The ultimate thunderbastard. The ball being stationary or almost stationary, perhaps rolling ever so slightly forward was what made it.
Liverpool completely stood off him because they thought he was some work experience player.
Steven Gerrard was in his absolute pomp in this match. He blazed a penalty hilariously wide at the Kop end but Iâm sure he also scored the equaliser and the game completely revolved around him.
By 2002/03 life and world events had already entered the bizarre internet based hellscape we now know and hate.
RTĂ used to have a live English league game back in the day at 3pm on a Saturday. But was it Sky shenanigans that forced them to switch to deferred live coverage for a chunk of years before they ultimately lost it? Iâve vague memories of their deferred live game âkicking offâ at 3.30pm or something.
I donât really remember that.
They had spl cover and then epl coverage.
Des left for money,like all of them
From the time I developed full consciousness as a human being sometime around the 1st of January 1987, Sports Stadium on RTE had a live English League Division 1 game most Saturdays, but this would only start around October and run from there to the end of the season. They would not have a live Division 1 game if Ireland were playing in the Five Nations Championship.
When the Premier League came along in 1992 there was a row about the rights and the live games stopped, but there would be a deferred game running half an hour late, ie. it would start at 3:30pm on RTE. This petered out at some point in the mid to late 90s Iâd say.
For a short time in the mid-2000s (Iâd say 2005-ish to 2007/08-ish) RTE managed to wangle some sort of deal where they would get an occasional actual live game on a Saturday.
Then other weird digital channels like Setanta and Didgeridoo Sports came along and this stopped too.
Peter Crouch worth a tenner surely.
Were you always trying to wind the babysitter up?
Probably be Ben Foster
There was no weekly bbc motd when I first became a footix around 1987 im almost sure. Only for fa cup weekends. Started back with the premier league in 92. Itv had the live matches and possibly no Saturday highlights show in the late 80s early 90s?
From another thread. @cheasty can you clear up this timeline please?
Match Of The Day and indeed all BBC sporting highlights programmes including The Championship on BBC NI used to have a slot at the start of the programme where they would give you a rundown of what was coming up over the course of the programme.
This typically was accompanied by atmosphere building incidental music, which was generally absolutely banging. Primal Screamâs "Donât Fight It, Feel It (Scat Mix) was one of the tunes typically used by Match Of The Day around 1992. Dreams by The Cranberries was used as the intro to Football Focus on Grandstand. The Even Better Than The Real Thing Perfecto Mix by U2 was another frequently used.
Sportsnight used a Waterboys tune as an atmosphere building sub-intro. This tune for me is inextricably linked with the crushing tension of November 17th, 1993. It made the football feel adult and extremely important and added to the air of crushing finality that the final night night of World Cup qualifying already had in abundance. Big boysâ stuff.
Then you had incidental music than nobody knew the name of, because it was made by some faceless producer and would never hear again until youâd go down a YouTube rabbit hole in 2023. Match Of The Day used this throughout the 1992/93 season as their atmosphere building sub-intro.
This was used as the sub-intro in the 1993/94 season.
You donât get these sort of atmosphere building sub-intros on sports programmes very much now. RTE did have one during the 2021 Olympics where they used the instrumental version of âHallucinateâ by Dua Lipa and it worked to devastating effect. They had one during the 2012 Olympics too which used a song called âLook At Me When I Rock With Youâ by The Black Kids and that also worked very well.
Itâs the little things that seasoned television sports watchers notice in terms of understanding what makes successful television sports coverage.
The lightning seeds was the goal of the month music for a few years.
No I was the model child and model citizen until I found the tfk.
I wine âem I dine âem Iâm Des Lynam
This is correct. ITV had regional highlights coverage of Division 1 matches on Saturday nights - ie. I watched Saturday night highlights of Manchester United 4 Arsenal 1 on the opening day of the 1989/90 season because I was in London on this particular day but you wouldnât see any of this this if you were tuned to Ulster Television.
I believe there was a Match Of The Day for league matches up to 1986 but it didnât exist in the 86/87 season. BBC showed an occasional live league match up to the end of the 87/88 season but ITV got exclusive rights for 88/89.
The The Free Kick?
We didnât have BBC in our house (thanks Mr Terry). On Saturdays my sisters used to go to Ăgras - an Irish language youth club - and then wander back to their friends house, the Kellyâs on Johns Hill. My father would then drive over to the Kellyâs with me to pick them up and we would watch Match of the Day with them before driving home.
I know most muldoons in late 1980s/early 1990s Ireland lived in 2 tv channel land but us eastern seaboard dwellers had access to BBC 1 & 2 Wales, HTV & S4C. As you alluded to, regional ITV stations had English league highlights & youâd have Elton Welsby hosting the midweek highlights show on Grenada with a particular focus on the Manchester & Liverpool clubs. But this often wasnât shown on HTV, which was a bugbear of mine around 1991.
Famously.
So famously they brought it back for a while in the 2010s.
Well lucky you having HTV, we had UTV and no football highlights at all apart from Portadown v Glenavon in the TNT Gold Cup Final at 10:40pm on a Tuesday night.