ThreeMatchBan
Saint and Greavsie host a review of the fortunes of British clubs across three European club competitions, including Third Division Swansea City’s adventure in the Cup Winners’ Cup. Get your head round that, kids.
Saint and Greavsie on ITV
Saint and Greavsie ran on ITV on Saturday lunchtimes from 1985 to 1992, and for many supporters it was the warm-up act for a day of football. The presenters were Ian St John, the former Liverpool and Scotland centre-forward, and Jimmy Greaves, one of the greatest goalscorers England has ever produced, who had played for Chelsea, AC Milan, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham.
The show worked because of the chemistry between the two. St John played the straight man, Greaves the mischief-maker, and the Anglo-Scottish banter that ran through every episode was a big part of the appeal. Greaves’ line “It’s a funny old game” became a national catchphrase. The pair took the football seriously but never themselves.
It was also a show of its time. There was no live top-flight football on Saturday afternoons, highlights were rationed, and a lunchtime magazine programme with previews, features and a bit of fun filled a gap that rolling news and streaming would later swallow whole. The era is remembered in pieces on The Big Match and its golden age and on the tedium of terrestrial TV.
British clubs in Europe, autumn 1989
The edition of 16 September 1989 arrived just after the first round of the European competitions had begun. English clubs were absent. They had been banned from European competition since the Heysel disaster of 1985, and the ban would not be lifted until the 1990–91 season, when Manchester United and Aston Villa made the return.
That left the field to the Scots, the Welsh and clubs from Northern Ireland. Rangers were in the European Cup and drew Bayern Munich in the first round, a daunting tie for Graeme Souness’s side. Celtic were in the Cup Winners’ Cup against Partizan Belgrade, a tie remembered at Parkhead for its goals and its heartbreak, as Celtic went out on away goals. Other Scottish clubs were in the UEFA Cup.
Swansea in the Cup Winners’ Cup
Then there was Swansea. The club had won the Welsh Cup in 1989, and in those days the Welsh Cup winners went into the European Cup Winners’ Cup regardless of which division they played in. That is how a side from the Third Division of the Football League came to be drawn against Panathinaikos of Greece.
To younger viewers it sounds absurd. A third-tier English league club playing in a major European competition would be unthinkable now, and Welsh clubs in the English pyramid lost their route through the Welsh Cup in the mid-1990s. But for decades it was routine, and Cardiff City, Wrexham and Swansea all had European nights that their league status alone would never have earned.
Swansea had a European pedigree of their own, having played in the Cup Winners’ Cup several times through the Welsh Cup. In 1989 the Vetch Field had another big night to look forward to, and Saint and Greavsie put it in context for viewers across Britain.
The legacy of the show
For supporters of a certain age, Saint and Greavsie is pure nostalgia: Saturday lunchtime, beans on toast, and two old pros talking about football with a twinkle in the eye. Recorded episodes became prized items in the VHS years, as described in the video age of football.
The show ended in 1992, when the arrival of the Premier League and Sky television changed the way football was broadcast in Britain. Ian St John died in March 2021 and Jimmy Greaves in September of the same year, and the tributes to both recalled their partnership as fondly as their playing careers.
Somewhere a VHS copy of the 16 September 1989 edition is still labelled in biro and filed next to the Cup final.