forest 1 FA Cup Quarter Final March 11th 1989
Norwich 0-1 Liverpool April 1st 89 (Ronnie Whelan scored)
Hillsborough April 15th, 1989
Manchester United 0 Coventry 1 April 29th 1989 (Fergie Out)
Middlesbrough 0 Arsenal 1 May 6th 1989
Wimbledon 1-2 Liverpool May 13th 89
Crystal Palace 4 Millwall 3 October 21st 1989
Chelsea 2 Liverpool 6 November/December 89
Aston Villa 2 Arsenal 1 December 30th 1989
Liverpool 3-2 Southampton March 31st 1990 (Ronnie Rosenthal’s first game for Liverpool as a sub)
Liverpool 2-1 QPR April 28th 1990 - this game clinched the title
Sheffield Wednesday v Nottingham Forest May 5th 1990 (Wednesday were thrashed but wrongly thought they had avoided relegation after a fake crowd rumour went around that Luton had conceded at Derby)
Manchester United 0 Arsenal 1 October 20th 1990 - the Battle Of Old Trafford
Manchester United 1 Aston Villa 1 December 29th 1990 (one of Dwight Yorke’s first games for Villa)
Norwich 0 Nottingham Forest 1 FA Cup quarter final 1991 (Roy Keane scored I think)
Leeds 4-5 Liverpool April 1991
Liverpool 2-0 Everton August 31st 1991

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