SPY in the Camp | Why Footballers Call Me "SPY in the Camp"...

Hello, we just wanted to give insights into what it's like being in the football world where we've been behind the scenes.

And I want to take you back to 1986.

That was when the primary phone lines of Club Call started.

And it gave the opportunity for clubs to talk every day to supporters at a high price, of course.

And I was lucky enough to start it with Chelsea, Queens Park Rangers and the following summer Wimbledon all at the same time.

And I don't know how you felt at the time, Martin, but there was amongst the kind of established media who were so neutral, a resentment of clubs having their own media.

I don't know.

Quite a few of the main journalists, of course, didn't hide their club allegiances.

So I didn't feel I must say I rang it a few times, Club Call, and enjoyed the information, the extra bits.

And I suppose what we get today, some of it is free, isn't it, on the websites.

But most I've subscribed to a number of clubs to get there.

If I need to watch a game that I haven't been able to record on mainstream TV, you can at a very reasonable price, you can join, become a member of a club, particularly the clubs in the Football League, and get to see the action.

And very importantly, which I think was part of what you did as well, you get the club's take on it, as opposed to sort of the neutral newspaper coverage or radio coverage and very limited TV coverage at the time.

So that's useful as well to get their perspective on who's playing well and who's been the star of the season so far or any mistakes.

Well, you get some context with it, which is good.

And you certainly got people talking and listening as well.

Well, this is how technology has changed.

The very first coverage that we did, which was a pilot, was the 1986, I think, September or October game between Chelsea and Nottingham Forest.

And my instructions were to give the teams a four-minute piece down the phone to a tape recorder, which was reel to reel.

So they'd take it off that and then put it on the technology.

So it would take four minutes before it went out as they replayed it.

When I got to the press room about now before kickoff, no, about an hour and a half before kickoff, I was shocked an hour and 10 minutes before kickoff in the days where managers had to hand in their team sheets an hour before the game, that the manager of Chelsea, John Hollins, phoned to the press room, asked for me and gave me the team.

This is how much the clubs were putting into their idea of this as a money raiser.

The game, I was supposed to do an update midway through the first half and an update at halftime unless a goal was scored.

And then I had to do an update when the goal was scored.