STELLING’S EXIT UNBELIEVABLE
TO a generation of football couch potatoes, it’s like ravens deserting the Tower of London.
Jeff Stelling’s decision to step down as host of Soccer Saturday at the end of the season is not just a hammer blow for Sky Sports.
For armchair fans, it feels like Saturday afternoons have been cancelled.
“I have loved doing it, and I can’t imagine not doing it,” said the unrivalled king of teleprinter score flashes.
“But I wanted to go out while I was sharp, and it is time to let somebody else have a go at what is the best job in the world.
“I wouldn’t want to get to the stage where I’m calling Raith Rovers ‘Roth Ravers’ and carry on to a point where viewers might think I’m past it.”
When he revealed his decision to abdicate on air, Stelling was given a standing ovation by his panel in the studio.
“I just wanted to make it as matter-of-fact as possible and get on with it,” he said. “There are still seven months of the season to go.”
For all his professionalism, Stelling’s resignation has the air of a full stop – like Richie Benaud signing off on Channel 4 at the Ashes in 2005.
Whoever takes over has an impossible act to follow, as Paddy Mcguinness has found out as Sue Barker’s successor on Question Of Sport.
But until the curtain falls, let’s just marvel at the genius of Soccer Saturday, which sounded a lousy concept at the outset but became unmissable.
Stelling, 66, who has anchored the show for 27 years, conducts an orchestra of ex-footballers watching games on monitors and shrieking when the goals go in.
He has turned many of his panel, and the platoon of reporters at matches, into cult stars, presiding over countless moments of TV gold.
Chris Kamara’s baffled look at Fratton Park, when Stelling informed him Portsmouth’s Anthony Vanden Borre had been sent off against Blackburn – and the anchorman in the studio knew before the touchline messenger – was unbelievable, Jeff.
And when his beloved Hartlepool were relegated out of the Football League four years ago, with Stelling hosting the programme in monkey-hanger blue and white stripes beneath his waistcoat, he laid bare the emotions every fan goes through.
Soccer Saturday, often imitated but never bettered, must now find a solution to the biggest setback of all.