Final Score - Early Days

Early Days

Final Score had been part of BBC's long-running show Grandstand as far back as 1958. The football results appeared on a device dubbed the Teleprinter, with each character of the results displayed one-by-one. Football fans, particularly those of lower division teams would wait anxiously for news on their team's result as live score updates during matches in those days were rare. The one-by-one letter typing by the teleprinter always heightened the anticipation. In the early days, the presenter stood next to the Teleprinter with a camera pointed at the actual printer.

The results came from the Press Association (PA), who appointed a correspondent to attend each match and report back the half-time and full-time scores to its offices in London. The PA would then use the technology of the day to provide a feed to BBC Television Centre. The Press Association still provide the vidiprinter results service to this day.

The host of the main Grandstand programme used to present the scores and often try to reflect how each result affected the league (i.e. Portsmouth go top of the league) which meant meticulous preparation was necessary.

After the majority of the results came in, the scores would then be collated and announced as the Classified Football Results in alphabetical order starting with the highest leagues first (up to 1992 the First Division, subsequently the Premiership). Remarkably, only three people have regularly read the football results on the programme: the Australian Len Martin (from the first programme until his death in 1995) and Tim Gudgin. Gudgin read the results for the last time on 19 November 2011, then retired at the age of 81. He cited the BBC's decision to move the programme from London to Manchester as one of the reasons for his departure and the difficulty of travelling from his home in Hampshire, particularly in winter. The classifled results were then followed by the pools news and score draws and then the league tables although the pools news element has been dropped in recent years due to the decline in the popularity of the football pools.

Whilst football was always the mainstay of Final Score, news and results from other sports, such as rugby union, and in the early days, racing were also included. A brief version, usually lasting for 5 to 10 minutes, was aired during the summer when football was out of season.