Bring Me the Sports Jacket of Arthur Montford: An Adventure Through Scottish Football

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With his pleasant, distinctive voice a singular asset, he became STV’s continuity announcer as well as sports reporter.

Montford was President and captain of Glasgow Golf Club, and was Rector of the University of Glasgow, 1974-1977. A packed Bearsden Cross Church, near Glasgow, heard how Arthur, who died last week aged 85, had still been writing his golfing column for Bunkered magazine until the final weeks of his life.With his pleasant, distinctive voice a singular asset, he joined Scottish Television in August 1957 as a continuity announcer and sports reporter, where Montford shared the opening night announcing duties with Jimmy Nairn, [4] He was then chosen to present STV's new sports programme, Scotsport (originally Sports Desk), where he remained as anchorman for 32 years. He interviewed all the greats from Bobby Jones and Ben Hogan to Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player. I met him on 2 January many years ago when I played junior football for Downfield Juniors in Dundee. These went well as a radio broadcaster, and, when BBC sports editor John Wilson joined Scottish Television in 1957, he asked Montford to join him in the new commercial visual age.

Though again he did not shout about it, his politics in the 70s favoured the SNP, and he helped the late Margo McDonald in her campaign in Govan in 1973.His recollections of some of golf's greatest players, moments, and tournaments were popular with the magazine's readers and he was the title's longest-serving regular contributor. Everybody knew him through his broadcast journalism but he did not have a different personality away from the TV. And he said that during golf outings, when things were tight, Arthur would often start commentating to build the tension. Thanks to his friend, Douglas Rae, at whose house Montford’s second marriage took place with Rae as best man, Montford was appointed director of Morton FC, and latterly became honorary vice-president.

Whilst at school he was one of a band of rebels who tried — unsuccessfully — to introduce soccer to the rugby-playing school. Indeed, with Archie McPherson and others at the BBC, he was one of the pioneers of sports broadcasting in Scotland, his career covering the era of canned film of games that were rushed to the Glasgow studios to be broadcast to cathode ray tubes, up to the age of constant live satellite transmissions, electronic video machines and instant replays. While there he covered numerous sports, but it was football that became his main sport, and he was asked by the BBC's well-known producer Peter Thomson to do some match reports for radio. Scottish PFA chief Tony Higgins, who played in Arthur’s commentary heyday, said: “He was a giant of his time.On his retirement at the age of 60 in 1989, he concentrated on playing golf at Glasgow Golf Club at Killermont. The world of Scottish football can be a divisive place at times, but news of the death of Arthur Montford at the age of 85 in November 2014 was met with sadness and tributes from all parts of the game there. He said that, undeterred, they set up in the North Stand and ended up winning the local battle for viewers. He also presented Radio Clyde’s version of Desert Island Discs as well as writing the Scotsport Annual among other books.