‘World of Sport’ died yesterday as it had always lived. The same sense of fun, chaos and self-indulgence was there to the end. All the usual shenanigans meant that Bennett had to delete 40 minutes of planned content from the show and, even in saying goodbye they were late, an unpardonable sin in most other branches of television. It was due to be off air at 2 pm but host Sandy Roberts, who had to present a 40th birthday cake to a cameraman before delivering a tear-jerking farewell to loyal fans, faded from the screen at 2.03.
At that moment the gathered mourners, who included such notable sports identities as Jack Hamilton, Dr Allen Aylett, Ron Barassi and Ted Whitten, threw the orange blue and pink streamers handed out by the staff across the studio.
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The reality of what had just passed into history hit home immediately. The smooth Roberts, whose arrival from Adelaide seven years ago was one of the show’s few concessions to professionalism, walked away from his microphone with tears welling in his eyes. The show’s founder and former presenter, Ron Casey, who recently retired as HSV-7 general manager, tried his best to hide his emotions during the show as he strutted around his favourite studio floor, shaking hands and reminiscing with the old timers like Colin Campbell, Kevin Coghlan, Jim Cleary and Bruce Andrew and giving explanatory interviews to reporters from opposition channels too young to remember such “WOS’ institutions as Champion Kick.
Casey had declined an offer to compere the last show, saying he preferred to remain detached. We knew just how detached he was when he walked behind a partition at the end of the show with tears flooding into a white handkerchief.
Even without the irreplaceable Jack Dyer, who had promised to come in but never made it, they all did their best to present a memorable final show. Richards spent every minute of the three hours walking around the set, puffing on a cigarette and worrying as always. “How did I sound. Did I look OK?” he asked anyone within earshot every time he came off camera. One morose studio hand muttered that someone should tell Lou there’s nothing to worry about any more.
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In deference to the new Sydney owners and the fact that positions are not yet finalised for the new ‘Sports World’ program, a Sydney-Melbourne combine which goes to air on HSV next Sunday morning from 9 am to midday, most of the performers tried hard to keep off air what was an obvious bitterness at the decision to drop Melbourne based sport. Uncle Doug left half an hour before the end. “I’m going home to my daughters. I don’t want to stay and get maudlin drunk. I might blow up the station,” he said.
If you wanted to judge yesterday’s final show by modern standards of television presentation, it was an appalling three hours of mushy nostalgia, boring interviews and insufferable commercial breaks all thrown together in a format which was old hat 15 years ago.
But ‘WOS’ could never be dismissed like any other bad TV show. For more than a quarter of a century Victorians happily ignored its glaring and often embarrassing faults to make it a top-rating show.
You never really turned on ‘World of Sport’ to find out what happened or why. It was just there every Sunday morning, like a mate who pops around for a chinwag and a beer. When you turned it off yesterday you knew you had lost a mate.
From the Archives, 1987: Tears as ‘World of Sport’ fades out
Source: Philippines Alive
