 | Thisbiography of a living personneeds additionalcitations forverification. Please help by addingreliable sources.Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced orpoorly sourcedmust be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentiallylibelous. Find sources: "Alan Parry" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(February 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Alan Parry (born 1948 inGarston, Liverpool)[1] is an Englishsports commentator, concentrating onfootball andathletics. He has commentated for all four main broadcasters of football in the UK – theBBC,BT Sport,ITV andSky TV, as well as for bothBBC andcommercial radio.
Starting his career atBBC Radio Merseyside, he joined the BBC inLondon in 1973, and immediately started regular football commentaries. Within a short time he was coveringEngland matches, and by 1975 he was covering theEuropean Cup final. After the death ofMaurice Edelston he started working alongsidePeter Jones covering theFA Cup Final in 1976. By the mid-1970s he was alsoBBC Radio's athletics commentator, covering the1976,1980 and1984 Summer Olympics,1974,1978 and1982 European Athletics Championships,1974,1978 and1982 Commonwealth Games and the first World Athletics Championships in1983.
From 1981 he largely relinquished his radiofootball commentary to commentate forMatch of the Day onBBC television and in1982 was a member of the BBC Television commentary team for the World Cup in Spain his most famous commentaries was the shock 2-1 win by Algeria over the1980 European Champions West Germany and West Germany's controversial 1-0 win over Austria in fact he did all 3 of West Germany's 1st round group games for the BBC ironically the ITV commentator was Hugh Johns who was at that time ITV's chief Football commentator in the Midlands a role that Alan Parry would later take for Central Sports Special and The Central Match and also he was a member of the BBC'sEuro 1984 commentary team alongside John Motson. In 1985, he left the BBC to joinITV, initially as an athletics commentator after the commercial channel won the rights to cover British athletics. However, by the late 1980s, Parry had also become a key football commentator for the network, and in 1990, Parry wasBrian Moore's number two at theWorld Cup – this was a role he would retain until he left the network.[1] As well as covering national football andathletics, Parry was also heavily involved on a regional level, beingCentral's lead commentator for a number of years. Between 1992 and 1996, the ITV regions held the rights to live coverage of theFootball League, and Parry commentated on a live match almost every Sunday for the Central region.
After coveringEuro 96 forITV, Parry left to join Sky TV by which time ITV's athletics portfolio had dwindled almost to nothing (he continued covering what little athletics ITV had left until 1997). Parry has also covered athletics for Sky, but his main role has been as a football commentator. For five years he was theMonday Night Football commentator, before working on the pay-per-view games onPremPlus for four years. In more recent times, Parry has been one of Sky's 'Big Five' commentators – includingMartin Tyler,Ian Darke,Bill Leslie. andRob Hawthorne (now 'Big Four' since Darke left Sky) – who commentate across a wide portfolio of matches in thePremier League,FA Cup,League Cup,Champions League,Europa League, andFootball League. Parry has commentated on seven League Cup Finals for Sky. Parry is also the commentator forWales' live international matches on Sky.
Between 1998 and 2002 he also worked as a football commentator fortalkSPORT and a presenter during theWorld Cup hosting a phone-in. In the 2002–03 season he presented Saturday afternoon football coverage onCapital Gold.
The 2006–07 season was another busy one for Parry. As well as his core commitment of 1 live match from every weekend of thePremier League, (plus several live matches for overseas viewers for TWI), Parry covered several live matches from theUEFA Champions League, theFootball League Championship and theLeague Cup. His season's highlights were the League Cup Final which he commentated on for the seventh time and the two-legged Champions League semi-final betweenManchester United andAC Milan. During the summer he commentated on theCopa América for Sky, including the final.
He, by his own admission, is a supporter ofLiverpool which for a period of several years meant that he did not cover any of their matches for Sky. However, during this period he continued to regularly commentate on Liverpool matches on the TWI International feed for overseas Premiership viewers. His "ban" on Liverpool games for Sky seems to have been lifted, with his live commentary ofAston Villa vs.Liverpool on 29 December 2009. Parry has also been involved withWycombe Wanderers for over ten years now including a spell as a director.
Parry then became commentator of the revivedGladiators onSky One replacingJohn Sachs.[2]
When not working for Sky Sports, Parry has been heard commentating Premier League matches for Premier League Productions, a venture of IMG Sports Media who produce, package and broadcast the live production of games for the Premier League for its international broadcast partners. The same productions are also shown domestically for highlights packages on Sky Sports' "Football First" programme.
