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Andrew Titheridge: how I got into broadcasting and journalism

My career as a rugby player was very limited but as a loose head prop all I needed was brute force and ignorance – and I had plenty of both!  At the end of an undistinguished career I took up refereeing and fairly quickly rose through the ranks, eventually ending up at the top level.

My first senior game as referee was Harlequins against Bath and I was very nervous. After about 15 minutes, having had a constant diatribe from the Quins skipper, Bob Hiller, who at that time was also captain of England, I took him aside and said to him: “Who is reffing this match? You or me?”  “Neither of us, sir," he replied. You learn fast as a referee.

When I couldn’t keep up with the players I decided to retire and as luck would have it commercial radio was just starting and I was offered a job as rugby correspondent to County Sound Radio (now The Eagle). In the New Year of 1985 there was no sport at all except the Five Nations championship (now Six).  So in the sports show of county sound it was almost endless music interspersed between the local news and the adverts.

England were due to play Ireland at Twickenham but it was called off at the last moment as, although the pitch was OK, the stands were covered in snow and ice. I rang the England skipper Nigel Melville and said if he was doing nothing would he come down to Guildford and join a discussion on rugby.  He agreed and quickly I organised a mixed bag of rugby men including Mike Coley, the RFU marketing manager, and George Crawford, an international referee who had abandoned a game between Bristol and Cardiff, walked off the pitch and refused to carry on as the players were too keen on hitting each other rather than playing rugby. I managed to get a skipper of a local rugby club and we had 5 hours' discussion on the state of rugby union!

IRN who supply news and sports to over 350 commercial radio stations heard our broadcast and I was offered a job as rugby correspondent. I was paid a pittance but as rugby was rapidly developing I approached all the major sponsors who were interested in sponsoring the game and achieved 80 per cent success, and with IRN’s blessing set up my own company called Talking Rugby – although very soon the England players renamed it "Talking Bollocks"!

A year before the 2003 World Cup the RFU approached me and asked if I was prepared to do a morning interview with the England manager Clive Woodward. At his request it was to be 7am every morning wherever he was in the world! It was a fantastic year culminating in the winning of the World Cup.

At one early meeting at England’s training ground of Pennyfield Park, Clive was very interested to get some information about what the press were saying and it was to be off the record.  So we did it going down to the training pitch and Clive asked me to hang on a moment, and called to Martin Johnson, England’s wonder captain, and asked him to get the players together for a briefing.  Martin turned round and told Clive no [in a far less polite way].  Clive and I continued talking but it was obvious to me who was really running the show!

They were great days and now I am old!

Memory added on January 6, 2021

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