To Liverpool supporters of pensionable age, Ian St John will forever be the man whose goal took the FA Cup to Anfield for the first time in 1965, the pugnacious centre-forward who started scoring for the Reds in the Second Division and carried on through two league titles and the first European adventures under Bill Shankly.
To the generation of football followers whose formative years came in the 1980s, though, it was a different St John who came to mind when news broke yesterday of his passing: the broadcaster with the big grin, usually chuckling away at a quip from his sidekick Jimmy Greaves. The pair’s Saturday lunchtime Saint & Greavsie show brought together two of the finest forwards of the 1960s and provided a highlight of the week for fans at a time when live televised football was scarce.
Indeed in the autumn of 1985, when the pair were the game’s favourite double act, there was no football on television whatsoever after the Football League’s failure to agree a domestic broadcast deal – hence an item involving commentator Martin Tyler, then a regular contributor, standing on Waterloo Bridge with Frank McAvennie, West Ham’s free-scoring new striker, and asking passers-by if they knew who he was.
Speaking to i, Tyler offered fond memories of St John, with whom he commentated for ITV at the 1982 World Cup final: “He was warm and personable and smiley but competitive – and television is competitive.
“As a player he wouldn’t back down to anybody but because he was such a warm human being, he had this talent for people just loving his company and that stretched to being onscreen.”
As a Liverpool player, St John had been among the BBC’s analysts for the 1970 World Cup. By 1978, he was replacing Brian Moore as presenter of Off the Ball, ITV’s counterpart to the BBC’s Football Focus, though – as the Scot noted in his autobiography – it was Greaves who brought the “gold dust” with his involvement. This began in 1982 with a regular, light-hearted segment filmed down the corridor from the studio where the ex-England striker was appearing on the children’s TV show Tiswas. Before long, the pair were presenting On the Ball – with Ian St John and Jimmy Greaves – and collecting an audience of 5.5million.
“There was a chemistry there,” recalls Tyler. “They brought their own experience within football and, of course, their own sense of humour which was key to the show.”
It certainly was. A clip circulating on Twitter yesterday showed St John at his twinkle-eyed best in a piece at Everton’s Bellefield training ground ahead of the 1984 all-Merseyside League Cup final. Wearing a blue-and-white tracksuit, St John is filmed on the training pitch with Howard Kendall’s team and complaining: “Just because I’m an old Liverpool player they won’t even give me a pass of the ball!” The feature ends with him standing in front of Kendall’s players and telling them “Everton for the Cup” before removing his top to reveal a red shirt – and making a hasty exit as Everton players chase him.
It is the kind of daftness that David Baddiel and Frank Skinner would dish up in their Fantasy Football League show a decade later. Yet Tyler stresses that “it wasn’t just a knockabout show. There was a lot of wisdom in it. They took football seriously, both loved football. The Saint, in particular, was a real, real football man.”
The show was rebranded as Saint & Greavsie in 1985 and was still going strong when the pair appeared – in their respective Scotland and England shirts, scarves and caps – on the front cover of the TV Times at the outset of Italia ’90. A year later came Donald Trump’s appearance on the show, conducting the League Cup quarter-final draw from Trump Tower. However, ITV’s loss of domestic football rights with the arrival of the Premier League brought it to an end in 1992.
Looking back on its success, Tyler adds: “They didn’t take themselves seriously. The humour was always to the forefront. The Saint really presented it and Jimmy chipped in.” It is telling Tyler has not once called St John by his first name. “He was always called The Saint or Saint, never Ian,” he explains. “So I hope he is up there with the saints now.”
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/306Xq0A
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