Peter Brackley
The voice of Italian football on British television in the 1990s
PETER BRACKLEY, who has died aged 67, was a football commentator who went to six World Cups and numerous European Championships for both the BBC and ITV, but is probably best remembered, at least among a certain generation, as the voice of Channel 4’s Football Italia in the 1990s.
The programme hit British screens in 1992, when football was entering its modern phase of gaudy ubiquity. The Premier League was about to launch, and Paul Gascoigne, who had taken centre stage in the nation’s sporting consciousness at the 1990 World Cup, had decamped amid much fanfare to Italy.
Brackley had the task of generating the excitement while watching the game on a monitor and broadcasting from a tiny, windowless studio in Soho, most often with Ray Wilkins as summariser and straight man. But with his measured, slightly gravelly tones, relishing every syllable of the players’ names, Brackley – once named by Kenneth Wolstenholme as his own favourite commentator – became an indispensable part of the action.
Few suspected he was not there in person. “I was even refused house insurance,” he recalled, “because the agent said it was too risky with me being abroad each weekend.”
Peter Brackley was born at Brighton on June 13 1951, and began his career at BBC Radio Brighton before switching to London. He presented Sport on Two and Sports Report, and commentated on two FA Cup finals and the 1982 European Cup final, won by Aston Villa.
That year Brackley moved to television, replacing Hugh Johns at the ITV company, Central, and making his debut for Manchester United v Sheffield Wednesday in April 1986. The following month he kept a cool head at the European Cup final between Barcelona and Steaua Bucharest. He was the anchorman in the studio with the pundit, Ron Atkinson, when the link with Brian Moore and Kevin Keegan in the commentary box went down, seamlessly filling in until the link could be restored.
For the ITV network Brackley commentated on the 1984 European Championship and the 1986 World Cup, but remained behind Brian Moore, Martin Tyler and Alan Parry in the pecking order, and so joined the nascent Sky Television.
He did most of his work there for Eurosport, which was then partly owned by Sky, and was their lead commentator at the 1990 World Cup. He was also in the chair for Sky’s own first live matches, in the now dimly remembered Zenith Data Systems Cup.
In 1992, as well as joining Football Italia, Brackley moved back to ITV which, having lost broadcast rights to the Premier League to Sky, was concentrating on the lower leagues. He also continued to commentate on internationals for ITV, his last World Cup being the 2006 tournament in Germany.
With a keen sense of humour, he was known for his impressions: once, when Jimmy Greaves was unable to appear on his Saint and Greavsie Saturday lunchtime show, Brackley imitated Greaves while crouching under the desk as a technician worked Greaves’s Spitting Image puppet above him. “What about football at your old club, Tottenham?” asked the programme’s co-presenter, Ian St John. “Good idea,” replied Brackley as Greaves.
He provided commentaries for the computer game Pro Evolution Soccer from 2001 until 2006, usually alongside Trevor Brooking, and he latterly enjoyed a career in front of live audiences, including appearing in George Best and Rodney Marsh’s stage show and touring with the comedians Mike Osman and Richard Digance. He had a column in the Brighton Argus and contributed a humorous blog to the website of Brighton and Hove Albion FC, of whom he was a devoted fan.
Peter Brackley was married to Jan; she survives him, along with their son and daughter.
Peter Brackley, born June 13 1951, died October 14 2018