A whole new ball game
The launch of the Premier League changed British TV coverage forever – but the modernisation started at Italia 90
So far the Premier League has failed to capture the imagination of an English football public not fooled by a change of label and the accompanying hype.
David Lacey, The Guardian, October 1992
Just make it fucking good.
Dave Hill, executive producer, Sky Sports, 1992
It is unclear whether or not he was booked by BBC Scotland to do the job in advance but either way, Andy Gray was at a loose end on Sunday, 26 October 1986, the day of the Scottish League Cup final. He had been injured for Aston Villa two weeks earlier in a 3-1 win over Southampton and, in fact, he had been missing for the first two months of the season, in which time he also managed to fit in another date for his new venture.
For both the first Old Firm league game of the season at the end of August and now at Hampden for the final – wearing a quite phenomenal jumper in a caravan with Dougie Donnelly – Gray was present to give his thoughts and analysis at the interval and at the close of play. The same passion for the game that characterised his broadcasting career was evident then as it would be 30 years later but there were only brief hints of the ability to explain and dissect the action, the talent that would later change the whole picture for those watching at home.
Gray was almost wholly descriptive in those early forays into television and so often used that well-worn trope of the senior professional approaching retirement – “‘the boy Ferguson”’ or “‘the kid Durrant”’. He would improve markedly, however, and in doing so would help change the way an entire generation consumed their sporting obsession and, as a result, change the way they looked at their first footballing love.
In 1986, Scottish football’s fraught and distrustful relationship with live television ensured one thing: the game and its success stories were protected from the reality of the outside world. As a result it felt that touch more special and meaningful, with no live action being beamed into houses every weekend which consistently highlighted a very different standard on show elsewhere. In a way the League Cup Final, taking place as it did on the last weekend in October – when the clocks go back in Britain – was a perfect example of that sense of exceptionalism. No other country was handing out silverware at this time of year, with the drama of the final always concluding under floodlights as the Glasgow skies darkened around them. With little with which to compare, it meant the world to fans at home, especially young ones for whom it was deemed too soon to enter the fray of the national stadium.
On the very same afternoon in Rome, Diego Maradona scored the only goal of the game to secure Napoli a win over Roma and put them top of Serie A, where they would not be replaced for the rest of the season. Before the match, those famous warm-up ball-juggling skills were on dazzling show but viewers in the United Kingdom would only see them later in the 1989 film on the man, Live is Life. On that Sunday he might as well have been playing on the moon. For all the snippets of action that would find their way up here and even the summer festivals of international contests that would be shown every two years, this was where the footballing world began and ended and therefore the results meant so much more.
The doors to this world were only open late on a Saturday night and early on a Sunday evening as BBC Scotland and STV shared highlights on those respective slots, ensuring an interminable wait for fans whose side were covered by STV’s Scotsport that weekend. The only regular live action was exclusively for the ears and for that, most fans tuned into Radio Clyde, which had the rights to broadcast the final five minutes of the first half and the second half live. With the increased use of portable transistor radios, fans were kept up to date with action elsewhere while they were at their own team’s match, in the days when almost all games were played at the same time.
In addition to that was Open Line which became a fixture of journeys home from the game in the car. Introduced by Richard Park and Paul Cooney in the mid-1980s, it was another feature that the former had brought to the station from his time in the USA, as well as background music to goals in a post-match round-up. It ensued rampaging arguments but ones which were mostly entertaining. Its 21st-century iteration may have become a haven for opposition fans to feast on the misery of their rivals and their crackpot theories but, for several years, that hour between 5pm and 6pm on a Saturday was the home of some genuine debate and good humour, and all of that simply bound this closed community even tighter. Before social media ensured that public debate never ended – and so could only get worse – here was a defined time and place for it all to take place live and, as such, it was almost a national appointment.
With three outlets came three voices. There were others in a supporting cast but the trifecta of Archie Macpherson, Jock Brown and Gerry McNee was unsurpassed as the chief narrators of our national game throughout this period. Macpherson was the elder statesman of the three, a school teacher by profession, and via his early broadcasting the career with the BBC he had the bigger international distinction1. Taking the lead from David Coleman and Brian Moore – the doyens of 1970s commentary – Macpherson’s narration was often a case of “less is more” but no less authoritative with it. “It’s there” or “2-1” is often all you would get, in calm tones as Macpherson would allow the match atmosphere to escape through the television set and into millions of homes.
Even when the words were dramatic, the voice rarely seemed to rise, always keeping things in scholarly check. In the future he would be parodied on BBC Scotland’s Only An Excuse comedy sketch show with his famous, excitable “Woof!”, but that was perhaps only relevant later in his career as he moved with the times as the production of live football reached heightened levels of sensationalism.
Jock Brown was already there. The practising solicitor and partner at law was far more verbose on STV than his BBC counterpart. The big-match moments were matched by his excitement and quickfire levels of description but his real talent, perhaps understandably, was in his summing up. “A goal made in England” was the perfect response, in the moment, to capture Ray Wilkins’ volley against Celtic at Ibrox in August 1988 as the match and the balance of power in Scotland swung sharply as Rangers won 5-1 and didn’t look back for a decade. It was an iconic moment – he knew it – and his words made as indelible a mark on the minds of those who watched those highlights as the goal itself. Like so many moments in television coverage of sport, when the words match the pictures so perfectly, immortality often beckons.
Originally on Radio Clyde, Gerry McNee didn’t have pictures with which to work. The self-appointed ‘Voice of Football’ was the journalist and columnist made manifest on the airwaves. His tone had more than a little hint of pomposity about it and describing the action was never enough. Opinion had to be part of the narrative, especially when there was a phone-in to excite the masses about. This meant that he had to take sides more obviously than his colleagues on other stations and the man who had grown up supporting Celtic – who had written books about them – perhaps felt an acute need to poke and provoke his boyhood club on air and in print.
Later, as the 1990s unfolded, he would manage to deal with the cognitive dissonance of his weekly criticism of Rangers midfielder Paul Gascoigne – which reached the almost dehumanising stage of McNee refusing to call him by his name and instead using the moniker “Number Eight” – and his energised and passionate commentary of the Englishman’s title-winning hat-trick in 1996. It was almost as if this was all an act.
All three men swapped microphones in 1990, with Macpherson making the move to radio, McNeee to television and Brown the jump from STV to BBC. It was also a summer that was a significant plot point in the quickening development of football coverage throughout the country. Before then, exposure to live football in Scotland was very limited. In 1986-87 Scottish fans were treated to eight live matches and five of those were due only to Dundee United’s run to the two-legged Uefa Cup Final. European finals were only live if there was a British interest – which extended to Terry Venables managing Barcelona in the 1986 European Cup Final against Steaua Bucharest – but between 1987 and 1991 there was very little in the way of live coverage. This meant that in Scotland, unless you had some nascent satellite technology, the great AC Milan side of 1988-1990 were only accessible in snapshots, with their two European Cup finals coming to us via Sportsnight highlights.
English football was also restricted. Live FA Cup finals in the 1980s were only shown if there was a replay due to the clash of dates with the Scottish Cup Final2 and even when the Football League finally saw the full opportunities that television had when it sold the rights to ITV for £44m in exchange for live Sunday matches from October 1988 to May 19923, it still didn’t apply north of the border apart from the odd exception, such as the incredible Friday night denouement of the 1988-89 season at Anfield. Manchester United drew 1-1 with Everton at Goodison Park on Sunday, 30 October 1988 – the first live Sunday match in this new deal – but viewers in Scotland had to make do with Broadway Serenade from 1939.
It was all done deliberately to protect the mystique of the domestic story, like some kind of Soviet sporting paradise. It wouldn’t be long, however, until our own wall came crashing down.
With the World Cup being held in Italy in the summer of 1990, the floodgates opened and everything began to change. Live football was now on every day for a whole month and crucially with ideal kick-off times4. Arguably the only World Cup to have ever taken place in a country that was the sport’s epicentre at the time of the tournament, there can be criticism over the quality of attacking football but absolutely none about the sheer drama that seemed to unfold on a daily basis and it was the coverage of this that changed the game in broadcasting.
The BBC’s touch was operatic as Luciano Pavarotti’s version of Nessun Dorma became the soundtrack to the summer. It was not, however, overdone and – for the 1990s at least – this balance was struck perfectly with Puccini, Bernstein and Faure before the tipping point was reached in the 21st century and Bolton v West Ham would be sold as the imminent apocalypse. Then, however, there was an understanding that sport produces a kind of tension that no writer possibly can.
Pavarotti’s contribution simply amplified the action and, with Toto Schillachi’s eyes and Paul Gascoigne’s tears, they engaged the middle classes and made football executives realise that the solution to the carnage and violence of the 1970s and 1980s had been staring them in the face from the corner of the living room all along. Make the event an attractive one and people will want to be a part of it. In England they did, and soon enough the draw that Rangers had enjoyed since the revolution started would quickly weaken.
Our understanding of the game was changing too. Because the main feed came from the Italian broadcaster RAI, there was more emphasis on on-screen statistics and the concepts of tactical shape were discussed in more detail during the coverage. Every live game in Scotland until the Scottish Cup final of 1990 had shown the team line-ups in either a vertical or horizontal line but on the first day of the 1990-91 season, the BBC highlights of Rangers v Dunfermline had the teams shown in formation.
Even before the big bang of 1992, Sky could go into depth that terrestrial television couldn’t do simply because it had the space to fill. Law changes – a feature of the game that would gather pace – were better discussed and as a result, left the audience better informed. In September 1991 there was a perfect example when the Scottish football media were up in arms about a red card that Pieter Huistra did not receive in an Old Firm game at Parkhead. The Footballer’s Football Show – a panel discussion format on Sky – was able to easily explain how the new FIFA directives meant that, as Gary Stevens was sweeping up behind, it wasn’t a sending-off offence. Small steps perhaps, but it was the start of an acceptance that fans could cope with more detail. It wouldn’t be slow in coming.
For things to get better for those watching at home, they first had to become horrific for those who dared to enter the grounds. The Hillsborough disaster in April 1989 was finally English football’s nadir, the moment whereby it couldn’t ignore its decay any longer. Most of the requirements to changes in stadia contained in Lord Justice Taylor’s report would no doubt have happened gradually without the tragedy, but it ensured that the pace of change had to be more rapid. The Taylor Report shaped how English football would look by the end of the 1990s but there was now a sudden need to pay for that renovation. English clubs, especially the Big Five of Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Everton, were forced to realise the market potential that their product had always had. Encouraged by Greg Dyke at ITV, who wanted to ensure the biggest sides were playing if he was paying, talks of a breakaway started soon after the World Cup but there was an initial challenge in bringing along the rest.
The Football Association, at the time no great friends of the Football League, produced a document in April 1991 that recommended a Premier League in the best interests of English football but it wasn’t until the spring of 1992 the split finally happened and the English Premier League would be born the following season. News of this announcement sparked panic in the Ibrox boardroom as frantic phone calls were made to the Football League, asking, “What happened to the British Super League that we had talked about?” That ship had sailed, leaving Rangers high and dry.
The race to win the broadcasting contract was almost as dramatic as the coverage they would provide as Sky gazumped ITV at the 11th hour with a massive £304m bid. It was alleged by Dyke that Sky had been tipped off about ITV’s bid by the then Tottenham chairman Alan Sugar, whose company Amstrad happened to make the satellite receivers for Rupert Murdoch’s enterprise, when he was overheard on his mobile phone encouraging the person at the other end to “blow them out the water”5. It all paved the way for 1992 being the year of lift-off, where that shelter that Scottish football enjoyed was blown away by the introduction of four different game-changers in the way a new generation of supporters would consume the game.
On Sunday, 16 August 1992, the first Super Sunday was broadcast on Sky, with Monday Night Football – fireworks, cheerleaders, live half-time music and all – following on the next evening6. The television ideas, like much of the new stadium redevelopment and matchday experience, were drawn from the success of NFL in the UK throughout the 1980s. Sky were always likely to market the new Premier League well and with little modesty but, crucially, they added depth and Andy Gray, now out of the ridiculous knitwear and into a suit or polo shirt, was the man who provided it.
Andy Melvin was the deputy head of Sky Sports and was tasked with producing the new Premier League coverage. He recalled a conversation a few years before with Gray and David Livingstone – who at the time was presenting football and golf for Sky – in a Glasgow pub, where he asked the former international footballer what the difference really was between playing with a back three and back four. Gray moved around the empty beer bottles on the table to graphically demonstrate it in a way that Melvin would understand. When the new deal commenced, he was asked to do that on television, but this time using a Subbuteo pitch pinned to a table and black and white draught checkers while talking to a current player in their club’s kit room about what went right and wrong the previous week. Andy Gray’s Boot Room was at 30-minute weekly show about football tactics in a time where the subject barely received a passing mention.
Rudimentary production values perhaps, but it was the start of a much-needed revolution in how the British media talked about their game.
The rest of Sky’s production values were ground-breaking, however, such as multi-angle instant replays in the gantry as well as for the viewers and the permanent clock and live score box in the top-right corner of the screen. It was a huge gamble for Sky – already haemorrhaging £1m a week for the Murdoch empire, they were 500,000 subscribers away from breaking even and were now forced to bid £30m more than planned for this new football league – but it paid off handsomely and millions flocked to watch the regular coverage.
Even for those without a dish, the renewed Match of the Day on BBC1 every Saturday night gave viewers a better and quicker highlights package than the previous wait for Saint and Greavsie the following Saturday lunchtime as it had been under the ITV deal. Fans north of the border were effectively drawn towards a new television drama and, as such, were forced to choose their own heroes and villains. Scottish fans having a soft spot for an English club was nothing new but those numbers increased dramatically – especially among casual supporters – as did the replica kits on show. Kids at school in the 1990s had to have an English team.
They also had to have an Italian one. Serie A coverage wasn’t new – it had been available to viewers in Wales on SC4 since 1988 and BSB and Sky had shown games sporadically before 1992 as well – but Channel 4’s decision to buy the rights for live coverage was another huge moment in how the sport was shown in this country. Originally Michael Grade, chief executive of the channel between 1988 and 1997, had wanted to show only Lazio games, following the transfer for Paul Gascoigne from Tottenham, but that wasn’t contractually possible so, with the success and impact of the World Cup still fresh in the mind, he decided to take the lot.
Serie A was, by some considerable distance, the best league on the planet, and from Sunday, 6 September 1992, when Lazio drew 3-3 away to Sampdoria, the greatest players in the world were on display every weekend on terrestrial television. The live Sunday match would often get ratings of three million and the highlights package Gazzetta – presented by James Richardson – would get 800,000 viewers on a Saturday morning, usually the preserve of children’s programming. It was a surprise hit and the footballing public would further quench their burgeoning thirst for continental knowledge and appreciation that year when ITV spent some of what it had earmarked for the Premier League on the new Uefa Champions League. Viewers had felt lucky just to see the European Cup final live in recent seasons and now there would be live coverage of the top level of European club football from the autumn through to the spring. Foreign superstars were no longer only accessible every four years at a World Cup or on selected highlights here and there. They were now a fixture of the living room and a deeper part of the footballing conversation.
This was also the season where the new backpass law was introduced, meaning that goalkeepers would have to use their feet if the ball was passed to them. This was done to curb time-wasting, the most egregious of which happened in the World Cup where the Republic of Ireland drew 0-0 with Egypt and Pat Bonner had the ball in his hands for six minutes in total. Even the laws of the game were being changed for the sake of entertainment, just as football effectively became one big television series.
The final revolutionary introduction into the football media in 1992 helped to broaden that conversation even further. Prior to this footballing Year Zero, the beautiful game’s adaptation to the computer screen had been basic at best. Management simulations that allowed users to make an unenforced substitution were considered futuristic but the release of Championship Manager was the start of a phenomenon. Written by two brothers – Paul and Oliver Collyer – from their bedroom, it became more than just a wildly popular and addictive computer game.
As the series developed, it ensured that a generation needed to have a grasp of the more abstract elements of the game as well as going through the emotional highs and lows for 36 hours on end when they should have been studying for exams. Formational tweaks soon became established parts of the lexicon and, even at its most basic level, fans started to associate numbers with performance and attributes.
The general information that could be gained of players from leagues further afield than those shown live on a Sunday afternoon was so prevalent that some clubs used the game engine as a basic scouting platform. Ordinary supporters had more knowledge about the game of football than they had ever had before and it is hard to conceive of such a welcome reaction to the more in-depth analytical writing of Jonathan Wilson and Michael Cox in the late 2000s had it not been for the rise of the manager games in the 1990s. From the terracing to the car, the living room to the bedroom, the television to the computer monitor, football consumption was becoming all-pervasive.
Scottish football fans have always known who the greatest players in the world were and what wider trends were taking place in the game. It is not as if there was a complete blackout before 1992. However, the impact of consistent live football and quality highlights from different leagues cannot be underestimated. From having eight live matches in Scotland in 1986-87, all involving a Scottish club, and rarely reaching double figures throughout the next five seasons, to reaching over 80 in 1992-93 – where the best the world had to offer were on show on a regular basis – is an incredible jump.
All of sudden Rangers faced competition for a generation with only so much bandwidth with which to download all of this football. It wasn’t direct competition – even those with two or three teams and all their replica strips would still prioritise the Ibrox club in their affections – but often it is the indirect competition that can be more significant in the longer run. The success of the Rangers revolution was arguably amplified in the imagination of those who savoured it because it took place behind this curtain of protection. But in the 1990s, the footballing world would suddenly seem a lot wider. Yes, Rangers were kings, but of a smaller castle now that more and more were looking at it through a new lens.
A generation of supporters would now grow up being all too aware of the real benchmarks of success. Scotland wasn’t enough now that they had seen what else was on offer and, in turn, Rangers would be held to different standards and with less patience than ever before. It was a generation who also grew up believing that they knew best when it came to who Rangers should be signing or the formational adjustments that the manager simply needed to make, solely off the back of a good cup run on a computer simulation. If they knew all about the anticipation and flair of a new Algerian forward, then why the hell didn’t Walter Smith?
It wasn’t just the younger generation, however. The success of football’s new dawn was based on huge audiences tuning in and subscribing. In the summer of 1995, one contributor to Follow, Follow fanzine wrote to say that not even the arrival of Paul Gascoigne would tempt him to renew his season ticket, “It’s not enough to beat poor opposition by the odd goal. Entertainment is the name of the game, with the trophies being won in style. I have succumbed to the temptations of Sky TV and now have the power to watch games with more verve or simply switch channels if they show the lack of interest like that in the recent Old Firm game.”
After years of grainy footage and miserly access to the main events, we gorged ourselves silly on what was suddenly on offer and in so doing, helped feed the monster that would keep Rangers, and Scottish football, in the shadows for the foreseeable future.
This is an extract from Revolution: Rangers 1986-92 by Martyn Ramsay
His commentary of Archie Gemmill’s goal against the Netherlands in the 1978 World Cup gained even greater fame following the release of Trainspotting.
Only six FA Cup finals were seen live in Scotland before 1992 and four of those were replays.
There had been live Sunday fixtures since 1983 but not on this level and relationships were fractious, as exemplified by the blackout strike during 1985-86.
Eurosport was still the only channel to screen every game of the tournament, as it would be in 1994. It wasn’t until 1998 that BBC and ITV combined to provide access to the whole finals.
Tottenham were only club in the Big Five to vote for the Sky deal, the rest staying loyal to Dyke and ITV.
Teddy Sheringham scored the only goal of Super Sunday, his last for Nottingham Forest before his move to Spurs, as Liverpool lost at the City Ground. Manchester City then drew 1-1 with QPR on the Monday night at Maine Road.