…more than 50 years ago, Scottish Television launched its first ever sports coverage programme in the guise of Scotsport (original, huh!)… colour television was still a thing of the far-distant future, so black and white, and varying shades of grey adorned our screens every day… this wasn’t too much of a problem until it came to the Saturday football coverage… when one team’s strip was described as red, the other, dark blue… both teams on-screen looked kitted out in identical garb… back then, also, players did not have their names on their backs, only the position numbers … strictly 1 through 11, reflecting the position played on that day by whoever wore the jersey… none of this ‘pick any number yeez like’ nonsense for ‘squad rotation’… last night, I watched a WURLD Cup game on a ‘bootleg’ channel (no pun intended) here in the Gulf, with a less-than-perfect picture… it looked like it was snowing (in Sao Paulo), and my mind immediately switched back 50 years ago to the Scotsport presentations… regardless of the weather, the screen picture always looked as if the matches were being played in semi-blizzards…
…Scottish sports broadcasting legends, Arthur Montford and Bob Crampsey were the two major presenters, and it must be said, their clear Scottish diction would put many of the current crop of sportscasting talking heads to shame…
Arthur Montford
Bob Crampsey
…as an aside, Master Crampsey won the Brain of Britain competition, and reached the semi-final of TV’s Mastermind… however, some memorable quotations from the series on the weekend football shows include, ‘please excuse the poor quality of the film from today’s match at Dunfermline…this was caused by the bright sunlight…’ or the incomparable score line, ‘East Fife four, Forfar five’… try that when yeez’ve had a few tipples… one classic moment in a seemingly uninterrupted stretch of coverage announced the score at 2-1, the next score was 4-1... we were asked politely at the end of the show to ‘forgive the wee lapse in the middle… the missing goal was sum’where on the cutting room floor’… ah, mem’ries to cherish… thanks Scotsport, Arthur and Bob… see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!…
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Seumas Gallacher 
Reblogged this on theowlladyblog.
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‘East Fife four, Forfar five’ – bliss. Reminds me of the cricket one but I can’t remember who said it though I can hear Brian Johnston’s laughter in my head: ‘The batsman’s Holding, the bowler’s Willie’!
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… and at the Olympics when the 440 metre hurdles champion was running. ‘there goes Juantarena… opening his legs and showing us what he’s got!…’
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There’s a blog post here, Seumas. I challenge you to gather as many as you can!
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for sure , there’s tons of them 🙂
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Ah I loved those scores! TV was like that for me too as a nipper. Dad’s black and white set which had so much distort you could hardly hear people and because there was a very big building between us and the transmitter what we mostly got was French TV, Ah the joys of living on the south coast!
Cheers
MTM
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:):)
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When we got our first TV I thought it snowed everywhere. the old man spent most of the time nipping outside to check if the license van was coming. 🙂
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…:):):)
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