Brian Moore’s role in a slick operation helping to turn soporific English Sundays into television football fiestas is recalled in a book reviewed by Eric Brown.
BY ERIC BROWN
During the 1970s, Brian Moore’s voice turned drab British Sundays into super Sundays for football fans.
Sundays were a bit of a desert for TV entertainment back then. Programme controllers regarded it as a day when prospective viewers would be at church, cleaning the car, mowing the lawn, clipping the hedge or visiting family. So they offered slim pickings on screen.
It was not until independent television decided to challenge BBC’s stranglehold over televised football that Sundays emerged from deep slumber.
Onto the scene sprang Moore, who became the face of London Weekend’s innovative Sunday football highlights programme The Big Match.
Moore, born in Benenden, Kent in 1932, was, like many commentators who followed his lead, a print journalist keen on breaking into broadcast media.
Cricket fan Moore got his big break when invited to assist legendary Daily Telegraph cricket correspondent Jim Swanton by driving him around and doing odd jobs.
This led to a post sub-editing on monthly magazine World Sports and a stint at Fleet Street sports news agency Exchange Telegraph.
From there, he went to The Times as a sub-editor and football reporter but hankered after a broadcasting role. Moore wrote to BBC Radio Sport’s Angus Mackay and graduated from triallist to a permanent role there.
Clear enunciation and descriptive narratives made Moore a popular commentator. Soon he received a telephone message from a “Hill” summoning him to lunch.
Thinking he had somehow upset BBC DG Lord Hill, he turned up to find Jimmy Hill waiting for him.
Jimmy Hill, newly appointed LWT Head of Sport, invited Moore to “climb a mountain with me.”
Moore accepted the challenge of presenting and commentating for a new programme to be called The Big Match.
His £5,000-a-year salary almost tripled his BBC wages and he was under pressure to justify this after Hill selected him ahead of Barry Davies.
Moore presented his first BIg Match commentary on 25 August 1968 when QPR faced champions Manchester City.
A key piece of the Sunday jigsaw was now in place but, as author Matt Eastley reminds the reader in ‘Brian Moore Saved Our Sundays: The Golden Age of Televised Football’, this is not a biography of the commentator.
Many of the characters involved in setting up regular ITV football in London and the regions graduated from writing about it.
Barry Davies, Hugh Johns, Keith Macklin, John Camkin, Gerald Sinstadt, Gerry Williams, Gary Newbon, Roger Malone, Peter Lorenzo, Martin Tyler and many more were among the pioneers.
Jimmy Hill played a more important role than anything he achieved for Fulham or Coventry City as Moore settled perfectly into the slick, fast-moving programme.
In London, the whole shebang was supervised by John Bromley along with brilliant director Bob Gardam, Jeff Foulser and the technical team.
Sundays were never the same again. Ask football fans of the 1970s about The Big Match and many of them will claim they can still smell the roast beef cooking as the signature tune starts.
Most of them will remember studio interviews with Brian Clough and the notorious spat between Alan Mullery and Malcolm Allison.
The author obviously spent many hours trawling through re-runs of early ITV matches whether The Big Match or regional equivalents like Match of the Week or Star Soccer to collate this excellent tour around regions awakening to the call for football highlights on Sundays.
It’s a gripping journey that will have readers wallowing in nostalgia as matches, personalities, interviews and characters are recalled with affection.
It’s not entirely without blemish, though. At one point we read of a goal scored for Southampton by Ray Davies. This should have been Ron Davies. Not a gremlin but perhaps a kink in the works.
Brian Moore Saved Our Sundays: The Golden Age of Televised Football by Matt Eastley, published by Pitch Publishing price £14.99.
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