Match of the Week

Anglia Television Football Highlights 1962-83
Encouraged by Ipswich Town's league title success of 1961/62 the three year old Anglia Television service reached a special agreement with the Football League to begin screening a 30 minute highlights programme during the 1962/63 season, thus becoming the 2nd ITV station in England to broadcast regular weekly coverage of League football (Tyne Tees began screening a local highlights programme two weeks earlier). The fee was just £1,000 for exclusive rights to 30 games that season involving four East Anglian clubs. Len Caynes, who went on to become a Match of the Week director and then Anglia's 'Head of Sport', was a cameraman at the very first match along with Stuart McConahie, later editor of ITV's World of Sport, Caynes recalled; "Everyone on the outside broadcast crew at that time was crazy about football. We couldn't believe our luck, getting paid for watching football - something we would have been doing anyway." The regular director in the 1960's was Bob Gardam who went on to direct The Big Match (One of the camera positions at Wembley later became known as "Gardam's Pit"), he couldn't have enjoyed covering games at Norwich City in the early days as the camera gantry at Carrow Road was behind one of the goals, but the problem was eventually rectified following City's promotion to the top flight in 1972. Colour proved to be another headache as many grounds in the region did not have sufficient floodlight power for the camera's to capture satisfactory colour pictures and for a time viewers would watch the first half of a winter match in colour whilst the 2nd half would be in black & white.

Anglia commentators

August 1962 - Early 1967
Match Of The Week's regular commentator in the early years was the pipe-smoking John Camkin, a former newspaper sports writer who also co-commentated for BBC radio. Camkin (aged 40 during the season the programme began) served as a director at Coventry City and was secretary of the League Managers Association as well as writing several books on the game. He was the son of Bill Camkin who had managed Birmingham City during World War II. Camkin gave up his commentating role at Anglia due to a recurring back problem.
See also this TV Times feature on John Camkin from 13/Dec/1963 and this article written by director Bob Gardam for the 30/Jan/1965 edition.

*Maurice Edelston also voiced several Anglia games and Simon Smith did at least two Match of the Week commentaries during this period. Both went on to commentate for Southern TV.

Dec 1966 - May 1969
36 year old Gerald Sinstadt joined Anglia in 1966 having previously worked for BBC Radio, he was poached by Granada for the start of 1969/70. See the Granada page for further details.

August 1969 - 1993
Former Army second lieutenant and Daily Express war correspondent Gerry Harrison was Anglia's voice of football for 24 years (during which time he was also picked for ITV's World Cup commentary team for all tournaments from 1970-1990), he had been among the final six in BBC Television's 1969 "Find a commentator" competition (won by Idwal Robling). The Upminster born Harrison later became Anglia's 'Head of sport' but left the station in 1993 to take a job producing worldwide football coverage for an American owned TV company, citing ITV's losing out to SKY and the BBC in the soccer rights war as the main reason for his move.

Steve Rider joined Anglia at the age of 27 in 1979, he was a reporter/presenter on the programme and later left for the BBC in 1984 where he presented Grandstand.

The Anglia region's league teams
Ipswich Town*, Norwich City*, Peterborough United*, Colchester United*, Northampton Town and Cambridge United. Luton Town were shared with LWT, Southend United were shared with Southern/TVS. From 1965-1974 Anglia also covered Hull City, Grimsby Town, Scunthorpe United and Lincoln City**.

*Ipswich, Norwich, Peterborough and Colchester were the initial four clubs with whom Anglia had an arrangement to cover in the early days of the programme.
**The addition of two new transmitters (Sandy Heath and Belmont) in 1965 expanded Anglia's choice of league clubs to 11 and then Cambridge United were elected into the league in 1970, but the four Belmont teams (Hull, Grimsby, Scunthorpe and Lincoln) were lost to Yorkshire Television when Belmont was switched over to YTV on 30th July 1974. Luton Town were often covered by London Weekend Television cameras as many homes around the Luton area received their TV pictures from London as well as, or instead of, those from Anglia.

What matches were shown
The following season links detail all of the Saturday matches recorded by Anglia cameras for local highlights, the re-edits of other region's matches are not included here (see the other region's pages for those here). For midweek games (which were networked) go here, for full details of networked Wembley Cup finals go here and for European finals see here. Given dates are for when the fixture was played (not the broadcast). Non-East Anglia based matches are in italics.