Radio Luxembourg… Sport on Two… Ceefax… and a nod to our Wes
The times they are a-changin’.
Life, football. And how the latter is reported, dissected, and discussed.
It doesn’t seem so very long ago that I might not have known the result of a midweek game involving Norwich until the following day’s newspaper dropped through the letter box. Then, joy of joys, it all became a little bit easier after Mum and Dad bought me a radio and I became, in an instant, one of the generation of school kids who listened to Radio Luxembourg under the sheets and blankets every night.
Or, and this is when it was easy to go to bed early, Sport On Two was on BBC Radio Two from around 8pm whenever there was a big night of football on.
Peter Jones, Maurice Eddleston and Jimmy Armfield.
Gary who?
I may now look back at those long but hugely enjoyable evenings turned into 1500m on the old long wave dial with suitably rose-tinted spectacles but, even in today’s multimedia age of 24/7 national and local TV and radio, of which I, against my wildest dreams at the time, now a small part of, I don’t think I have ever enjoyed a sports show quite so much as I did that one.
They would usually pick up live commentary of a game involving one of the English club sides in Europe midway through the first half before providing full and uninterrupted commentary of the entire second half with, after around 22 minutes or so, Peter would hand over to Mike or vice versa for the rest of the game.
Yet, as much as it was entertaining to listen to how ‘super-sub’ David Fairclough was taking on St Etienne on his own or how England were struggling to break down the massed blue ranks of the Italian defence at Wembley, my adrenaline levels would only soar to a peak when, after a passage of play had broken down, Bryon Butler would intone, “We hear there’s been a goal at Norwich, where the Canaries are playing Queens Park Rangers, over to Alan Parry at Carrow Road…”
