The Big Match

The explosion of free to air TV channels sparked by the fantastic innovation “Freeview” has enabled the traditional broadcasters BBC and ITV to seriously expand their sports output.
Whilst the BBC sticks to using their additional channels to extend their coverage of events such as the Olympics, ITV has also used ITV4 to air some of their archive material.
In football terms this has largely come in the form of “The Big Match Revisited”, quite simply a repeat of an episode of the commercial broadcaster’s response to the BBC’s Match Of The Day.
However rather than pick a variety of episodes across the life of the show ITV has elected to stick with a particular season.
The reruns started about a year ago, going back fifteen years to the 1982-83 season. Some variety was offered by the fact that the different ITV regions broadcast different shows. At the time this gave ITV an advantage over the BBC who were stuck with three games nationwide whilst ITV would focus on a couple of local games with the added bonus of goals from other parts of the country. Additionally it also meant if you lived near the border of two regions you could catch two highlights programmes if the schedules were friendly, although to my eyes whatever the time of year it always seemed to be snowing in Southampton when my Dad tried to tune into the TVS version.
Maidenhead was home to London Weekend Television’s The Big Match hosted by the doyen of commentators Brian Moore (pictured top right with Jim Rosenthal). When I started watching TV in the 70s Match of the Day was out of bounds due to its late night scheduling (no bad thing as presenter Jimmy Hill was the stuff of childhood nightmares) whilst Moore would appear in the living room in the aftermath of Sunday’s roast dinner.
Coming across as a friendly Uncle, Moore was a product of the 50s, prone to hysterical outbursts such as “here come the madcaps” as the crowd invaded the pitch as was the style at the time.
Seen through today’s eyes the highlights shows are very tame, the extended highlights are quite dull compared to the delights we are served up today. Certainly football and I suppose the UK was a lot more pedestrian and much less exotic than today. The weekly episodes presented 1982-83 as the season Brighton got to Wembley,

and Fulham missed out on promotion to Division One when Derby fans invaded the pitch and got the game abandoned. Champions Liverpool barely featured so I guess they were mainly the province of MoTD that season.
The series started again at the turn of the year, this time going back to 1978-79, and already it seems to be rather more of a vintage year. The appetite was whetted by the classic Big Match theme full of brass, as opposed to the tinny electronica of 1983.

This had an unfortunate Pavlovian side effect of making me salivate for Roast Beef which was sadly not forthcoming from the kitchen. Instead I was served up a football feast: Manchester United 3 West Bromwich Albion 5, an astonishing game of football which saw West Brom’s Laurie Cunningham silence Old Trafford with a stunning performance.

Last week saw a big freeze with a studio debate about when games should be called off (plus ca change!), following Arsenal’s visit to Sheffield Wednesday which was most memorable for Pat Jennings being pelted with snowballs by the Hillsborough kop.

The series continues weekly on ITV4, with each episode shown on Thursday (twice) and Friday.