Just watched one from 23rd April 1983. Fulham v Leicester with L/C playing with Gary Lineker and Alan Smith up front. The pitch had patches covered in sand and other parts did not even have any grass on it. Todays footballers are so spoilt with the bowling greens they play on. Liverpool lost at home to Norwich and Mark Lawrenson scored a cracker of an own goal. Could not have happened to a better person.
Some good own goals in the old (pre back-pass rule) days. There was a great one in the Newcastle United v Blackburn Rovers goal highlights. Who thought it was a good idea to have Denis Law as a presenter? Whatever happened to the Thames Valley Royals who he informed us would be playing in division three in the 1983/4 season? The Brighton - Wednesday cup semi was brilliant. A reminder of the days when the competition really meant something to "lesser" clubs. It is clear from this series that Steve Coogan based Alan Partridges voice and mannerisms on a mix of Elton Welsby and Jim Rosenthal (check out Jim's hair!). Ironically, the actually Mr Sport for Anglia Television (Gerry Harrison) was a pretty good commentator.
I love when Brian Moore reads out the letters and gives the full addresses of the writers. Would never get away with that now.
Tickled me when Brian Moore mentioned a full time score involving Torquay who I should imagine were in Division 4 back in 1983. Can't quite see MOTD giving out a League 2 score on their Saturday evening show. 30 years from now I should imagine we will look back and have a laugh at today's matches.
i catch the big match now and again, brings back some great memories! i watched a liverpool game the other day and in my opinion players like dalglish, rush and fowler were as good on their day as players like suarez today, i know the game is different from then and now but dalglish was excellent! in full flow.
The Tottenham v Liverpool game on the other week was brilliant. Glenn Hoddle really was very good. In recent matches, "19 year old Andrew Goram" was in goal for Oldham against Fulham.
Was that the one when Steve Archibald scored two and almost got the hatrick ? Loved Hoddle with his laid back image. Shirt out of his shorts and socks rolled down with no shin pads. How times have changed.
I watched that as well.Steve Archibald had his shirt out of his shorts that looked so small you'd think he wasn't wearing any.
I must be getting an old git because I think the modern baggy shorts are ridiculous, and I on Saturday's I end up rummaging in the kit bag for something that doesn't end up around my knees. Tottenham started the "baggy shorts" revival in the 1991 cup final and were widely mocked at the time: Actually, I think shorts reached a reasonable size about 1993/4 or so before going from one extreme to the other. Back to the "Big Match", and I never realised Fulham's doomed promotion bid in 1983 ended in such controversial circumstances, with the crowd virtually on the pitch and taking kicks at players in the last 10 minutes. I can't understand for the life of me why a) Derby weren't deducted points and b) why the game wasn't re-played behind closed doors given what went on. Also, in that last game, where were the Fulham fans? The away terrace was empty. Were they on the popular side or in the seats behind the away terrace? The crowd at Craven Cottage for the last home game was small (looked about 10,000 or so with an empty Putney Game) given the importance of the fixture. Shows Fulham's poor travelling support is not just a modern phenomenon.
Fred Dinenage. Renaissance Man. Oh for the days when sports programmes were promoted by a dilettante like Fred. What a gloriously Partridge-esque career. Writing the Kray's autobiographies and narrating trainspotting videos. Brilliant: "Frederick Edgar Dinenage,[1] MBE (born 8 June 1942) is a British television host and newsreader. Dinenage has appeared as presenter of many British television programmes (most of them produced by Southern Television and its successors TVS and Meridian), such as Tell The Truth, How and its successor How 2, as well as the BBC quiz show Pass The Buck and Gambit (produced by Anglia). He is also a well-respected newsreader, for many years presenting ITV News Meridian (formerly known as Meridian Tonight) for ITV Meridian, alongside Debbie Thrower. He joined ITV Meridian in 1993, though he was inherited as chief male anchor of ITV News Meridian's predecessor programme Coast To Coast, on the TVS franchise which preceded Meridian. He co-hosted Coast To Coast alongside Fern Britton and Mai Davies, and Meridian Tonight alongside Natasha Kaplinsky, Debbie Thrower, and Jane Wyatt.[2] Dinenage was born in Birmingham. He spent a brief period in the late 1970s covering regional sport for Yorkshire Television. He also appeared as a relief presenter of the networked ITV Saturday afternoon show, World of Sport, something which earned him an appearance on the high energy, anarchic children's Saturday show Tiswas. He also has his own weekly column featured on the magazine of the Southampton local newspaper Southern Daily Echo. Alongside his television career, Dinenage has written several factual books, including ghosting on autobiographies My Story and Our Story for the Kray twins. He is a keen football follower and was on the board of directors at Portsmouth FC for a number of years. He was a team captain on the ITV game show Never Had It So Good, shown in 2002. He also narrated Drivers eye views for railway filming company "Video 125", the most notable ones being Wessex, Connex Express, The Uckfield Thumper, The Royal Scot (Parts 1 & 2) & The Flying Scotsman (Parts 1 & 2). Dinenage became co-anchor of a new pan-regional edition of ITV News Meridian on Monday 9 February 2009, presenting alongside former South East anchor Sangeeta Bhabra. Dinenage was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours.[3] Fred Dinenage: Murder Casebook, a crime documentary series on twentieth century murders began airing on the Crime And Investigation channel in 2011" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Dinenage
Fulham appeared to be absolutely robbed. If that happened now it would be in the news for months. I suppose there's something to be said for the Football League at the time that they had made the decision by the middle of the week and that was it. Do any of the older members actually remember any furor surrounding it? It was a year before I was born.
I remember it but had forgotten there were 90 minutes left and as TrueShrew said a quick decision was made and that was that.
I wish ITV 4 wouldn't keep putting this on at such varied times,i'm sure they would get more viewers if it was on once a week on a set day and time.
I watch this programme just to look at the old grounds. FA cup was special in those days, its nothing now until you get to the quarters. ps I was at that Sunderland game Taffy, they reckon around 15,000 Mackems were there that day.
Why are ITV only repeating the second half of the 1978/9 and 1982/3 seasons? Both were boring seasons where Liverpool won the league easily. Do they have any other games in the archive?
Those are the only ones they have shown since originally re-showing them in 2008. I'd love to see some of the other ones as I'm fascinated by football in that time period (I wasn't born until 84). I'm also majorly intrigued by the 85-90 years as I know so little about those years. A good watch on Youtube are the BBC's Match of the 70s, 80s and 90s. Especially the 80s ones with Danny Baker. No video, but this website appears quite interesting if you are a bit of an anorak - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/ITVfootball68-83.html
Not a great deal of football on the telly in the 1985-90 era. I don't think my team (Shrewsbury Town) were featured on the television at all, apart from the occasional goal round-up on Midlands Today or Central News (usually when we were playing one of the "big" Midlands teams). That was despite being a second division side until 1989, with some exciting last day avoidance of relegation, and a league cup quarter final, plus regular derbies v West Brom, Stoke, Birmingham, Villa etc. 1985/6 was the (in)famous post Bradford and Heysel season when there was no football on television at all until after Christmas (BBC and ITV refused to pay the relatively piddling sums (£2m or so) that the Football League asked for in TV rights - in the end the Football League backed down). That was the year that interest in American Football peaked, largely because the Sunday night highlights of the previous weekend's NFL game of the week was virtually the only sport on television! From the start of the 1986/7 BBC and ITV started to give up on recorded highlights and showed live matches, nearly all featuring Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Everton, Tottenham etc. The league cup final also switched to a Sunday and was shown live. 1988 and ITV got exclusive rights to league football, which meant 18 live league games a season, and that was it (apart from the odd regional highlights, and FA Cup games on the BBC). Oh, and Barclays "goals of the day" which was squeezed in between two advert breaks and analysis in the (then) 10 minute half-time interval. ITV did however give us the possibly the greatest piece of live football telly ever in May 1989, and the direction for football on TV had been set. In 1990 the BBC showed the FA Cup semi-finals live for the first time. Palace 4-3 Liverpool (AET), then Manchester United 3-3 Oldham Athletic (AET). Again brilliant telly, but sadly set-up the events of 1992 and the end of football as we know it.
