It had been coming since the previous summer. The Falklands War was just the fillip in the polling she needed and this, combined with an opposition which was cleaving into two, resulted a general election that would set the political tone for the rest of the decade. On the 9th June 1983, the Conservative party won the General Election with a majority of 144 seats. True Thatcherism has arrived, with all that would follow.
The first weekend of the 1983-84 Canon League is upon us, and Thatcherism seems to be dipping its toes in here, too. The Football League had a sponsor’s name for the first time, while shirt advertising was permitted on televised matches for the first time, albeit with smaller logos than were permitted on non-televised matches.
Live matches would be coming, but on nothing like the scale that we’d see a decade later, never mind now, and not until October. In addition to this, the Football League has ended its practice of clubs sharing their gate receipt revenues from the start of this season, which will push open the door marked ‘inequality’ between clubs just a little wider still.
It’s been a busy, and in some respects horrific, summer. The Second Sudanese Civil War has started, which will last until 2005 and claim at least a million lives. In Sri-Lanka, the Black July massacre has killed an estimated 6,000 Tamils. The Sikorsky S-61 Disaster claimed the lives of twenty, off the coast of the Isles of Scilly, while Ninoy Aquino was assassinated on his return to the Philippines.
It’s been a barren summer for football. England toured Australia and New Zealand at the start of June, but with no major tournaments anywhere, the game went into hibernation for a couple of months, all but disappearing from the media, beyond a handful of transfer stories on the back pages of newspapers.
At such times, other sports step into the breach. India won the Cricket World Cup, beating the West Indies in the final, after having beaten the host nation England in the semi-final. Lester Piggott and Teenoso won the Epsom Derby. John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova won the Wimbledon singles. England beat New Zealand 3-1 in the summer’s four-match test series, although New Zealand’s win for was their first-ever on English soil. A week earlier, the European Cup in athletics took place at Crystal Palace.
It’s warm and sunny for the first weekend of the Football League season. Liverpool and Manchester United are the favourites to win the League, and United’s comfortable 2-0 win against them in the Charity Shield suggests that Joe Fagan’s team might have their work cut out to hold on for a third title in a row. Spurs, Nottingham Forest and, at a push, Everton and Arsenal might also be considered outsiders. But really, it feels like it should be a two-horse race.
The champions kick off their defence of the title away to Wolverhampton Wanderers, and that match will be shown on Sunday afternoon on a new, networked version of The Big Match on ITV, alongside Charlie Nicholas’s debut for Arsenal against Luton Town, following his high-profile - probably the highest of them all - transfer that summer.
One of the key features of the new television deal is that Match of the Day has become resident on Saturday nights. Trying to push football into their Saturday night light entertainment roster had failed for ITV. “We don’t want Saturday night football ever again on ITV”, said Gary Newbon of Central TV at the time,, “Soccer on Sunday fits in better with the way we do programmes and television viewing.”
The new television deal brought changes. Shirt sponsorship was permitted, while the broadcasters were given a whopping total of ten live games to shared equally between the BBC, who scheduled theirs for 7.15pm on Fridays, and ITV, who took up Sunday afternoons. Both agreed not to show a highlights programme on a weekend of a live game, and not to show anyone at home more than once a season.
Of course, because this is the summer, people are expected to have better things to do in the summer in 1983. The BBC get their Grandstand started early, at five the eleven in the morning on this Bank Holiday weekend for coverage of the third day of the fourth test between England and New Zealand from Trent Bridge.
This is followed by the news, an episode of Blake’s 7, and the 1968 film Only When I Larf, a comedy starring Richard Attenborough, David Hemmings and Alexandra Hemmings as a a trio of con-artists. And at 9.00, it’s time for The Main Attraction, a variety show hosted by Paul Daniels, who is still dressed like a magician (and does a magic trick), even though this isn’t a magic show.
ITV’s belief that the Bank Holiday Saturday night crowd could be thin on the ground seems even stronger than the BBC’s. After World of Sport, they chuck in two hours of repeats in the form of Catweazle, Happy Days and CHiPs, before an episode of their absurd TV quiz show Ultra Quiz and a Saturday light entertainment show called Saturday Royal which seems to be blessedly - considering what’s known of its cast - mostly forgotten. We just have time to fit in the news with Jan Leeming and the weather Michael Fish before it’s off to join Jimmy Hill and Bob Wilson for the second Match of the Day - but let’s be frank for a moment here, the first proper one - of the new season.
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