Journey of the Lord’s Taverners class of ‘02
WHAT has happened to the football panel of 2002 pictured here for my first Lord’s Taverners Christmas Lunch? I am President of the Lord’s Taverners West Midlands region and have hosted 17 to date – two years missing through Covid.
The first one took place in the old function room below the old committee box at Edgbaston Cricket Ground.
Apart from two years during the stadium’s rebuild, the event has always been held at the cricket charity’s spiritual Birmingham home.
Much money has been raised with people with disabilities wanting to play sport particularly benefiting in recent years.
The line-up for that inaugural lunch is captioned on this page. All great friends of mine including the lunch organiser Norman Gascoigne who went on to be a successful and popular chairman of Warwickshire County Cricket Club. He has attended every Lord’s Taverners sports lunch to date. The rest? Broadcaster Jim Rosenthal has been at the NEC this week commentating on Channel 4’s coverage of Crufts – a role he has enjoyed since 2014.
Jim is from Oxford and supports the football club where he was a director for two years.
Now 74, he began his broadcasting career in 1972 in Birmingham with Radio WM before moving to BBC Radio 2 in London.
His career in television with ITV is distinguished. He covered eight football World Cups, three rugby World Cups including England’s 2003 victory, two Olympic Games, 150 Formula 1 Grand Prix, many big boxing contests and top athletics events.
Jim was twice named Sports Presenter of the Year by the Royal Television Society and currently presents some of Amazon Prime’s Premier League coverage. He should,
Much money has been raised with people with disabilities wanting to play sport particularly benefiting in recent years.
in my opinion, be doing far more. His son Tom is a successful comedian and star of both Channel 4’s Friday Night Dinners and ITV’S Plebs.
There’s two outstanding football co-commentators who fell foul for different reasons, who once worked together at Aston Villa.
Andy Gray was assistant to manager Ron Atkinson. Andy was a trophy-winning great centre-forward for Villa (League Cup final, 1977) where he was voted both PFA Player and Young Player of the Year.
Manager Ron Saunders, who did not like Gray, cruelly made Gray stay at home. I was with the Outside Broadcast Unit at his home to link him to London for ITV’S live coverage of the awards dinner. Andy went on to score the only goal in Wolves’ League Cup win over Nottingham Forest at Wembley in 1980 before picking up more trophies at Everton – the old League title in 1985 and the European Cup Winners’ Cup in the same year.
He won the FA Cup with Everton the previous season before going on to win the Scottish Premier League with Rangers in 1989.
During his Everton days he began his career as a football pundit with me at ATV, stepping in when Jimmy Greaves was not available.
He was one of my team captains in ITV’S Sporting Triangles quiz show.
Gray was always loyal but I did not have room to accommodate him after that so he joined BSB which morphed into Sky Sports.
He was simply brilliant as a pundit and co-commentator but fell foul,
making a sexist remark when he thought the mic was off. He was sacked by Sky Sports. He and his TV partner Richard Keys joined TALKSPORT before both signing to present bein SPORTS coverage in Doha in July 2013.
Now 66, Gray is still going strong with Keys on a lucrative contract while most of their colleagues at Sky are, for a variety of reasons, no longer with the station.
Another fine and popular co-commentator Ron Atkinson make a disastrous if muffled off-air racist remark in April 2004 and had to resign two days later. Both were crass, insulting remarks but no forgiveness for them in this country.
As a player Ron is still the record appearance holder for Oxford United, playing over 500 games as a wing-half known as “The Tank”.
He is the only player to captain the
same club from the Southern League to the Football League’s Second Division in six years. He prefers a quiz question about which is the only British manager – he was in charge of nine different clubs – to win England’s major domestic cups with three different clubs! The answer, of course, is Big Ron himself – Manchester United twice, winning the FA Cup in 1983 and 1985, and the
League Cup with both Sheffield Wednesday in 1991 and Aston Villa in 1994.
The king of the one liners, Ron fell foul with that off-air remark in 2004 in Monaco. I was the interviewer and did not even know he said it.
Ron and I have been close friends since 1971 and always will be. Ron will be 83 on Friday.
Andy Townsend and Trevor
Francis are close as well and I will write about them next week.