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Alan Allardyce of Christchurch recalls his early sports broadcasting memories of covering rugby and racing meetings in the 1920s and 1930s.
He was New Zealand's first radio sports broadcaster. The first broadcast was of a rugby match [between High School Old Boys and the Christchurch club] from Lancaster Park on 29 May 1926. It was well received by listeners, with letters to the newspaper and to the station about it. He says he followed the game closely and tried to describe the play.
One week later he commentated a Canterbury Trotting Club meeting from Addington.The big race was won by Waitaki Gal.
He then did race meetings, boxing and hockey games. These were broadcast by the Canterbury Radio Society station before 3YA started. He had to give up his job to do the sports commentating so insisted he needed to be paid: 2 guineas a day for race meeting coverage.
There was a great response with pubs and hotels starting to get radios in their bars. They had to pay a 10 pound licence to broadcast in public.
At Riccarton Races he broadcast from the top of a haystack in the back straight. He says he knew Riccarton well, including all the jockeys and their colours and did not use binoculars.
He mainly did rugby and horse racing, going to Auckland and Wellington to cover big races there - there was no national link-up at this time, so the races were only broadcast locally.
He recalls some of the memorable rugby games he covered in the late 1920s. At about this time [1928] he was stopped doing the horse racing commentaries for three years because the government declared that broadcasting was encouraging betting. It didn't resume until broadcasting was nationalised in 1931.
Talks about antagonism from the newspapers towards the broadcasters who were seen to be infringing upon their territory.
Several commentators who followed in his footsteps were Gordon Hutter, Bill Meredith, Charlie Lamberg and "Whang" McKenzie. After broadcasting was nationalised he was offered a job in Wellington but he didn't want to move so became a casual sports announcer in Christchurch. They were the first station in the world to broadcast a test cricket match in 1930 when the M.C.C. visited New Zealand.
He declines to comment on the current state of sports broadcasting.