I don't know if it's been mentioned elsewhere on the forum but I Was really saddened to hear about the death of Tom Tyrrell yesterday, a big red and all round nice guy.
For the lads and lasses on the forum that hail from further afield the name possibly doesn't mean that much, but for United fans in the Greater Manchester area it's a sad loss.
Tom did the radio commentary on United games for over 40 years, and was the stadium announcer for a while too, he has also written a couple of books about United.
Some of my earliest United memories were listening to Tom on Piccadilly Radio on a Saturday afternoon with my Dad, I even rang him once to ask for his autograph, which he sent along with some Piccadilly radio stickers.
Great bloke, RIP Tom.
Two men died this week who were associated with Manchester United without ever frequenting the headlines.
Brian Whitehouse was the reserve team manager from 1981-1986, the man who said signing Peter Beardsley would hinder the progress of a young Mark Hughes, the Welshman who’d become a star striker and later a manager whose Stoke City team will play Manchester United at home tomorrow. United are on a 16 game unbeaten run. Savour that sentence as a sign of improvement this season.
Whitehouse, as West Brom’s caretaker manager, gave Bryan Robson his professional debut at 18. A former top-flight professional footballer himself, he made young United talents ready for battle in the first team. United’s reserve side was a finishing school and when they made the big step up, those players would walk out at Old Trafford, where they’d become very familiar with the voice of the stadium’s PA announcer, Tom Tyrrell. The radio journalist also passed away this week after a long battle with cancer, which limited his time on the golf course. But not by much.
Tyrrell was a United fan who started going to games aged 14 when his family moved to Manchester. He’d supported Carlisle United before that. As a proud Stretford Ender, he said he was “absolutely heartbroken” after the Munich air disaster. A decade later, he queued overnight for tickets for the 1968 European Cup final. He had every single token from attending every game including reserve fixtures, so he was entitled to be one of the first in the queue.
Work took him to Lincoln, but he continued to travel to games at Old Trafford with the Lincoln supporters’ branch before applying for a job as the industrial correspondent on the Oldham Chronicle.
“I was probably the worst industrial correspondent that any paper has employed,” he told me in 1996. “I really just wanted to be near Manchester. The editors soon realised that my future didn’t lie in that position and I was transferred to being a news reporter where I wrote a book ‘Manchester United, The Religion’. That earned him another transfer – this time to the sports department. In 1970 he applied to work for BBC radio in Manchester covering sports.
“I had a show called ‘Kick Off’ which was a kind of fanzine on air,” he said. “The show finished at midday so I could go and commentate on United games. Independent radio was opening up and I was approached to go to Piccadilly Radio in 1974.”
Tyrrell doubled up as the voice of the Tannoy (and it was a Tannoy) for Old Trafford from 1974 until 1989. Those listening at home were treated to multiple plays of Tarzan Boy by Baltimora as the terraces filled up in the hours leading up to a game.
If a goal was scored in a game in which one of the Greater Manchester teams was playing, the transmission would cut to a pre-recorded cries of: ‘It’s a goal!’ if the goal was for a local team or an ‘Oh No!’ for a rival side. In the intervening second of suspense and tension, you’d pray that the ‘Oh No!’ wouldn’t be followed by Tyrrell’s voice at a United game, breathing a sigh of relief when the radio cut to Spotland or to Brian Clarke at a City game. Football was barely televised in the 1980s and local radio coverage was very important. Tyrell loved the role.
“I could never play for United,” he told me. “As a footballer I had three left feet, but the nearest I got to it was playing the records at the ground. I felt part of the club and it meant a lot to me.”
Tyrrell was hurt when the club told him they no longer wanted him to do it in 1989. He felt people at the club resented him being referred to as ‘the voice of Old Trafford’ on the covers of some of the books he wrote about United.
“Somebody once said, ‘If Old Trafford could speak, it would speak with your voice, Tom,’ he said proudly.
In 25 years, he missed only two home games. On Boxing Day 1994, he covered one game at Chelsea away from outside Stamford Bridge. A mix-up with his pass saw Alex Ferguson help him out by getting him into an area reserved for players’ guests.
Tyrrell did his commentary from there via his mobile phone.
“When Hughes scored for United, I said: ‘Great news here at Stamford Bridge, Mark Hughes has scored for United.” A rather large Chelsea fan took offence before hurling obscenities down to the phone to listeners in Manchester.
“Paul Ince’s agent Ambrose Mendy was sitting behind me and told the Chelsea fan to shut up in no uncertain terms, making a reference to his weight in the process. The Chelsea fan retaliated with a racist comment and a colleague of Mr Mendy punched the Chelsea fan to the ground. I decided to get out quick and stood on the Chelsea fan while making my way out. He screamed out, I got out.”
Tyrrell’s next report from the game came from the press box, but without accreditation he was thrown out. The next update was phoned in from the car park, the one after that from the disabled enclosure, until he was also ejected from there. His final report was broadcast after he climbed a wall where he could see half the pitch. A Chelsea steward relayed events in the other half of the field to him.
“He changed his tune when Brian McClair scored and told me to bugger off,” said Tyrrell. United won 3-2: Cantona, Hughes, McClair.
Tyrrell and David Meek from the Manchester Evening News were good to me as a young journalist. Tyrrell told me: “If fanzines were about in the 1960s I would have definitely started one.”
Tyrrell was often accused of being biased, but he saw it slightly differently.
“We just take the United angle. If United are attacking at Anfield then listeners don't want to know how well United are defending, they want to know how well United are attacking. That said, I do think some of the commentators are anti-United. I get criticised because I get excited when United score but as a fan I’m going to. However, I was also presented with a life membership of Manchester City’s supporters club when I was at Piccadilly.”
Tyrrell was at Selhurst Park in 1995, a year before he left full-time employment in Manchester radio for more regular work in Ireland.
“I had the perfect view of the punch,” he said of Eric Cantona’s disagreement with Mathew Simmonds. “It was a cracker, he smacked him straight across the jaw, followed through and Simmonds went bowling over backwards. Eric Cantona did what many people would have loved to have done over the years.”
And Tom Tyrrell, with his job, did exactly the same. Rest in peace, Tom.
BY ANDY MITTEN 3 SEC AGO
