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Richard John Gwynne (23 April 1945 – 9 July 2022) was an English teacher, sports commentator and reporter. He was best known for his darts commentary, and worked at
Sky Sports
Sky Sports is a group of British subscription sports channels operated by the satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It ...
for twenty years.
Early life
Gwynne was born in
Shropshire
Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to ...
in 1945 and moved to
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
in 1957. He attended
Chorlton Grammar School. Upon leaving, he went into teaching, and taught English and was Deputy Housemaster (Fisher) at Moston Brook High School in Manchester.
Broadcasting career
Gwynne was a commentator for the
PDC darts tournaments which air on
Sky Sports
Sky Sports is a group of British subscription sports channels operated by the satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It ...
. He commentated on the first ever PDC World Championship in 1994,
and the
2016 World Championship was his last tournament for Sky Sports.
Gwynne's first media job was covering speedway at
Belle Vue in Manchester for
Piccadilly Radio
Greatest Hits Radio Manchester & The North West is an Independent Local Radio station based in Manchester, England, owned and operated by Bauer as part of the Greatest Hits Radio Network. It broadcasts to Greater Manchester and North West Eng ...
in 1980. He moved onto local
north-west football. Premium-rate telephone information services such as
ClubCall gained popularity during the late 1980s and Gwynne worked for a cricket equivalent, "Cricket Call" covering
Lancashire County Cricket Club between 1988 and 1991. Alongside darts entrepreneur Dick Allix, they set up a similar darts phoneline service in 1989 called The Darts Line, for which Gwynne provided darts news and tournament updates. Gwynne had commentated on some darts tournaments for regional
ITV programmes with
Dave Lanning
Dave Lanning (24 March 1938 – 29 October 2016) was an English sports commentator and journalist, best known for his coverage of Professional Darts. He was brought up in Poole and educated at Poole Grammar School.
Broadcasting career
He was o ...
and when the
darts split occurred in 1993 and Sky Sports took up coverage of WDC (later to become the PDC) tournaments, Lanning and Gwynne were chosen as commentators.
Sid Waddell
Sid Waddell (10 August 1940 – 11 August 2012) was an English sports commentator and television personality. He was nicknamed the 'Voice of Darts' due to his fame as a darts commentator, and worked for Granada, Yorkshire, BBC and Sky Sports. D ...
was still working with the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, and did not join Sky until the 1994 World Matchplay Championship.
Gwynne was a regular match reporter for over 20 years on Sky's ''
Gillette Soccer Saturday'' and was the reporter when
Manchester City won the league title on the last day of the 2011-12 season.
From April 2014, he was also providing expert analysis on
William Hill's online betting service and "in-play" Radio service.
In 2014, he was inducted into the
PDC Hall of Fame. Later in 2014, Gwynne began commentating on
Eurosport
Eurosport is a group of pay television networks in Europe and parts of Asia. Owned by Warner Bros. Discovery through its international sports unit, it operates two main channels— Eurosport 1 and Eurosport 2—across most of its territories, ...
for
BDO darts tournaments, such as the
Six Nations Cup
The Six Nations Cup is an international darts team competition currently organised by the English Darts Organisation (EDO),[Winmau World Masters
The World Masters is one of the longest-running and most prestigious of the BDO/WDF tournaments, which began in 1974. The tournament is sponsored by darts board manufacturer, Winmau. The World Masters was unusual in darts in that its sets are th ...]
and the
BDO World Championship. In the years that followed, he made occasional commentary appearances on Sky Sports during the early rounds of the
PDC World Championship and worked on
Talksport's radio commentary of the event in 2017/18.
His final ever commentary came in the inaugural
World Senior Darts Championships in 2022 when he called the
Robert Thornton v
Martin Adams
Martin Adams (born 4 June 1956) is an English professional darts player who plays in World Darts Federation (WDF) events. Nicknamed "Wolfie", he is a three-time BDO World Champion and three-time World Masters champion. He represents Cambridges ...
Final on February 6.
Other work
Gwynne initially worked as a school teacher in Manchester until 1987.
He was also an after-dinner speaker and toastmaster. Gwynne was
master of ceremonies at arts exhibitions and ran local darts tournaments in the Manchester area. From the start of the 2019 season, he was the announcer for Lancashire County Cricket Club.
He wrote a monthly column, "The Mancunian Way", for ''Darts World Magazine'' (previously titled ''Piccadilly Line'') for 31 years, and at one time was responsible for
ghostwriting
A ghostwriter is hired to write literary or journalistic works, speeches, or other texts that are officially credited to another person as the author. Celebrities, executives, participants in timely news stories, and political leaders often h ...
Wayne Mardle
Wayne Elliot Mardle (born 10 May 1973) is an English former professional darts player who played in events of the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) and British Darts Organisation (BDO). He was runner-up in three PDC majors, losing to Phil ...
's column, "Wayne's World", in the same magazine. He also wrote for north-west newspapers, covering local darts, for nearly thirty years. He gave up both in 2011.
Gwynne was chairman of the Manchester Superleague and Manchester Log-End Federation, which he founded in 2003 to save the log-end dartboard from extinction.
He worked for the
International Socca Federation
The International Socca Federation (ISF) is an organization which sets up the Socca World Cup. It sets up as a governing body for six-a-side football specifically.
History Formation
The ISF was formed in late 2017 by leading providers of sma ...
as commentator on their Six-a-Side World Cup tournaments.
In September 2020, in conjunction with David Mitchell and with a foreword by
Jeff Stelling
Robert Jeffrey Stelling (born 18 March 1955) is an English television presenter. He currently presents '' Gillette Soccer Saturday'' for Sky Sports and hosted coverage of the Champions League between 2011 and 2015.
He also presented the Chann ...
, Gwynne published a memoir of his football memories, ''Soccer Satisfied''.
Personal life and death
Gwynne's wife, Margaret, predeceased him. His son,
Andrew
Andrew is the English form of a given name common in many countries. In the 1990s, it was among the top ten most popular names given to boys in List of countries where English is an official language, English-speaking countries. "Andrew" is freq ...
, is the
Labour MP for
Denton and Reddish in
Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tam ...
.
A lifelong fan of Manchester City F.C
Manchester City Football Club are an English football club based in Manchester that competes in the Premier League, the top flight of English football. Founded in 1880 as St. Mark's (West Gorton), they became Ardwick Association Football ...
., he died from cancer on 9 July 2022 at the age of 77.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gwynne, John
1945 births
2022 deaths
British association football commentators
Darts commentators
British sports broadcasters
Professional Darts Corporation Hall of Fame
People from Shropshire