.jpg) Wilson in 2009 | |||
| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Robert Primrose Wilson | ||
| Date of birth | (1941-10-30)30 October 1941 (age 84) | ||
| Place of birth | Chesterfield, England | ||
| Position | Goalkeeper | ||
| Senior career* | |||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
| 1961–1963 | Wolverhampton Wanderers[1] | 0 | (0) |
| 1963–1974 | Arsenal | 310 | (0) |
| International career | |||
| 1971 | Scotland | 2 | (0) |
| * Club domestic league appearances and goals | |||
Robert Primrose WilsonOBE (born 30 October 1941) is a former Scotland internationalfootball goalkeeper and later broadcaster / anchorman.[2]
As a player, Wilson spent 11 years atArsenal, where he made over 300 appearances. He also featured as a youth and senior international forScotland. After retiring as a player, he turned to coaching and broadcasting, presenting football programmes on television for 28 years until 2002. Wilson also foundedthe Willow Foundation charity in memory of his daughter.[2]
Wilson was born on Ashgate Road, inChesterfield, where his father William was the Borough Engineer and Surveyor, and his mother Catherine Wilson (née Primrose) was amagistrate.[3][4] Their Ashgate Road house was named "Threepwood" after theGalston, East Ayrshire farm where William Wilson was born.[4] His middle name, Primrose, stems from a Scottish tradition of giving children their mother's maiden name as a middle name.[5]
He was the youngest child of six and had much older brothers and an elder sister. Two of his brothers were killed in theSecond World War, one as aSpitfire pilot and the other as arear-gunner in aLancaster.[4][6][7]
After leavingChesterfield Grammar School,[8] he spent time withLoughborough College.[9]
Wilson started late as a professional player, as his father would not let him sign papers withManchester United as he thought it was not a reasonable job whilst he was a youth. Wilson then went on toLoughborough College for training as a teacher. He had been playing reserve games forWolverhampton Wanderers as an amateur between 1961 and 1963 and was the first amateur to have a transfer fee paid (£7,500).[1] He remained an amateur for eight months when he signed for Arsenal in July 1963 until he signed professional forms in March 1964.[10]
Wilson made his debut againstNottingham Forest on 26 October 1963 in a 4–2 win. However, being forced to play understudy toJim Furnell, it was to be over four years until Wilson became first-choice keeper in 1968, after Furnell made a mistake in anFA Cup tie againstBirmingham City in March 1968. Wilson took over and remained in goal for Arsenal for the remainder of the1967–68 season.[11]
Later, firmly ensconced in the Arsenal side, Wilson was ever-present in the1968–69 season, which included Arsenal's loss toSwindon Town in the1969 League Cup Final. Despite sustaining a broken arm the following season,1969–70, Wilson recovered and won his first trophy with Arsenal, the1969–70Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. In 1971, he was Arsenal's player of the year in theirDouble-winning season, in which he played every first-team match in League and Cup, culminating in the1971 FA Cup Final win overLiverpool. Wilson was the first goalkeeper to get a number on his back and his favourite football shirt is his Arsenal shirt from the 1970/71 season with the number 1 on it.[12]
Wilson continued to play as Arsenal's keeper through the early 1970s, although an injury late on in the 1972 FA Cup semi-final againstStoke City meant he missed Arsenal's1972 FA Cup Final loss toLeeds United and much of the1972–73 season. UnderstudyGeoff Barnett took his place, but Wilson regained the number one shirt once fully recovered, and was Arsenal's first-choice goalkeeper up until his surprisingly early retirement from playing in May 1974, at the age of 32.
As a student and teacher of goalkeeping, Wilson has identified his own signature technique as diving at his opponents' feet to save goals. This caused him a number of injuries throughout his career.
He became eligible to play forScotland when the rules were changed in 1970 to allow players to play for their parents' countries of origin, if they had not already played for their own country. Wilson was selected byScotland managerTommy Docherty for his first match in charge, againstPortugal on 13 October 1971.[13] Wilson was also selected for the match against theNetherlands on 1 December 1971, butBobby Clark ofAberdeen was preferred after this.
After retiring, Wilson was goalkeeping coach for Arsenal for 28 years, during whichPat Jennings,John Lukic, andDavid Seaman were goalkeepers. He retired at the end of the2002–03 season, having helped Arsenal win two more doubles in1997–98 and2001–02, as only one of two people to have been involved with all three, with the other beingPat Rice.[2]
Wilson had already appeared as a pundit for theBBC during the1970 World Cup. He became a television presenter after retiring from football, working for theBBC from 1974 to 1994 as host ofFootball Focus. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, he also presentedGrandstand on a fairly regular basis (he was the presenter onGrandstand during the afternoon of theHillsborough Disaster in 1989), and also occasionally presentedSportsnight. During the 1980s, he co-presentedMatch of the Day alongsideJimmy Hill, and also worked extensively on the BBC's World Cup coverage into the 1990s. DuringDes Lynam's time as the main BBC anchorman, Wilson often covered much of the World Cup while Lynam was concentrating on theWimbledon Tennis Championships. Wilson also read the sports bulletins onBreakfast News during the late 1980s and early-mid 1990s, and was one of the hosts of the BBC Olympics coverage from Seoul in 1988.
In late 1994, he moved toITV, where he presented the station'sUEFA Champions League,League Cup andFA Cup coverage. In addition, he presentedCarlton Television's midweek highlights programmeCarlton Sport. He also fronted ITV's coverage ofEuro 96 and the1998 World Cup, including England's loss to Argentina on penalties in the last 16 stage, which was watched by more than 23 million viewers. Following the arrival of Des Lynam at ITV in 1999, Wilson's role was diminished and he was mostly seen presenting late night highlights programmes on ITV. He also hosted coverage of matches being shown onOn Digital's sports channels and he remained with them as it evolved into the ill-fatedITV Sport Channel, presenting the service's coverage of the pay-per-viewPremier League matches. By the early 2000s,Gabby Logan had assumed some of Wilson's work, especially on the main ITV channel, and Wilson had a much smaller role with the station at the2002 World Cup, which was to be his last work for ITV.
He still makes occasional appearances on television, on the BBC'sFootball Focus andMatch of the Day 2, as well as occasional work on documentary programmes forSky Sports.Half Man Half Biscuit made reference to Wilson as a broadcaster in the song "Bob Wilson – Anchorman".
He was the subject ofThis Is Your Life in 1998, when he was surprised byMichael Aspel during a training session with Arsenal at their training ground near St Albans.[citation needed]
In the mid-1980s he featured in a comic strip when he spent a season playing for the fictionalMelchester Rovers team inRoy of the Rovers, in a team containing another former professional player turned TV presenter,Emlyn Hughes, andSpandau Ballet membersMartin Kemp andSteve Norman. The quartet helped lead Rovers toLeague Cup glory and a record-breaking successive number of clean sheets – a somewhat unrealistic achievement considering Wilson's age and the fact he had not played for more than 10 years.[14]
Wilson married Margaret "Megs" Miles on 25 July 1964 atHoly Trinity Church, Chesterfield,[15] and they had three children:John (born 1965), Anna (1966–1998) and Robert (born 1968). John Wilson is a presenter onFront Row, theBBC Radio 4 arts programme. Megs Wilson died in November 2023.[16]
It was announced in April 2014 that Wilson was fighting prostate cancer.[17]
Wilson's great niece is Gina Coladangelo, a British businesswoman and lobbyist who made headlines in 2021 after exposure of her extramarital affair withHealth SecretaryMatt Hancock.[18]
In February 1994, his daughter Anna was diagnosed withmalignant schwannoma, a cancer of the nerve sheath. She died on 1 December 1998, six days before her 32nd birthday.[19] The "Willow Foundation" was set up in her memory in 1999 and operated locally, mainly inHertfordshire. Wilson relaunched the charity on 4 October 2005 with a national remit. The organisation was established in Anna's memory and now helps some of the estimated 12,500 people in the UK, aged 16–40, who are diagnosed every year with the illness.[20]
In 2007, Wilson was appointed an Officer of theOrder of the British Empire (OBE) for his charity work.[21]
In 1989, Wilson received an honorary award of Doctor of Letters fromLoughborough University.[22]
| Club | Season | League | FA Cup | League Cup | Europe[a] | Total[23] | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | ||
| Arsenal | |||||||||||
| 1963–64 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 6 | 0 | |
| 1964–65 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 1965–66 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | |
| 1966–67 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 1967–68 | 13 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 14 | 0 | |
| 1968–69 | 42 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 53 | 0 | |
| 1969–70 | 28 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 9 | 0 | 41 | 0 | |
| 1970–71 | 42 | 0 | 9 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 64 | 0 | |
| 1971–72 | 37 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 53 | 0 | |
| 1972–73 | 22 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 28 | 0 | |
| 1973–74 | 41 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 45 | 0 | |
| Career total | 234 | 0 | 32 | 0 | 18 | 0 | 24 | 0 | 308 | 0 | |
Individual
