Cliff Morgan - Broadcasting and Television Career

Broadcasting and Television Career

Following his retirement from the game in 1958 he found a new career in broadcasting. Although he will forever be remembered for his celebrated commentary on the 1973 Barbarians rugby match against the touring All Blacks at Cardiff ("This is Gareth Edwards... a dramatic start... what a score!",) his broadcasting career was far more wide-ranging and influential than that single event would suggest. During his playing days he had already been spotted by the BBC as a natural talker and communicator, and in 1958 he joined BBC Wales as Sports Organiser in Cardiff. His exceptional ability as a programme-maker and story-teller briefly took him outside the familiar world of BBC Sport in the mid-60s, when he spent two years as editor of ITV’s current affairs programme This Week. Returning to the BBC he then produced established TV sports programmes such as Grandstand and Sportsnight With Coleman, and, from 1970, was himself one of the original team captains (opposite Henry Cooper) on the long-running TV quiz A Question of Sport. In radio he found a natural outlet for his love of music, presenting for a time the BBC Radio 2 series These You Have Loved.

Off-air, his enduring influence in the world of sport and beyond helped him rise to join the ranks of leading BBC Executives. In 1974 he became Head of BBC Radio Outside Broadcasts, and from 1976 to 1987 he was Head of Sport & Outside Broadcasts for BBC Television. There he supervised coverage of the biggest broadcast events such as football World Cups, Commonwealth and Olympic Games, as well as Royal Weddings and other national ceremonial occasions.

After his retirement from BBC Television in 1987, he returned to radio where his warm, mellifluous voice, together with his natural conversational style and his wide range of contacts in sport and entertainment, proved a boon to popular BBC Radio 4 series such as Sport on Four (1977–1998), My Heroes (1987–90) and Down The River. In 1988 he was the subject of ITV's This Is Your Life

He has contributed to numerous publications about rugby and lent his voice to many popular rugby videos. Among his books, he edited Rugby The Great Ones (1970), wrote perceptive short profiles to accompany John Ireland’s illustrations for the anthology Rugby Characters (1990), and in 1996 produced his autobiography, Cliff Morgan: Beyond the Fields of Play (with Geoffrey Nicholson).