On This Day – 22nd January
22nd January 1927 saw a landmark in football history as a live commentary of a match took place for the first time.
Arsenal and Sheffield United played out a 1-1 draw at Highbury, with former Harlequins rugby player Henry Blythe Thornhill Wakelam (pictured above) becoming the first ever radio football commentator.
Wakelam had commentated on the England vs Wales rugby match at Twickenham the week before (England won 11-9) and the live sports commentary extended to cricket and the tennis at the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships in the summer of 1927.
In both the football and the rugby broadcasts, a map of the pitches were printed in the Radio Times magazine with a grid of numbered squares on so listeners could identify where the ball was on the pitch. It is widely believed that this is where the term “Back to square one” originated. You can see a copy of the original map from the Arsenal vs Sheffield United game in the photo below:
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