Who remembers The Big Match show?

There exists on iTunes a short instrumental piece entitled “La Soiree” by David Ordini. I would bet that a whole generation of Australian kids and their English counterparts who grew up football-mad in the 1970s would know it as the most popular and widely-remembered theme music to London Weekend/ITV’s English football program, The Big Match.

I was too young to be allowed to stay up for The Big Match, given its timeslot of about 10pm on a Wednesday night, except during school holidays.

And right there, in about 1973, I fell totally and completely in love with what we now call football, but was then called football, and couldn’t wait for the school term to finish.

I don’t think I’m alone, and certainly I wasn’t back then.

Even non-football-playing school friends could hum the theme and watched with interest possibly less avid than my own, as the English leagues were brought to our black and white TV screens each week, presented by the greatest commentator who ever lived, Brian Moore.

“The Big Match” actually kicked off in 1968 and ran under that name for 20 years. London Weekend was a regional station of ITV, serving London and the Home Counties.

Jimmy Hill got his start on the program before leaving to take the helm of the BBC’s “Match Of The Day.”

By the time I was hooked, I cared not one iota the reason for London clubs being in the main match every week (it took me a little while to work out that London Weekend might have a leaning towards London clubs). I was at the age where a young mind absorbs information like a sponge.

To this day, I could tell you that Queens Park Rangers were led by the supremely talented Stan Bowles, a future footballoos coach in Terry Venables in midfield and a lump of a bloke called Phil Parkes in goal, and were London’s top club of the mid-70s.

If it wasn’t QPR in front of the cameras, it might have been West Ham United, who played dazzling football led by the likes of Billy Bonds, Frank Lampard (yes, youngsters, that Chelsea guy’s dad) and one of the first black players in the English First Division, Clyde Best.

The format for the program was dirt simple and rarely changed over the years it was shown on Australian TV. The main match was a London game, and edited highlights took up about half of the one hour.

Highlights from two more games were shown from another regional station.

There was ATV which covered the Midlands teams and commentary was always provided by the great Hugh Johns. Anglia TV covered Ipswich and Norwich and Jerry Harrison, who has commentated in Australia for World Youth Cups was behind the mike. Granada TV covered Lancashire with Gerald Sinstadt.

Tyne-Tees brought action from the north (Newcastle, Sunderland or Middlesboro) with Kenneth Wolstoneholme as the commentator. Or Yorkshire TV brought footage of the mighty Leeds United, the less mighty Sheffield United, and (sigh) occasionally even dipped into the lower divisions for the odd Sheffield Wednesday game.

In between the second and third games, Brian Moore would dip into the “letters” bag and show a requested clip from a viewer. My joy at having a letter answered on The Big Match in 1977 is unreserved to this day.

But why all the nostalgia?

Is this just another one of those “things were better back in the day” rants? It might read that way, but essentially it’s also a possible reason why the English game is still viewed with great affection by long-term Australian football fans.

Those of a certain vintage who are not even fans of today’s game can probably hum the tune and remember the West Hams and the Derbys and the Notts Forests of the day, plying their trade on pitches that often alternated between ice rinks, ski fields and mud heaps.

Derby County played at the Baseball Ground and it was the WORST surface you could imagine.

On a monochrome TV it looked like the aftermath of Woodstock. Yet Derby were two-time League champions, and the names Kevin Hector, Roy McFarlane, Colin Todd and Dave Mackay roll off my tongue much more easily than, say, the current Deportivo La Coruna midfield.

It was also one of the few football fixes available.

There were two other football programs on Australian TV in the early to mid 1970s. One was “Star football” on Channel Seven, which was essentially the ATV Midlands coverage, and often enough would show the same games as The Big Match just re-edited.

The only other football coverage was somewhat surprisingly German football, screened at the unlikely hour of 7.00am Saturday morning, hosted by Toby Charles.

But it was Brian Moore and “The Big Match” I grew up with. Strange incidentals stick in my mind: The first game I ever saw on colour TV was between Spurs and Birmingham City, and I was surprised because I always assumed Birmingham wore red. If a game ended 0-0, Moore would virtually apologise for the lack of action.

He once said of a particularly tawdry League Cup Final between Everton and Aston Villa, “That may have looked all right on the highlights. Let me tell you, it was a lot worse than that.” (The game was famous for a marching band member losing a leg spur in the lush Wembley turf during the half time entertainment, and the game being held up while all the players searched for it).

The general consensus is that the game today is a lot more skilful and intricate than the English version that graced our screens in the 70s. No argument from me on that; Spain play a modern game that takes the breath away.

It is however, an advanced form of the Dutch concept of “Total Football” which rose in the 70s, and not coincidentally, it was Dutch players that became one of the first wave of foreign players to play in England in that era, with Ipswich Town signing Frans Thijssen and Arnold Muhren.

And make no mistake, there were supremely skilful players gracing my screen from that time. Names like Liam Brady, Kevin Keegan, Mick Channon, Tony Currie and Eddie Gray had the ball on a string, and they did it on some pretty ordinary surfaces.

It was also an era where the show brought us the unthinkable: Manchester United were relegated to Division Two at the end of 1973-74 in extraordinary circumstances.

A derby game at Old Trafford against Manchester City on the last day of the season saw former United legend Dennis Law score the only goal with a back heel. For those who nowadays see players refuse to celebrate a goal against their former employees, Dennis Law may have been the first to do so. But he took it one step further by asking to be replaced straight after he scored. (Fans rioted anyway…)

The Big Match also paid attention to the lower divisions.

There was less of a gulf in quality between First and Second Division than there is now between the Premiership and the Championship. Consequently, teams like Luton Town, Notts County, Walsall and Bournemouth would get coverage.

Curiously, so too would Gillingham, at least once a year. It was years later that I learned Brian Moore was a director of the club and lifelong fan.

And then there was the sadly short-lived Fulham era of Best and Marsh. A 2nd Division side, Fulham in 1976-77 signed George Best and Rodney Marsh and the two wreaked good-natured havoc on oppositions.

One of the most famous games of the era is a 4-1 win over Hereford United, with the two playfully tackling each other in a memorable clip.

Even the great Brian Clough is closely linked to The Big Match, as a guest analyst during his managerial days with Derby County. Clough was never afraid to speak his mind, which didn’t endear him to the Derby management, and amazingly he left the club to manage 3rd Division Brighton and Hove Albion, while maintaining his role on the show.

It led to perhaps his most awkward career moment, when the show televised a home 8-2 thrashing of Brighton by Bristol Rovers, and Clough had to explain the loss to Moore on camera.

He did, with the honesty and bluntness that no manager would dare display now.

ITV4 in the UK recently started replaying old “Big Match” shows, and some of the programs have at last been released as DVD compilations, although it appears they are not available on DVDs compatible to our region (dammit!)

The show that lives on in my memory may have to keep doing so.
v