Soccer Special
& Soccer Hour

HTV Football Highlights 1968-83
HTV was originally launched as "Harlech Television" in May 1968 as a "dual-region" ITV service for Wales and the West of England, the station became known as 'HTV' in 1970. In an area where rugby was regarded as the no.1 sport, local football coverage was sporadic with HTV relaying either London Weekend Television's The Big Match or another region's programme on most Sunday afternoon's. Locally televised matches would go out under the title "Soccer Special" with just the one game taking up the whole programme until season 1977/78 when HTV began showing a shorter edit of their own highlights before joining LWT for the remainder of the one hour slot.

HTV commentators and presenters
Roger Malone (apparently a Bristol City fan) was the regular commentator - Born on 31st May 1933 in Egypt, Malone had been employed by previous Wales & West ITV franchise holders TWW as a continuity announcer, but he went on to become a part of ITV's 1970 World Cup commentary team. Bob Symonds commentated on Welsh matches from around 1973/74 (and continued to commentate for ITV's Welsh service until 2008), Graham Miller could also occasionally be heard voicing/presenting HTV games in the late 1970's/early 1980's (he went on to become an ITN newsreader circa 1990). Hugh Johns joined the station 'full-time' in August 1982 having worked for TWW in the early-mid 1960's before moving to ATV, but he had voiced Wales internationals and popped up on mid-week HTV programmes throughout the 1970's.

The HTV region's league teams 1968-1983
Bristol City, Bristol Rovers, Swindon Town*, Swansea Town, Cardiff City, Wrexham** and Newport County.

*ATV/CENTRAL cameras would also turn up at Swindon's ground.
** Wrexham were covered by GRANADA on a few occasions.

What matches were shown
The following season links detail all known Saturday matches recorded by HTV 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 Wales or West based matches are in italics.