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Vikki Orvice – a tribute by Jacqui Oatley

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Jacqui Oatley, the broadcaster, was brought on to the FWA’s National Committee by Vikki Orvice, who passed away today at the age of 56.  Here is Jacqui’s tribute to her friend and our dear colleague.

 

BRAVE. FEARLESS.  TRAILBLAZER. PIONEER. 

There was only one Vikki Orvice. That’s clear from the many tributes which have poured in from journalists and senior sporting figures alike following the desperately sad news of our beloved colleague’s passing. Taken from us by cancer at the age of 56, but not before she’d squeezed every drop out of life and found humour in even the darkest of days.

This funny, strong Yorkshirewoman and fiercely loyal friend was unrivalled in her experience, yet did everything in her power to draw others alongside her.

Vikki had been a member of the Football Writers’ Association since the mid-1990s, joining the national committee in 2015 and becoming vice-chair two years ago. Holding the belief that change must come from within, she was also a committee member of the Sports Journalists’ Association. Vikki had so much to offer so, when she heard about our new Women in Football campaign group, she wanted to get involved. WiF was set up in 2007 by Anna Kessel and Shelley Alexander with a plan to champion our peers, challenge discrimination and create opportunities for other women. Vikki saw this as another avenue to make a difference in a heavily male-dominated industry so became a founding board member.

Vikki had been a staff writer for The Sun since 1995 and could easily have chosen to focus on the considerable demands of such a role on a national newspaper. She could have kept a low profile to focus on simply keeping her job. But no, Vikki’s political beliefs stimulated her determination to stand up for the vulnerable, those who lacked confidence and needed a guiding hand. She was in a perfect position to mentor others. Nobody else has equivalent experience so every word she uttered to wide-eyed students and aspiring journalists was absorbed and digested. She would always make the effort to attend our WiF events over the past 12 years – only extreme ill health or being in another country would keep her away. Such was her dedication and commitment.

Just a fortnight ago, Vikki attended the FWA tribute dinner to Gareth Southgate at The Savoy Hotel. She was in a wheelchair and so frail, her body ravaged by cancer and the drugs required to fight it. Most would have taken the easy and sensible option to stay at home to rest but not Vikki. She had to be there alongside her husband, the renowned sports writer, Ian Ridley. Spirited and resolute to the end. Naturally, she was still smiling.

Vikki achieved so much in her relatively short but action-packed time on the planet. Far too much for one article to detail, so here’s a brief overview: she was the first female staff football writer on a tabloid, athletics correspondent at The Sun, charity campaigner and fundraiser, patient governor at the Royal Marsden Hospital, diversity campaigner, board member and despite the effects of intensive treatment, she even found time to chair her local book festival in Hertfordshire. Her inspirational story will be told in full in due course.

Vikki’s passing is devastating to all who knew her. I have cried a steady stream since taking the call from my WiF colleague, Jo Tongue, at breakfast time. Too soon, just too soon to lose this special person. But Vikki was such a force for positive change that her friends and colleagues will turn our grief into her legacy. Plans for a sports writing bursary in her name are just the start.

Rest in peace, dear Vikki. There was nobody quite like you but your warmth, wit and spirit will live on. We will do everything in our power to ensure the sporting press rooms and press boxes of the future are a more welcoming and equal environment. On behalf of all female sports journalists: thank you.

Pictures courtesy of News Group Newspapers

Vikki Orvice RIP – by Steve Howard

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Vikki Orvice, the FWA’s vice-chair and a long-standing National Committee member, lost her long battle with cancer today at the age of 56. She was a much-loved colleague to many of us at the FWA and especially at The Sun, where she covered athletics and football.

Former SunSport chief sports writer and FWA member Steven Howard paid tribute to his colleague on the Sun’s website, and we are honoured to reproduce it here:

Article below via The Sun website.

Images courtesy of News UK.

IT was Saturday August 4, 2012, and London’s Olympic Stadium was a crucible of bubbling, patriotic fervour.

Jess Ennis-Hill had just won gold in the heptathlon and Vikki Orvice and I were furiously putting over our copy knowing Mo Farah was due to start the 10,000metres in under half an hour.

Then from the other side of the stadium came a huge roar.

“What the **** was that?” I yelled at Vikki alongside me.

“Greg Rutherford has only gone and won the flipping long jump,” she shouted back over the din.

Not long after, Farah would make it triple gold – three inside an astonishing 44 minutes.

It was the greatest night in British athletics, perhaps the greatest night in Olympic history.

Certainly, neither Vikki nor I had known anything like it.

At the time, Vikki was in remission from the cancer that had first struck in 2007 – and which, devastatingly, would return in 2014.

For the last four years she fought valiantly – and with no lack of humour – against the odds, her life a strength-sapping treadmill of chemotherapy at London’s Marsden Hospital sandwiched inbetween her jobs as athletics correspondent and football writer for The Sun.

All three Olympic gold medallists later sent message of encouragement and support during her cancer battle.

Fittingly, for a daughter of Sheffield, she had a core of steel.

 

But the long, unequal struggle ended this morning when Vikki died aged 56.

The grief engulfing her sportswriter husband Ian Ridley, her family and her many admiring friends is only partially mitigated by the relief it is finally all over.

If she was a fundraiser, arch supporter and poster girl – her own words – for the Marsden, she was also a massive source of encouragement for every young girl who wondered whether they, too, could make it in what was the very male enclave of sports journalism.

Yes, Julie Welch was the first to start breaking down the barriers on The Observer in the Seventies.

And there were other sports journalists like Hazel Irvine and Kate Battersby when Vikki first arrived in Fleet Street in the Nineties.

But they were few and far between.

The difference with Vikki, though, was she was the first woman to be appointed as a football writer on a red top.

It may have been a decade or so after the worst male excesses of the Life on Mars generation but the profession was still top-heavy with men behaving badly and contemptuous of women in the pressbox.

Working at the coal face of sports journalism, she was not just a pioneer but a suffragette on the slow, back-breaking march towards equality.

At the end, she would stand at the pinnacle, a vociferous defender of women’s rights and ceaseless promoter of their abilities – a director of Women in Football and a significant figure at both the Sports Journalists Association and the Football Writers Association.

At the age of ten, she entered a Daily Express competition, saying she wanted to be a sportswriter.

Her subject? Her beloved Sheffield United.

She would finally achieve her ambition in the face of constant prejudice but it was a long journey.

Recalling her early days on national newspapers, she said: “I went to Arsenal v Norwich on the opening afternoon of the season.

“The main stand at Arsenal had a mural on it and I was basically sent along to write about that because, you know, it was a bit girly and stuff.

“But it actually turned into a good story because Norwich won.

“I remember somebody came over to the sports desk on the Monday morning saying ‘Why did you give that match to HER? I should have been there instead’.

“I would later have lunch with the sports editor who said a woman could never do the job full-time. In those days, you didn’t even question it.”

Then in the summer of 1995 came her mould-breaking move to The Sun.

Her all-round talent was quickly recognised and she would soon become the paper’s athletics correspondent, a role which she relished – covering all of Usain Bolt’s world records – and in which she would prosper.

She would also strike up enduring relationships with many of the sport’s leading lights – chief among them Paula Radcliffe, Ennis and Farah.

She did so because these people trusted her. Many times she was given information she couldn’t write about and didn’t – her scrupulousness being rewarded later with bigger stories she COULD write about.

As such, she produced a series of old-fashioned scoops during the golden age of British athletics. An era that saw the GB team go from one gold medal at Atlanta in 1996 to an astonishing 27 in Rio in 2016, second only to the USA.

Nor was there anyone more excited about the new crop of outstanding home athletes like Dina Asher-Smith than Vikki.

During all this, she was a sounding board for other members of her profession unfortunate enough to themselves be afflicted by cancer.

She was also fundraising – one reference to a charity event with Radcliffe showing both her unquenchable spirit and humour.

She tweeted: “I am walking 5k with Paula in the Race for Life. She has a personal best for the event of 14 minutes 29.11 seconds but is recovering from a broken toe and hence is not running.

“I have a personal best of 19 months in remission from secondary cancer – hence not running, either!”

I met Vikki twice for lunch in the last few months with former Sun sports editor Paul Ridley, the man who not only brought her to Fleet Street but also gave her the athletics job.

Once when, complete in black wig and showbiz sunglasses, she looked a million dollars – despite the chemo.

Then again just before Christmas in Soho when she was obviously struggling a bit.

Dressed in a stunning, full-length, camel overcoat and carrying an elegant black walking-stick, she climbed into a black cab that was to take her to see a concerned Sebastian Coe.

Noticing the anguish in my face, she said: “Don’t worry, Steve.”

What style. What class. Still thinking about other people to the end.

Motorama to take over as National League title sponsor

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Motorama, sister company of FWA partner Vanarama, will take over the title sponsorship of the National League from the start of next season.

This new agreement will build on the success of the Autorama Group’s previous work with the National League through Vanarama as National League title sponsors since 2013. The sponsorship, along with support for the FWA through our annual Golf Day and regular National League columns, propelled Vanarama into the homes of millions of people around the UK, driving huge engagement with the brand and the wider football community.

Motorama (a new car leasing company) will take the naming rights from the start of the 2019/2020 season – to encourage real football fans to STOP buying cars and to START leasing them with Motorama.

The growth of car leasing has been huge in the last three years and is expected to grow exponentially as customers become less interested in show rooms, and more comfortable with online purchases. In fact, 67% of customers that lease with Motorama don’t test drive the vehicle they choose to lease. Drivers are now leaning towards car ‘usership’, rather than ownership – making getting a car as simple as getting a mobile phone, with the same opportunity to upgrade every couple of years.

Autorama’s extension of the existing partnership with the National League under the Motorama brand will ensure that along with the National League they can take the competition to the next level. It signifies Autorama’s commitment to remain firmly at the heart of football – and engage football’s most committed fans. The Motorama National League will continue to receive incredible exposure, with BT Sport broadcasting live matches and highlights for the next three years – allowing even more opportunity for Motorama’s leasing proposition to outstrip tired and dated traditional car-buying.

Andy Alderson, Autorama Group CEO, said:  “We’re delighted to be continuing our relationship with The National League. With cars making up 88% of new registrations in the UK, the new sponsorship will appeal to a wider audience within the followers of National League football and provide a great opportunity to elevate and scale the partnership we currently enjoy with the National League. It will allow Motorama to enjoy the prestige of being title sponsor of one of the UK’s most popular football leagues and get its message that people CAN lease the cars they want – rather than settle for something they can find on a used dealer’s forecourt – to an engaged audience of enthusiastic fans.”

Previous title sponsor Vanarama found title sponsorship of the National League a game-changing decision, with customer engagement and intent-to-use the commercial vehicle leasing brand sky rocketing as a result. Vanarama now has the highest awareness in its market, thanks largely to the Vanarama / National league partnership which has reached a peak of cooperation and mutual benefit most sponsorship partnerships can only dream of.

Michael Tattersall said:  “Following five seasons as the Vanarama National League, we are delighted to be signing up for a further three seasons as the Motorama National League. Our relationship with the Autorama Group goes from strength to strength and is a classic case of football sponsorship delivering value and helping to create a leading consumer brand.”

For more on Motorama please visit: https://www.motorama.com/

Hugh McIlvanney, OBE

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We at the FWA are sad to report the passing of Hugh McIlvanney, one of the greatest sportswriters of the past fifty years and a much-loved colleague.
Hughie passed away on Thursday, aged 84, after a battle with cancer, but he left behind a legacy of prize-winning sportswriting and a reputation as one of the true greats.
The majority of his career was spent writing for the Observer and Sunday Times before he retired three years ago, and he was the first journalist inducted into the National Football Museum’s Hall of Fame two years ago.
Below is a tribute from his friend and former colleague Pat Collins, himself a giant of sportswriting.

“One winter evening in the eighties, a group of sports writers boarded the London-bound train at Manchester Piccadilly station. We started to speak of the match we had covered that afternoon, and of United’s decisive goal. Somebody praised Bryan Robson’s pass which had created the goal, and we all muttered our agreement. All except Hugh McIlvanney.

“’It wasn’t Robson, it was Frank Stapleton’, he insisted. The ensuing argument lasted until Crewe, by which time Hugh conceded that he might be mistaken. He got up, swore loudly and yanked his typewriter from the overhead rack. “I’ll have to speak to the office’, he said. We told him it was the last train, that he’d be marooned until Sunday morning and that, anyway, nobody would notice the error. “But I would’, growled Hugh. We were still pleading with him through the carriage window when the train pulled away.

“When his countless admirers speak of Hugh’s writing, they recall the rolling phrases, the astute insights, the dramatic sense of occasion. But those who worked with him — and especially the heroic subs who placed paragraph marks on his copy — will tell of the tireless perfectionist, the man whose Sunday would be spoiled by a misplaced comma or a wayward colon.

“His passing, at 84, has provoked torrent of tributes; glowing and utterly merited. His influence on British sports writing is profound, and he has long since secured his place alongside Ian Wooldridge and Frank Keating in the trinity of our greatest sports writers.

“Setting out on the Kilmarnock Standard, McIlvanney moved to The Scotsman, to The Observer from 1972 to 1993 — with a two – year spell at the Daily Express — before joining the Sunday Times until his retirement in 2016. The honours came pouring in: he was Sports Journalist of the Year on six occasions and he is the only sports writer to be named Journalist of the Year in the British Press Awards.

”But the honours only hint at the talent, far better to consider his sporting heroes. There were the towering football men from the West of Scotland: Jock Stein, Bill Shankly and – most notably – Sir Alex Ferguson. Hugh spent countless hours in their company, and he painted some imperishable pictures in his columns. But if he admired those fine managers, we knew that he actually loved George Best. It was Best whom he described as having “feet as sensitive as a pickpocket’s hands’. It was Best who gave him some of his most revealing interviews. And it was Best of whom he wrote: “He appeared to regard gravity as an impertinent con – trick, unworthy of being taken seriously, gracefully riding tackles that looked capable of derailing a locomotive’.

“Sure, Hugh was anxious to celebrate the great sporting figures, yet he had an unforgiving eye for mere pretenders. Of Vinnie Jones, he wrote: “Plenty of hod carriers made it in football in the past, but they had to learn to play first’. While I remember wincing when I read his one – line demolition of the British heavyweight boxer Joe Bugner: “The physique of a Greek God, but with fewer moves’.

“Boxing was his prime passion. He recognised its hazardous cruelty, but he saw courage and genuine nobility in the nature of so many fighters. Again, his heroes came from the top drawer: Sugar Ray Leonard, Lennox Lewis and – way above the rest – Muhammad Ali. Hugh enjoyed extraordinary access to Ali, and his interview on the banks of the Zaire River in the wake of the astonishing fight with George Foreman remains one of the most memorable pieces he ever wrote: “We should have known that Muhammad Ali would not settle for any old resurrection. His had to have an additional flourish. So, having rolled away the rock, he hit George Foreman on the head with it’.

“His boxing writing made his reputation in America, and for a while he moved home to upstate New York to spread his talents more widely. But the pull of the British sporting scene proved too great. “I missed it for all kinds of reasons’, he said. “Especially Cheltenham’. He loved the races. He loved the air of rascality, the guile of the jockeys, the wisdom of the trainers, the sense that there was a killing to be made if only he could hold his nerve. He was, to put it kindly, an optimistic gambler, but he shrugged off his losses and cherished his occasional coups.

“He also wrote this stunning intro one winter’s day at the races: “The tarpaulin they threw over the remains of Lanzarote on Thursday afternoon was a winding – sheet for our enjoyment of this year’s Cheltenham Festival’.

“His contribution to our rackety old trade was prodigious, but I shall remember Hugh McIlvanney for other reasons; for the late nights and the laughter, for the unpredictable explosions and the brooding remorse, for all the songs that were sung and all the tales that were told.

“A final memory: some thirty – five years ago, we covered a world middleweight title fight at Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas. The fight took place on a Friday evening, which allowed us to watch the event, speak to the “connections’, attend the Press Conference and return to our hotel rooms to work through the night before dictating our pieces to our Sunday papers.

“I finished around three or four in the morning, after which I slept for a few hours before knocking at Hugh’s room at mid – day. The place was in some disarray, the floor strew with discarded sheets of copy paper, empty coffee cups and the remains of breakfast. The air was thick with the purple fug of cigars: “He would spend more on Cuban cigars than the rest of us would spend on our children for Christmas’, as David Walsh once wrote. Hugh sat amid this chaos with a sheaf of copy in one hand and a smouldering cigar in the other. He was staring, distrustfully, at his report. “I’m not sure this works’, he said. Boldly, I said: “Would you mind if I read it?’. He handed me the copy. It was a long piece and I took my time. As I had expected, the piece was brilliant. I handed it back. He lifted an eyebrow and then, almost as if he valued my opinion, he said. “Well’, what do you think?’. “Honestly?’, I said. “It’s rubbish. Total rubbish. I wouldn’t bother sending it if I were you’. He jumped to his feet, bellowed a stream of insults and hurled the copy at me as I dived through the door.

“Then I heard him laugh as I walked back down the corridor. I remember his laughter. I think I always will.”

Hugh McIlvanney, 1934 – 2019

Hugh McIlvanney of The Observer (left), and Ian Wooldridge of the Daily Mail (right), who shared the Best Sports Journalist award at the 1976 AstroTurf British Sports Journalism Awards in London. Minister for Sport Denis Howell (centre) presented them each with a set of cut glass and a £250 cheque.

Vanarama National League column – Managers

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Who’d be a manager?  by Glenn Moore

There was major news on the managerial merry-go-round on Tuesday as one of the leading clubs made a change. Wrexham, arguably the Vanarama National League’s biggest name (though Leyton Orient and Chesterfield might disagree) appointed Graham Barrow, former manager of Wigan, Chester and Bury.

The decision went under the radar – another managerial move that day, in Manchester, absorbed the media’s attention – but it meant seven of the 24 Vanarama National League clubs now have a different boss to the one they began the season with. If speculation linking Aldershot’s Gary Waddock to Bristol Rovers proves correct it will be a third of the division. Indeed, add in the summer changes and already less than half the clubs retain the manager they ended last season with. Not so much a merry-go-round as a set of fast-revolving doors.

The spotlight may be smaller in non-League, but the expectation can be big. The Vanarama National League is like the Championship; the promotion prize is so great clubs are desperate to succeed, sometimes over-reach, and tend to react quickly. The vacancy at Wrexham arose because Sam Ricketts quit to join Shrewsbury, similarly Andy Hessenthaler left Eastleigh in October to take over at Dover Athletic, but the other five managers were pushed rather than jumped.

Hartlepool, anxious to regain their league status, are now on their third manager since being relegated in 2017, Richard Money this month replacing Matthew Bates who took over from Craig Harrison last season. The other four clubs making a change have never played in the Football League, but are ambitious to do so: Ebbsfleet, Dover, Braintree and Maidstone (whose namesake predecessors briefly played in the league before folding in 1992). Progress has slowed so, albeit with heavy hearts, each parted company with the men who had taken them into the top flight, Daryl McMahon, Chris Kinnear, Brad Quinton and Jay Saunders respectively.

However, there is a coterie of Vanarama National League managers who are part of the furniture. Paul Doswell has chalked up a decade at Sutton United, a feat Harrogate’s Simon Weaver will match at the end of the season. At Fylde Dave Challinor has been in place since late 2011 while Havant & Waterlooville, having seen off interest in Lee Bradbury from Hartlepool, have just completed six years with him at the helm. In each case longevity has bred prosperity.

So far Hessenthaler has had the most dramatic impact of the new men. Dover were bottom when he arrived and while they remain in the relegation zone the trajectory is upwards.  Going full-time has helped, though that is a tricky change to implement mid-season and has meant a turnaround of personnel.

Ebbsfleet’s results have also picked up, those of Braintree and Maidstone less so. Chairmen will wonder whether they were right to make a change so soon in the season, or whether they should have acted earlier. They will never know. While many would argue managers need time there are many factors involved and, when even hiring a multiple-Champions League-winning manager fails, no guarantees.

For more on the Vanarama National League visit: http://www.thenationalleague.org.uk/

For great deals on car and van leasing visit: https://www.vanarama.com/

 

Arsenal legend Alan Smith joins FWA

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The FWA is delighted to welcome Alan Smith, the former Leicester City, Arsenal and England striker, as a member.  In his hugely successful playing career Alan won two League Championship titles with Arsenal, the FA Cup, League Cup and European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1994, when he scored the only goal in the final against Parma.  He also won 13 England caps and played in the 1992 European Championship finals.

Since retiring soon afterwards, he started as a journalist with the Telegraph, covering matches, writing features and interviewing football personalities. He is a well-known voice as a co-commentator for Sky Sports and since 2012, for EA Sports’ FIFA games.

Now he writes a regular column in the Evening Standard, and has recently released his autobiography “Heads Up” https://www.amazon.co.uk/Heads-Up-My-Life-Story/dp/1472127862 

Alan has always been a good friend of the FWA and attended many of our events, and is a welcome addition to the association.  You can see his thoughts on Arsenal’s prospects this season here:

https://youtu.be/MBujk6ApAiw

 

Gareth Southgate to be honoured by the FWA

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We at the Football Writers’ Association are delighted to announce that the recipient of our Tribute Evening at the Savoy in January will be Gareth Southgate.
Following discussions with Gareth, his team and the FA, we have decided against our traditional event. Unlike previous Tribute dinners, this one will not focus solely on Gareth’s career but on what he has created as England manager with a new style of leadership and culture which helped the squad to a World Cup semi-final this summer.
It will also be a celebration of the squad and staff as a whole and Gareth’s determination to bring the England team closer to both the supporters and the media, something which he achieved with spectacular effect during the summer and post-World Cup.
The speakers on the evening will reflect the significant change in culture and Gareth’s determination to build on the foundations in Russia as England prepare for fresh challenges.
The dinner will take place on Sunday January 20, 2019 at The Savoy and the ticket price has been held at £96 per person thanks to the generosity of our title sponsors, William Hill.
FWA members can purchase tickets individually or in tables of either 10 or 12, and we are able to take bookings for smaller groups of FWA members. Please let Paul McCarthy, FWA Executive Secretary, know your ticket requirements by email paul@maccamedia.co.uk
We look forward to an enjoyable night, which is one of the highlights our calendar.

Photos: Press Association Images

David Meek Memorial Service

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Following a priivate family service, there will be a Memorial Service to celebrate the life of David Meek at St Ann’s Church, St Ann Street, Manchester M2 7LF on Wednesday 21 November at 1.30pm.

David’s family have pointed out that his favourite colour was pink, so feel free to wear something with a splash of the colour.

In the meantime, we have on our YouTube channel and Facebook page, a beautiful filmed tribute to David made by MUTV, featuring tributes from Manchester United legends Bryan Robson and Paddy Crerand, as well as journalism colleagues Steve Bates, Neil Custis and Andy Mitten.   Visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GYwyugd2MA

FWA Northern Awards dinner

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Pep Guardiola led a host of successful managers honoured by the Northern branch of the FWA at the annual awards dinner in Manchester on Sunday November 4.

Guardiola was honoured after winning the Premier League title with Manchester City, and he was joined at the top table be fellow winners Tony Mowbray of Blackburn Rovers, Micky Mellon of Tranmere, Rotherham’s Paul Warne, John Coleman of Accrington Stanley and John Askey for his success with Macclesfield Town. Paul Cook of Wigan was unable to attend for personal reasons, but his assistant Liam Robinson accepted the award in his place.

Guardiola thanked the football writers for making him feel at home in Manchester, and his full acceptance speech can be seen on our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37gBQPlbo08

A substantial sum was raised for the designated charity, Clare House Children’s Hospice.

Thanks to Dick Bott, Paul Hetherington, Andy Dunn and Steve Bates for their sterling work in organising the event, and also to our sponsors William Hill for supporting it.

David Meek – more tributes

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More tributes have come in for David Meek, the former Manchester United correspondent for the Manchester Evening News, who has passed away at the age of 88.

Colin Young was given a huge help in his fledgling career  by David:

“When I was 14, my heart already set on football reporting as a career, my headmaster Alan Walker arranged for me to go over to Manchester to spend a day of work experience with his best school friend and a proud Archbishop Holgate’s Grammar School old boy. He had arranged a similar day out at Old Trafford for Jonathan Champion, who also went on to fulfil his dream, and is now a world-renowned commentator.

The Manchester Evening News’ legendary David Meek met me at Manchester Piccadilly and took me straight to the MEN offices and then into the inner sanctum of Manchester United Football Club, introducing me to the likes of Sir Matt Busby, Ron Atkinson, who was then the manager, and after the match, Bryan Robson and man of the match Jesper Olsen. I hardly closed my mouth all day.

‘Meeky’, as his colleagues called him, was the first person I saw and heard file a live match report and I was mesmerised. United lost to Nottingham Forest which meant I met Brian Clough for the first time. I remember him telling me to go to the press room (then a little cupboard next to the PA announcer) to pick up some quotes from the managers while he filed his final match report to ‘Belfast’. Cloughie, who clearly hadn’t expected such a young young Young man, spent the first five minutes interviewing me, much to the senior journos’ amusement. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, which has lasted to this day. I fell in love. With the job, journalism, Cloughie, although not United. David sent me on my way back to York after buying me a copy of The Pink at the station, with his by-lined match report on the front page.

A week later, I sent him a combination of a thank you letter and match report which he liked so much he kindly printed it in The Pink the following week. It was my first published football article, but certainly not the last.

And so began a warm friendship. When I joined the national newspaper pack, he remembered me the first time we met again at St James’ Park in 1996 and always kept an eye out for me. I can’t tell you how privileged that made me feel. The lovely welcome David extended on that first day was always there whenever I went to Old Trafford and he was still working and ghostwriting Sir Alex’s programme notes.

As well as sharing a love of the game and job, we had a joint interest in the fortunes of York City, and the Yorkshire Evening Press. I started at the YEP as an 18-year-old trainee after two years of voluntary weekly work experience, arranged with Alan Walker’s blessing. David’s dad Wilf was the YEP’s City reporter for many years and eventually became club chairman. He always asked about York and Archies when our paths crossed.

Last year I went to interview him at his home in Milton Keynes. He was such a lovely man, made me tomato soup and was in great form, typically humble, reminiscing from the days when he was appointed the MEN Manchester United man just days after the Munich air disaster which claimed the lives of eight journalists, including the MEN’s Tom Jackson. He made such a positive impression he stayed on for more than 40 years. He was so trusted that he continued to write Sir Alex’s notes when he retired from the MEN. His favourite all-time player was Bill Foulkes. And like any good journo that was based on ability and accessibility.

The bookcase in his office was a sea of red volumes and spines from the 50s, 60s and to the present day. And he had written most of the hundreds of books and magazines on show.

I covered a few Manchester United games in Europe and I remember sitting next to Jon Champion on a return trip from Athens a few years ago. I reminded Jon of his own trip to Old Trafford all those years ago and we agreed how proud Alan Walker and David Meek would be that two Archies lads were living their dreams.

I was fortunate that two great men set me on that path and it was an honour for me to go on to call David Meek a friend and a colleague. RIP ‘Meeky’. Although I always called him David.”

 

Ian Herbert, of the Mail, was another close friend of David’s:

“It was the fundamental humanity of David Meek which so many of those who worked with him will most remember.

Someone made the point, when news arrived of his death on Tuesday, that he was always interested in what you had written, heard, or were doing in life. He’d kept chickens at some stage and I had some vague intention of doing the same. ‘So have you got them yet?’ was his constant refrain when our paths crossed. I’d newly arrived in the forbidding world of football writing at the time, ten years back. Kindness of his kind was a precious commodity.

By then, Meek was a regular traveller on Manchester United’s European trips – there as a representative of the club to accompany reporters and a regular companion on match-day morning walks around some European city or other.

But behind the humility and self-effacement, there was the journalist’s steel. He was the chronicler of Manchester United for the Manchester Evening News and, of course, also the ghost-writer of Sir Alex Ferguson’s programme notes down many years. He gave as good as he got when Ferguson revealed that propensity of his to combust with reporters.

There was trouble when Ferguson took his players for a day trip to the SAS headquarters in Hereford, at the instigation of the club’s head of security Ned Kelly, who had served with the regiment. One of the MEN’s news reporters had got wind of the story. Ferguson asked the paper not to publish – fearing that his club would become a target for the then active IRA – but the paper went ahead anyway.

Ferguson had thus effectively severed all relations with him, but he decided to meet the problem head on at Old Trafford, when the players trained on the pitch there just before Christmas that year.

Ferguson spotted him. ‘The Manchester Evening News is finished at this club,’ he bellowed and marched away up the slope to the top of tunnel. He was out of breath, at the top, when Meek caught up with him. “OK. If that’s how you feel, then Merry Christmas,” Meek retorted as another Glaswegian volley came his way. Meek was marching past him when Ferguson’s arm came out. ‘Nothing personal, you know!’ Ferguson said, a smile breaking across his face. Fire always was best met with fire where Ferguson is concerned.

Meek’s quiet persistence also brought surely the greatest published insights into Ferguson. The relatively unknown book ‘Six Years at United’, which he ghost-wrote with the manager in 1992, is a gem. Its depiction of the insecurity Ferguson felt in those early trophy-less years quite extraordinary when you read it back now.

Meek is also perhaps the journalist who knew Ferguson’s compassion more than any. After illness forced him to break off from 16 years of uninterrupted programme notes, the Scot despatched a huge bouquet of flowers to the hospital where he was recovering. He was convalescing at home a week later when the phone rang. There were no words of introduction down the line, just a growl declaring: ‘The Scottish beast is on its way!’ Ferguson was at Meek’s door in 20 minutes.

Meek related these anecdotes for a piece I was writing for The Independent seven years ago – about the manager’s relationship with the media in what had by then been 25 years at the helm. I felt like the callow newcomer, mining his secrets, yet he was happy to speak of those days with extraordinary affection. ‘He never lost his sense of wonder at the game and his characters,’ someone reflected this week. Which pretty much said it all.”

 

Michael Hart, like David a life member of the FWA, wrote this:

“David Meek was a hero of mine. And not just me. He was a role model for dozens of young football reporters back in the sixties and seventies and, of course, he had the stage on which to perfect his journalistic craft – Old Trafford.

“Meeky” charted the everyday business of life at Old Trafford with the spirit of Denis Law, the confidence of Bobby Charlton and the grace of George Best. These three great players were the cornerstones of the rebirth of Manchester United in the sixties and David found it impossible to say which of them was THE greatest.

But he did say of Best: “I watched him blossom into a rare performer who in my view still stands alone as the most extraordinary and exhilarating player I have ever seen.”

David reported on life at Old Trafford from 1958, when as a young leader writer he took over as United correspondent from Tom Jackson, tragically killed in the Munich air disaster, until 1996.

I had the good fortune to work alongside him on many occasions. I learned many valuable lessons from him and perhaps the most important was the value of trust. “Meeky” would never break a confidence.

I remember a former United manager Dave Sexton, who I knew well from his time at Chelsea, telling me that David Meek was the only reporter he would trust. Years later, David established a similar rapport with Sir Alex Ferguson. He wrote his programme notes for 26 years and despite all kinds of inducements would never reveal the manager’s thoughts before they appeared in the programme. He was privy to the inner most secrets of one of the world’s great football clubs and never betrayed a confidence.

We travelled together across the globe, covering England, and it became a real pleasure watching his charm, his logic and his kindness win over some stubborn passport official, security guard or press box dictator!

I last spoke to him a few days before he died. I wanted to remind him of the debt I owed him. At the Mexico World Cup in 1986 he introduced me to the girl who would become my wife.

Yes, “Meeky” was a not just a special friend. He was my hero too.” 

And the tributes continued on social media:

From Neil Harman: The sad news keeps on hitting hard. David Meek, who became the Manchester United writer for the Evening News in the wake of the Munich disaster [a job he continued for almost four decades] has passed away at the age of 88. I moved to Manchester in 1981 and will never forget his kind words, wise counsel and helpful spirit. There was no more considerate, warm colleague in the press box. Always there for his fellow man, which speaks volumes of him. There will never be another Meeky.

From Matt D’Arcy: Devastating news! My guide and mentor from the time I joined the MEN sports desk in 1966 until I joined the Daily Star in 1978. And even then, he would keep in touch as a friend as much as a colleague, with words of advice and encouragement. He introduced me (young, and new to this world of football journalism) to his closest contacts–like Busby, Best etc–and opened doors for me, generously and unselfishly. David was a wonderful, kind man, a gentle soul, widely admired and trusted by football people who gave their trust and admiration sparingly. What a loss to our profession. My thoughts, now, are with his family. RIP Meeky.

From James Fletcher: Oh no, what terrible news. Lovely tribute Paddy. David Meek was one of the finest men I’ve ever met, not just because he was a proper journalist with proper contacts but, more importantly, it was the way he conducted himself. Always gentle, softly spoken, considerate. Willing to listen to the whipper snappers dominate conversations in the press box or on the press trips whilst he knew what was really going on. I learned a lot from just being around his company, a man who didn’t need to boast or shout or scream, he just quietly and professionally did his job and, never had a bad word to say about anyone. A man of true honour. RIP Meeky, and lots of love and best wishes to his family

From Andy Mitten: Very sorry to hear about journalist David Meek passing away. He covered MUFC for the Evening News from ‘58-95. Helped me loads, with work experience and advice. He was still on Euro aways until 2011. He’d mind my ticket and wanted to hear which daft route I’d taken to the game.

From Mark Ogden:  To many journalists who have covered @manutd, David Meek was as big a figure as some of the players he reported on as the MEN’s United reporter for almost 40 years. A great man, without an ego, and a true legend of his profession. Sad news.

From Stuart Mathieson: Very sad to hear that David Meek has passed away. Always available for advice when I took over in #MUFC MEN role. Meeky tours on Champions League aways were legendary. A coffee and a cathedral visit cured many a hangover. A great man. God bless

From the FWA’s Paul McCarthy: David Meek was a journalist who people trusted implicitly even when he had one of the toughest jobs in the media. His class shone through in everything he did and he was truly a man with the absolute highest standards. He will be greatly missed by so many.

From Gordon Burns: So sad to hear of the death of David Meek the legendary @MENnewsdesk sports writer. Great journalist and really nice man. What a long and outstanding career he had.

From Alex Stepney, former Man Utd goalkeeper: Very sad to hear that David Meek is no longer with us…been a bad week for losing good football people.