A night out at the theatre

On the evening of Friday 19th September, the Vodkat League was represented on a one hour show broadcast live from BBC Radio Lancashire’s Radio Theatre in Blackburn.

The programme kicked off a new series of the station’s “Non-League Hour”, which has been broadcast continuously since the early 1990’s. The regular host, and Head of Sport at BBC Radio Lancashire, is Gary Hickson, and his co-presenter throughout the many years of the programme has been former Darwen and Great Harwood Town manager Ian McGarry.

Regular readers of North West Side Stories may recall an in depth interview with Ian in issue 2 of NWSS in February 2007 (and if you missed it, you can check it out from the back issues page).

For the benefit of anyone who has never heard it, the show is a general discussion programme, and Gary and Ian try wherever possible to steer away from more routine news and transfer talk. Guests are called in to discuss current issues that have affected their club, or in the case of League officials, to talk about topics such as league restructuring.

Many representatives both from the League and clubs in the station’s listening area have been guests on the show over the years, either in person in the studio or on the phone. Indeed, it would be fair to say that some of the longer established chairmen and managers at clubs in the Lancashire area are pretty much established as regular guests, and are always likely to pop up on the show at least a couple of times a season.

Anyone I’ve ever spoken to on the subject is of the opinion that the programme is always worth tuning in to, and it has a listening audience that extends out beyond Lancashire, especially now that it is possible to listen online. For many years the show was on between 8 and 9 pm on Friday nights, but this season it has moved back an hour, and is now aired between 7 and 8 pm.

Although non-league football forms a regular part of the station’s football output throughout the year, the Non-League Hour begins in earnest in September when it replaces a similar show devoted to local cricket, and runs through to the end of the season. In the case of last season, the final show was on Friday 9th May, and the whole hour was devoted to previewing the FA Vase Final.

Having followed Kirkham & Wesham from the quarter final stage I was asked to appear on that particular show to chat about the game, and afterwards the show’s producer Jon Lowe mentioned to me that they were considering having some forum type programmes with a larger number of guests in the station’s Radio Theatre.

The Radio Theatre is used for a variety of different programmes, most notably the weekday lunchtime show which is broadcast from there every day, and the idea of a group of people from our League gathered there to take part in a programme to showcase the League and its clubs was an extremely appealing prospect. I assured Jon that we as a league would love to take part in something like that, and we agreed to pick up on the idea at the end of the summer.

I was therefore very pleased when Jon contacted me in August to ask if we would be interested in kicking off the first programme of the new season with a Vodkat League special from the Radio Theatre. The answer was an emphatic yes, and over the course of the next few weeks Jon and me worked together on drawing up a guest list.

Our original aim was for about ten people to be involved, but a couple of our target guests were unavailable. The final line up of assorted League “personalities” who headed for the centre of Blackburn at the end of a Friday night rush hour comprised a cross section of League and club representatives. Myself and Geoff Wilkinson were there from the League, along with Bacup Borough Manager Brent Peters, Padiham Secretary Alan Smith, Squires Gate Treasurer Geoff Mackay, and AFC Fylde’s Business Development Manager Martin Booker.

As we gathered before the show, Martin was last to arrive and certainly made the grandest entrance as he grabbed everyone’s attention when he walked in carrying the FA Vase trophy! He explained that he had been out visiting schools around the Fylde that afternoon to promote the club, and had had the trophy with him anyway, so he thought he might as well bring it along to give us a photo opportunity afterwards.

The appearance of the trophy was of particular interest to Alan Smith, who commented that over the years, he had passed up various opportunities to have his picture taken with a number of big name football trophies, most notably the Premiership Trophy which had been present at the Lancashire FA’s AGM in the summer. He decided there and then that a picture of him with the FA Vase was a prerequisite before he left the building and with Martin and myself both having cameras, that was no problem.

Another photo request came from Brent Peters, who complained that the picture of him that is used in any reports about Bacup on the BBC website was one that I took after a game at Ramsbottom last year. Bacup had just been well beaten, and Brent’s post match inquest in the dressing room had gone until after half past five. Under the circumstances, the last thing he needed was some idiot collaring him as soon as he stepped out of the dressing room and asking him to adopt a cheerful demeanour for a photograph, and he requested that we added some new ones to the portfolio of league managers pictures that I keep.

As for the programme itself, we covered a range of different topics, with Gary compereing the show on his feet, wandering from person to person with a radio mike. We talked about the problems of fund raising, and the rising costs of running a football club, and Martin was on the receiving end of some good natured ribbing with suggestions being made that his club has less worries than most when it comes to money.

With Bacup due to play at Runcorn Linnets in a Sunday fixture, as a result of Wincham Park being used on the Saturday for a Witton Albion game, the possibility of Sunday football on a more regular basis was raised. Geoff pointed out that the League would have no problem in sanctioning requests from clubs to play games on Sundays, although the feeling was that this would never be likely to be accepted as the norm.

It was also the week that Tony Greenwood had been sacked by Fleetwood Town, and with his track record of taking Fleetwood to three promotions in the space of five years, both Ian McGarry and Brent Peters made their feelings known on that decision.

On the occasions I’ve been on the show in the past, I’ve wondered how on earth you are going to fill an hour just talking about our League, but each time the hour flies past and this session was no different. It’s amazing how easy it is to have a football discussion when a group of like minded people are all together, and since the show was broadcast I’ve been heartened by the number of people I’ve spoken to who have said they enjoyed it. All being well, it won’t be the last time we get the chance to promote our League on the BBC.

The evening ended with a few snaps being taken of the assembled participants, which can be viewed by clicking the thumbnails on the left of the page.

The Vodkat League on-line magazine