One of my main problems with my experiences of Sunday football 1968 -75 (the book’s chosen timescale) was the commentator assigned to the North West/'Granada' region. Gerald Sinstadt was evidently a decent fellow (despite his porno-cinema 'self-pleasuring' arrest), and his commentaries were generally … OK. But every time I heard the brilliant Brian Moore (LWT) or Hugh Johns (ATV), I realised that Granada’s Football (what an imaginative title that was) or The Kick Off Match were vastly inferior experiences to those programmes enjoyed by Midlands football fans (Star Soccer) or those from London and its environs (The Big Match*).

In many ways, the book’s title gives the game away. BMSOS is a paean to Brian Moore himself – not just his abilities as a football commentator, but also (and more importantly) as a George Bailey character, beloved by all he met, and with an unfailing ability to put people at their ease and make ordinary folk feel special. The anecdote (furnished by Moore’s son Chris) that tells of Brian Moore taking Wimbledon cup hero goalkeeper Dickie Guy home for his Sunday dinner is just plain lovely.

Matt Eastley’s book looks at the rise (and occasional fall) of televised football in the regions. I’m not sure how interesting a non 50+ (usually) male reader would find the history of football coverage in the Westward (Plymouth, Exeter, Torquay) region, or the politics of Anglia TV’s (Ipswich, Norwich, er, Colchester) football coverage, but I was hooked – and completed the book’s 300+ pages in a couple of days.

Matt writes at great length of how The Big Match (his Sunday TV experience) slotted in perfectly to the rituals of 1970s Sunday life, with its church services and Sunday roasts,** and everything else about Sunday life and TV being deadly dull. Such specificity and assumption-making could have easily slipped into the cosy world of 70s reminiscences, but the writer creates a joyous worldview where life may have been just that little bit easier, because life was (perhaps) simpler.

It's all relative, of course. Never for one moment did I say or think (‘back then’) I’m glad it’s 1974 – things are so simple, now! God help me in the future! But I understand that nostalgia helps to frame our memories and (again, maybe) helps us to improve our understanding of our passions, our loved ones and relationships through contextualisation – albeit a contextualisation that might be very, very wrong.

A tiny bit of editing may have helped (“all over it like a rash” turns up at least twice, and Ray Davies certainly did not play up front for Southampton, but Brian Moore Saved Our Sundays is a tremendous slice of social, sporting and media history, and I’m really looking forward to the next instalment. (Especially 1977-79, when Everton were ace!)

*La Soiree - the third The Big Match theme -was only bettered by Rich Man, Poor Man in the world of 1970s TV themes.
**Roasts/Roast ‘dinners’ were, are, and always will be … shit!

SV 17.11.24