The Media Eye - Tony Gubba

By Simon Wright – Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

The development of football on TV has evolved tremendously over the past 40 years.  Competition for live TV rights continues to increase, and the personalities that host, report and commentate on live matches become familiar household figures.

This new series, The Media Eye will profile some of the most recognised and famous faces in football in regards to its growth.  It won’t just be TV figures profiled, with radio also getting a look in.

The voices of football commentators are often the most renowned in sports media and I am about to start a series of some of the famous voices fans have heard over the past four decades. This starts with the much-loved and dearly missed Tony Gubba.

Gubba (pictured) was one of British television sport’s leading figures for over 35 years on both the BBC and ITV. He had an incredible dry wit about his approach to commentating behind the microphone, shown all the way until just a few weeks before his sad death after a short illness in March 2013.

Born in Manchester, Tony Gubba started out in newspaper journalism but his aim was to get into television. His big break in this field came in 1972 when he was chosen to replace David Coleman as the presenter of the popular BBC weekday evening programme Sportsnight. This is after some regional training as the BBC’s North of England correspondent.

Gubba would also be a host of both Grandstand and Match of the Day in future years, joining only a select club of personalities who have had the privilege of fronting all three programmes. One thing you couldn’t question him on was his versatility. Football might have been the number one sport for Gubba but he would cover anything the BBC asked him to do and was the perfect all-rounder.

He worked on nine FIFA World Cups, with his first being the tournament in West Germany in 1974. Fittingly, his last World Cup was in the same country 32 years later. He was also part of the BBC’s line-up at every single winter and summer Olympics from the tragic Munich summer games of 1972 right through until 2012 in London.

Having hosted Sportsnight for three years in the mid-70s, Gubba moved from a presenting position into sports commentary. Sadly for him, top football games at the BBC were often shared out by the equally popular John Motson and the strong tones of Barry Davies. There were exceptions to this. Gubba did commentate on the 1986 World Cup semi-final between West Germany and France, Spain’s triumph in the 1992 Olympics Football final on home soil in Barcelona and the 2007 Carling Cup final involving Arsenal and Chelsea at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium. Other sports that got the Gubba treatment included ice-skating, tennis, cycling, ski jumping, judo and rowing. He also made a brief mark on the football computer game industry with appearances on the PC version of FIFA International Soccer and the Nintendo 64 game International Superstar Soccer 1998.

We also heard him talk over Wrexham’s giant killing in the FA Cup against the mighty Arsenal in 1992, Michael Owen’s first goal in the senior Liverpool side in 1997 and Maynor Figueroa’s goal of the season for Wigan Athletic from the halfway line against Stoke City in December 2010.

Of course, Tony also came up with some unusual quirks in the box. They included:

“Mark Hughes pulls his trousers up in a gesture that says job done.”

“He was in the right place at the right time, but he might have been elsewhere on a different afternoon."

“The ball must be as slippery as a wet baby.”

“The ageless Teddy Sheringham, 37 now.”

In 2006, Gubba doubled up with his football highlights commentary on Premier League and Football League games with ITV’s new skating show Dancing on Ice. He commentated on all eight series of the show and was still holding down the role into this calendar year.

His final commentary was heard on 17 February 2013. He died three weeks later from leukaemia. The BBC’s head of sport Phillip Bernie said: “For a generation he was one of the most familiar and respected names in sports broadcasting. Tony was an outstanding sports journalist and a formidable broadcaster, whose death will sadden everyone at BBC Sport.” He left behind his partner of 15 years Jenny and two daughters.

Tony Gubba is a sad loss to the sports broadcasting industry but he was an iconic voice for many years and he left some great memories.