Elton presenting on the Big match in 1976. Looks different without the hair ! https://www.itv.com/hub/the-big-match-revisited/1a6464a0044
I miss The Big Match opening music, my first experience of top flight football on the TV before Sky got involved....
Loved having sunday lunch and settling down to the Big Match .... concentrated on all the divisions and not spoilt by banal pundits
Ah, you obviously weren’t around at the time. Each ITV region had its own highlights programme which would cover a local game; The Big Match was the London one, so always featured a London team and the other short highlights were cherry-picked from the other regions. The one in this category that I always remember was a game that has almost taken on legendary proportions: Man Utd v West Brom in 1978. Cyrille Regis at his greatest in a 5-3 away win.
No was before my time but that does seem to be the case. Guess MOTD on the BBC had the bulk of the top division coverage? No FL coverage on channels hardly heard of in those days !
No, there was nothing like the competition for football coverage that we are used to now. ITV did it have to pick up what was left by the BBC. In fact the BBC highlights contract forced them to show matches from all divisions, a decreasing number from 1st down to 4th Div. For the lower divisions they tried to pick the ‘biggest, or most important games, e.g. in 1978 they covered our home game v Southend (1st Place v 2nd) when we picked up the 4th Div championship trophy.
When the Premier League began and MoTD was a thing again they showed highlights from 3 matches and a goals round up of the other matches.
Yes I remember that. I think it's since the BBC got the rights back they have shown highlights of all the games.
ITV had it for 3 years, IIRC the running order was Man Utd v whoever they were playing first, then Arsenal, then Chelsea. I like the fact that by in large MoTD do it in order of interest or number of goals scored. ITV missed a trick there that as a commercial channel they should have shown the big teams directly after each ad break.
Ignore me - just checked and there were plenty of games the previous day including us beating Swindon 2-0 at home in a promotion 6 pointer in Division 3
