Newspaper nostalgia with Adrian Chiles - and an interview that went south quick!
A sudden and unexpected trip down memory lane – or a deep delve into my personal archives – prompted a ‘cameo’ contribution on Adrian Chiles’ BBC Radio Five Live slot this week.
For the renowned football fan and acclaimed broadcaster was celebrating the late sports editions of local and regional newspapers, sadly now late in both senses of the word, as I popped the radio on to accompany my lunch.
The Sports Telegraph, Grimsby’s version, undoubtedly played a pivotal part in my career choice, and the niche publications were fondly reminisced upon ‘by football fans of a certain age’ as Chiles put it during this particular lunchtime listen.
It was the newspaper I almost read cover to cover, poring over front and back for the Grimsby Town match summary and the entire domestic programme’s results and latest standings - the holy grail for a football-obsessed boy. All that information with only the occasional L-L among scores of scores from every professional level.
Delving inside for the full report, the statistics, then further in for local football and cricket. Familiar names, including my own rare cricketing success, appearing in print, off the same presses that gave us Steve Livingstone superlatives and Clive Mendonca musings on what had happened little over an hour before. I may have skipped darts, pigeon racing and rugby sections, but I was hooked.
It always amazed me how it was through the door within minutes of our own arrival back from Blundell Park too, and when I was taken on as a trainee reporter by my hometown paper, I got to see exactly how, and the magic didn’t dissipate.
Most prepared in the week, and ‘live’ pages left open for Grimsby’s game and that team down the road to occupy, plus reports on the big four or six fed in from the national news agency, PA. Then that impressive stat-laden back page. Print still drying, it was a sporting joy to behold.
My passion for the Mariners hadn’t gone unnoticed when I entered the newsroom in the summer of 1997, and I was quickly ‘allowed’ to support the sports team. Compiling stats and ratings in-game and tagging along for post-match interviews to ease the burden on the main soccer writer.
Then, eventually, there came the odd time when I was needed to fill that key role. The regular takes on how the game was developing filed to one of the friendly copytakers sat back at Telegraph House, the occasional re-writes, all produced while keeping an eye on the game continuing in front of you. Then a quick 250 to 300 words ‘on the whistle’ at full time. That was, providing you’d secured your phone and a fixed landline in the press box. You didn’t want to be late. I wouldn’t have wanted the measures brought in to speed the game up either. Downtime in a match was heaven-sent for the journalist!
The Sports Telegraph was put together with equal parts pride, adrenalin, skill and muscle memory. It was a phenomenal effort repeated 40-odd times a year, but it was great fun.
You were working on your hobby, a fact perfectly illustrated as I look along my row at Blundell Park nowadays and see the two men whose prose I devoured as an early teen, still (usually) enjoying the game. Long beyond their time in the cramped press box, just there as fans.
Football journalism in general gave access to incredible moments too. Interviewing Kevin Keegan, Harry Redknapp and Sven-Goran Eriksson as club managers, and the footballers themselves after incredible highs and some inconsolable lows.
But it wasn’t this that intrigued Chiles’ production team as I whizzed off a random Whatsapp message to the Five Live team. It was a Wembley wobble when there wasn’t even a match to report on.
Grimsby Town had reached the Auto Windscreens Shield Final, the lower league knock-out as was, before it was infiltrated by Premier League academy graduates to become the Jersey Mike’s EFL Trophy as it is now.
Spring 1998, the team on a charge for promotion and an immediate return back to the second tier too – heady days. The game was on a Sunday. I was tasked with being the lead in the advance party, securing interviews, documenting the preparation for that night’s edition ahead of the pilgrimage south. This was Grimsby’s first visit to Wembley in their 120 years of existence. No-one knew it would become one of two in just a couple of months.
Saturday, midday-ish, I was assured we were expected, so we set off early from North East Lincolnshire to reach the hotel at the agreed time.
Not just any hotel, mind. Hendon Hall, basecamp for England’s 1966 heroes. The grandeur, four towering ornate pillars marking an imposing entrance; the vast gravel driveway and manicured lawns. I remember it like it was yesterday. It certainly added to the occasion.
In the best part of four hours from Riby Square to north London, I’d mentally pieced together the flow of most of my intended articles, several times over. This was way before laptops appeared in the office, never mind smartphones. We didn’t even have individual email addresses, just one PC in the middle of a room full of glorified word processors. We also needed to get photographs on a reel of film back, so we were heading straight from the meet to Daily Mail HQ – the Grimsby Telegraph’s parent company at the time - in Kensington. From there, the photographer and I could send our work over the wire to fill the two key pages of that beloved ‘Sports Tel’.
On arrival in Hendon, I nervously paced outside the hotel, on said lawn. Team coach parked up to one side. A little wait, then the squad emerges. A few nods from a couple of the younger members who I share an interest in Cleethorpes’ night-time economy with, and I then make myself known to first team manager Alan Buckley, fatefully asking “for a quick word”. “Velocity” is his response, and on he walks, disappearing into the coach as I urge the ground to swallow me up.
Devastated, suddenly I have wide open pages and no interview or insight. No time to wallow though, luckily the players are still milling about, enjoying some April sunshine before a final training session or first glimpse of the Twin Towers - Old Wembley, this predates The Arch!
Interviews secured, pictures posed for, some scarves and paraphernalia used to its fullest. Just no manager. No bother. The sports editor understood. And while my work may have been printed in black and white, there was more than enough colour in the copy to get by.
Fraught, frazzled, but across the finish line in time. If that wasn’t stressful enough, the game the following day was one of very few ever settled with an extra time golden goal. Wayne Burnett, for the victory, if you didn’t know. Then just the small matter of joining colleagues in filling several pages with all the reaction for Monday’s edition. ‘Glory Boys’ was the headline as a comment piece took over the front page.
Grimsby went on to win against Northampton in the Play-Off Final too, securing promotion, just as said comment piece called for. That intense period remains an absolute career highlight, and all played out within my first year in journalism. I think I treasured that page one byline more than my first for the actual daily newspaper too.
The Saturday ‘Sports’ continued for a few more years before the combination of rolling TV football coverage and the internet finally did for it. News not just online, but websites for all the sporting clubs and competitions that, until ‘www dot’ became common parlance, had only that one outlet and a guaranteed audience in search of that vital information.
In two decades how sport convenes and is covered has changed beyond recognition, but the game has far from gone - it has just evolved. I’ll remind myself of that as I live stream the Newport match from 240 miles away - one of 15 being shown at 3pm on Saturday. And that subject is for another day...
My now barely lukewarm takes from that defining day?
Phrase your questions as carefully as you’d expect your interviewee to frame their answers.
Always have a back-up plan when on a live assignment.
Remember the pressures faced by your subject may well be greater than yours.
As the dust settled and the buoyant Harry Haddocks deflated, it certainly made for a good tale over a pint, by the watercooler or, eventually, on Radio Five Live.
Listen back to a great feature and my brief interview – albeit not as brief as my first interview with 'Sir' Alan outside the hotel – here: Adrian Chiles - 23/09/2026 - BBC Sounds
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