Elton Welsby

Last updated

Roger Elton Welsby (born 28 May 1951) is an English television sports presenter.

Contents

Welsby is a fan of Everton Football Club, and St Helens R.F.C. [1]

Broadcasting career

Welsby began his broadcasting career on Liverpool radio station Radio City as a sports reporter and commentator. [2] In January 1978 he joined Granada Television, working on its football programme The Kick Off Match and presented its 1980s successors Match Night (if shown on a Saturday) and Match Time (if broadcast on a Sunday) until their demise in 1983. Welsby was primarily a presenter, but did occasionally deputise as commentator. During that time he also presented RL Action taking over from Bob Hall and later Richard Madeley. He was also involved with World of Sport as a reporter for On The Ball and later as a relief presenter, becoming part of the ITV team in the major international football tournaments for the 1982 World Cup and the 1986 World Cup he was a reporter and was ITV's co-presenter based in Italy in the 1990 World Cup, a reporter/interviewer in the 1988 European Championship he is remembered for the interview with the then UK Sports Minister Colin Moynihan before the England v Ireland match, lead presenter in the 1992 European Championship and was the newsreader and occasional relief presenter on Midweek Sports Special.

When Granada revived Kick Off in 1989 after a six-year absence, Welsby returned as presenter despite by then presenting networked shows. He was one of the anchors of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the last Olympic Games to be covered by the network, and also presented the Saturday afternoon Results Service from October 1985 until May 1992, and was the sole anchor throughout its seven years on air.

Welsby occasionally presented live matches for ITV in 1986, becoming the regular host in the 1987–88 season. At the start of the 1988–89 season, ITV began broadcasting exclusive live coverage of the Football League. It was the task of Greg Dyke to oversee the coverage and he entrusted Welsby as presenter of The Match , anchoring numerous dramatic matches over the next four years, including Arsenal's 2–0 win against Liverpool in the last game of the season which saw the Gunners snatch a last minute winner at Anfield.

The loss of top flight football to Sky Sports in 1992 hit ITV Sport hard, and Welsby's final work as ITV's lead football presenter was at the 1992 European Championship. After this, he ceased working for ITV Sport and returned to Granada full-time.

Welsby continued to present regional programming for Granada, including Granada Goals Extra, The Granada Match, the station's crown green bowls coverage, and the midweek sports programming until May 2000 when the station decided not to renew his contract. In an interview in 2015 Welsby was critical of Soccer Sunday, the last programme he presented, describing it as a "poor show with poor content and poor journalistic standards". [3]

Welsby occasionally returned as a guest on the Granada Soccer Night programme, and in 2001 he went back to radio to present Elton Welsby's Soccer Saturday for North-West regional station Century FM – a role he held for three years.

Other work

Welsby was the final presenter of the British gameshow Busman's Holiday , following on from Julian Pettifer and Sarah Kennedy. [4] [5] He also presented the quiz show Go For Goal in 1993. He is regularly involved in corporate and charity work.

Welsby's most recent TV work was as a presenter of Crown Green Bowls for Sky Sports during the mid-2000s. [6]

Welsby is active on Twitter, where his handle is @WelsbyElton and he occasionally appears as a guest on football and rugby league YouTube fanzine channels. His son, Chris Welsby, is a producer of Premier League football coverage on beIn Sports, presented by Richard Keys and Andy Gray.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Des Lynam</span> TV presenter

Desmond Michael Lynam, is an Irish-born television and radio presenter. In a broadcasting career spanning more than forty years, he has hosted television coverage of many of the world's major sporting events, presenting Grandstand, Match of the Day, Wimbledon, the Grand National, Sportsnight, the World Cup and Olympic Games, as well as presenting non-sporting programmes such as Holiday, How Do They Do That? and Countdown.

Brian Baden Moore was an English football commentator and television presenter who covered nine World Cups and more than twenty FA Cup finals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fred Dinenage</span> English television presenter and author

Frederick Edgar Dinenage MBE is an English author, broadcaster and television presenter. His television career has spanned nearly 60 years, including the long-running children's programme How and ITV's regional programming in the south of England. Dinenage retired from presenting regional news on ITV Meridian on 16 December 2021, after 38 years as a news anchor.

Gillette Labs Soccer Saturday is a weekly television programme broadcast on Sky Sports in the United Kingdom and Ireland during the football season. The programme updates viewers on the progress of association football games in the United Kingdom on Saturday afternoons. A new host is yet to be confirmed. The programme is sponsored by Gillette Labs.

Ian Payne is a British broadcaster. He is currently a sports correspondent at ITV News and the host of early breakfast 4am-7am current affairs phone-in show on LBC. He previously worked as a presenter for Radio 5 Live and Sky Sports.

<i>World of Sport</i> (British TV programme) ITV Saturday afternoon sports show (1965–85)

World of Sport is a British television sport programme which ran on ITV between 2 January 1965 and 28 September 1985 in competition with the BBC's Grandstand. Like Grandstand, the programme ran for several hours every Saturday afternoon.

ITV Sport is a sport producer for ITV. It was formed following the merger between Granada Sport and Central Sport.

Clive Tyldesley is an English television sports broadcaster. He was ITV's senior football commentator from 1998 until 2020. In that role, he has led the ITV commentary team at four World Cups and four European Championships and been lead commentator on seventeen UEFA Champions League finals and a commentator on nine FA Cup finals for ITV. He won the prestigious Royal Television Society Sports Commentator of the Year in 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2005, and was voted the Sony Radio Awards' Sports Broadcaster of the Year in 1983.

Gerald Morris Sinstadt was an English sports commentator, broadcaster and newspaper columnist, usually on football.

Robert Andrew McCaffrey is a British television presenter. He is most notable for presenting shows such as Goals On Sunday and You're On Sky Sports. McCaffrey also replaced Jeff Stelling as presenter of Soccer Special and enjoyed a spell presenting live Conference National matches.

Gerry Harrison is a former leading football commentator on English television in the 1970s and 80s, working for ITV. In the latter part of his career he was a senior television executive with production company TWI, who produce coverage of Premier League football, international golf and tennis among other sports. He left this role in 2007.

Angus Scott is an international broadcaster, journalist, university lecturer and academic. He has worked for Al Jazeera, beIN SPORTS, ITN, ITV Sport and Setanta Sports. He mainly covers football and rugby union, but has also hosted cricket and motorsport coverage. In 2021 he completed a doctorate at the University of Winchester on Al Jazeera.

The Big Match was a British football television programme, screened on ITV between 1968 and 1992.

Football on 5 is the principal football programme on Channel 5 in the UK. The show first ran from May 1997 until July 2012. The show returned in August 2015 under the name Football League Tonight. For the 2016–17 Football League season the Football on 5 name was revived with the highlights show now called Football on 5: The Championship and Football on 5: Goal Rush being broadcast from 9pm-10.30pm on a Saturday with a repeat on Sunday morning. The show itself was initially sponsored by Wilkinson Sword, and would eventually be sponsored by Soccernet.com, Peugeot and SEAT, among others.

Matt Smith is a British broadcaster, who worked with ITV Sport between 2001 and 2015. He currently presents BT Sport's coverage of Premier League, FA Cup, Champions League, Europa League, Conference Football and England Under 21 matches.

Rob Palmer is a football commentator and sports broadcaster on Sky Sports, ESPN and other outlets around the world.

Soccer Night is a regional television football programme on ITV in United Kingdom between the 1990s and 2008.

Results Service was a British television programme that ran from October 1985 until the end of the 1991/92 football season on the ITV network late on Saturday afternoons during the football season.

References

  1. @WelsbyElton (29 September 2020). "Super Saints.42-NIL vs Wigan(in other words the shite)" (Tweet) via Twitter.
  2. Barham, Kathy (2006) 194 Radio City - The Heart of Liverpool, Lulu.com, ISBN   978-1-4116-8814-8, p. 99
  3. Padman, Tony (2015) "Elton Welsby interview"
  4. Plunkett, John (2002) "University Challenge turns pro", The Guardian (London), 21 November 2002, retrieved 1 January 2011
  5. "Busman's Holiday". IMDB.com. Retrieved 17 August 2012.
  6. "World famous green woos back cameras", Blackpool Gazette , 17 September 2005, retrieved 1 January 2011