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Tanya Arnold: my route to covering Rugby League

School Days

It’ll come as no surprise I was a bit of a tom boy and used to kick a football around and played cricket, my Dad was a big cricket fan, I played sports with the boys at school, I also loved running but was never all that fast. My real claim to fame at school though was being able to throw. Girls were notoriously not taught to throw properly. If you were a girl you would start off throwing a rounders ball before graduating to javelin and discus. I was the under 11’s rounders ball throwing champion. In fact, much to his disgust, I could out-throw Edward Milliband who I went to school with!

Watching Sport

I’d watch anything and everything when it came to sport on TV and would sit in front of Grandstand very happily for hours on end. In terms of going to watch sport, cricket featured highly, watching village cricket or going to see Kent play with my Dad. My Mum was into horses so the other sport I went to watch a lot of was show jumping, we used to go to the Hickstead Derby. I watched Harvey Smith towards the end of his career and saw him win his last Hickstead Derby when I think he was riding his son’s horse. I was a bit young to have watched the original moment when he infamously gave the V sign but had seen it on TV so knew the history, I also have fond memories of John Whittaker wining on Ryan’s Son.

Rugby League

The first game I went to was the Regal Trophy Final at Headingley which Castleford won. I was taken along to the game by an ex-boyfriend. Having grown up down south, Rugby League was new to me, but I recall the fantastic atmosphere at the game. Castleford were very much the underdogs and pulled off a fantastic victory.

Given my job, you have to start following the sport and I had to learn about the game. One of the really lovely things about rugby league is how helpful and kind the people within the game have been in helping me to learn it, it’s a very generous sport like that. I think it’s a sport that has always had to fight its corner, the players are very conscious of their community, they are not earning millions of pounds or likely to retire to a mansion, so I think they recognise where they have come from and the values of putting back into the sport once they retire, acting as coaches and bringing youngsters through.

Tanya Arnold

Follow @TanyaArnold

Tanya is the main presenter of the Super League Show on BBC One as well as being a regular sports presenter with BBC Look North, Yorkshire’s regional news programme.

Memory added on October 13, 2014

Memory added on June 25, 2015

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