Metadata
WORK ID: NEFA 11066 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| TODAY AT SIX SPECIAL: RETURN OF THE HEROES | 1974 | 1974-01-01 |
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Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Colour Sound: Sound Duration: 12 mins 58 secs Credits: Interviewee: Brendan Foster Reporter: Alister Harrison Producer: Alan Powell Director: Tony Kysh Organisations: Tyne Tees Television Genre: TV News Subject: Transport Sport |
| Summary Tyne Tees Television Today at Six news special about Gateshead Harrier Brendan Foster’s return to Newcastle after winning the European 5000 metre gold medal at the 1974 European Championships in Rome, beating double Olympic champion Lasse Virén. A second feature covers celebrations for the Bomarsund Welfare Cricket Club team who beat Collingham, Nottinghamshire, at Edgbaston on 31st August 1974 to become Haig National Village Cricket Champions. |
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Description
Tyne Tees Television Today at Six news special about Gateshead Harrier Brendan Foster’s return to Newcastle after winning the European 5000 metre gold medal at the 1974 European Championships in Rome, beating double Olympic champion Lasse Virén. A second feature covers celebrations for the Bomarsund Welfare Cricket Club team who beat Collingham, Nottinghamshire, at Edgbaston on 31st August 1974 to become Haig National Village Cricket Champions.
Brendon Foster leaves a British Airways plane...
Tyne Tees Television Today at Six news special about Gateshead Harrier Brendan Foster’s return to Newcastle after winning the European 5000 metre gold medal at the 1974 European Championships in Rome, beating double Olympic champion Lasse Virén. A second feature covers celebrations for the Bomarsund Welfare Cricket Club team who beat Collingham, Nottinghamshire, at Edgbaston on 31st August 1974 to become Haig National Village Cricket Champions.
Brendon Foster leaves a British Airways plane at Newcastle Airport, and is greeted by his wife and a group of press photographers on the tarmac. He kisses his wife.
Title: Today at Six Special
Group portrait of Bomarsund Welfare Cricket Club team who hold up the prize cup and pints of beer in triumph after winning the Haig National Village Cricket Championship final. They chant the team name. The players include Dor Dreyer.
Title: Return of the Heroes
Portrait shot of Brendan Foster and his wife, smiling. Foster turns down a request from the media.
Title: Brendan Foster European 5000 metre gold medallist
The Bomarsund Welfare Cricket Club team hold their trophy in the air whilst chanting.
Title: Bomarsund Welfare National Village Cricket Champions 1974
A British Airways plane taxis at Newcastle Airport. Susan Foster leaves the terminal accompanied by Gateshead Harriers athletics coach Stan Long and another man heading for the tarmac to greet her husband. People are gathered on the roof of the airport terminal to watch the return of the new European 5000 metre champion from Gateshead. A crew of press photographers take pictures of Brendan Foster and his wife, shyly grinning, beside the plane. Foster hands Stan Long his medal in its red case. The press ask if he can take it out so they can get a shot. Foster hands it to his wife. Close up of the gold medal. Foster swings it around on its ribbon jokily. The group move off.
Alister Harrison offers his congratulations, saying it’s a bit different to Rome, and interviews Foster about his race victory, his stomach bug, race tactics and his training facilities at Gateshead. Foster says that the Gateshead track is the best in the world, much better than the one he'd just run on. He says he would have got the world record if he'd been running at Gateshead Stadium. Foster heads away into the airport terminal.
[mute]
Brendan Foster walks though the terminal, people smiling and clapping him. He grins to camera as he exits the airport and breaks into a jog to a waiting car.
Interview with Gateshead Council leader Bill Collins about the provision of the stadium and Foster’s new job with the council as Recreation Director of Sport, helping promote sport with young people in the region. The facilities at Gateshead are open to everyone and he hopes youngsters will want to follow in Brendan’s footsteps. Collins also talks about supporting Foster in his training and commitment to sport. He hopes he will get a gold medal at the Montreal Olympics and it will put Gateshead on the map. He states that Gateshead has always encouraged sport. The stadium is 20 years old. He explains that there were a lot of problems to get rid of such as slum housing. But now these have been dealt with, the council can concentrate on leisure. He says that he would rather young people participated in sport than become watchers and hooligans.
Next, there are various shots of the Northumberland League Bomarsund Welfare cricket team in action. The players rouse their crowd of supporters in the stands at Edgbaston in a sing song. General view of the Edgbaston cricket ground.
A banner for Bomarsund Welfare hangs on a wall in the bar at their club house. Various shots record the team and their family and friends celebrating their win in the Haig National Village Cricket Championship final. Interview with the captain of the team. A woman passes around sandwiches.
Credit: Reporter Alister Harrison
Group portrait of the team with the captain holding up the trophy.
Credit: Producer Allan Powell
Further shots of the proud team with the trophy raising a cheer for Bomarsund.
Credit: Director Tony Kysh
Group portrait as the team roar their team’s name.
Context
Tyne Tees Television’s Today at Six was their first colour regional news programme, which started in 1969. It was superseded by Northern Life, which ran on weekday evenings from 6 September 1976 to 2 October 1992 and adopted a light hearted approach to nightly news magazine coverage. Tyne Tees reporters blazed a trail in presenting the news over the years. Mike Neville, a much-loved face of TV news in the north east for more than 40 years who launched his broadcast career with Tyne Tees, once...
Tyne Tees Television’s Today at Six was their first colour regional news programme, which started in 1969. It was superseded by Northern Life, which ran on weekday evenings from 6 September 1976 to 2 October 1992 and adopted a light hearted approach to nightly news magazine coverage. Tyne Tees reporters blazed a trail in presenting the news over the years. Mike Neville, a much-loved face of TV news in the north east for more than 40 years who launched his broadcast career with Tyne Tees, once suggested that the launch of Tyne Tees enabled local people to be able to hear local accents and dialects on television where once the BBC’s standard cut-glass pronunciation was the norm.
This type of news segment was perfect for the local interests of Tyne Tees Television which began in 1959, broadcast from a disused warehouse in City Road on Newcastle’s historic quayside, transformed into state-of-the-art studios. A quarter of a million viewers watched on the first night. They broadcast from this base for more than 45 years until the studios shut down in 2005. 1974 began with Britain’s post war recession, and the first steps towards wider unemployment that would become more prevalent in the late 70s and early 80s. The recession was one of the main reasons behind Conservative Prime Minister Ted Heath’s resignation, allowing Labour’s Harold Wilson to form a minority government. Around the same time, the UK re-established direct rule over Northern Ireland after declaring a state of emergency. The recession and the troubles in Northern Ireland would be a recurring theme for the remainder of the decade. In sport, Don Revie’s Leeds United won the First Division title as Manchester United were relegated. The film was produced in 1974, as Brendan Foster returned to England having won a gold medal at the European Championships in Rome. This 5,000-metre medal was his second of the year, having taken silver at the Commonwealth games in Christchurch. Foster, who is from Hebburn in South Tyneside, is widely celebrated in the North East. Not just for his heroics on the track, but also for his BBC commentating career following his retirement in 1980 as well as his founding of the Great North Run. The run is Britain’s biggest running event and is famous around the world, attracting runners from all over the globe. One month before Today at Six celebrated his achievements at the European Championship, Foster set the world record for the 3,000 metres at his home track, Gateshead International Stadium. On his agreeing to this world record attempt on home ground, ‘Big Bren’, as he was affectionately known, commented “You know how it is when you’ve had a few drinks, you promise the world!” The Gateshead Youth Stadium rested in a reclaimed chemical dump down by the River Tyne. Its cinder track had seen better days. In winter 1973, Brendan Foster had to travel to Edinburgh, or to London, to train. Gateshead Council Leader William Collins “knew that we were breeding a champion” so decided to invest in a new synthetic track. On 3 August 1974, the Gateshead Games were staged to reopen the stadium, with Foster promising to make it a landmark athletics meeting. And it was. He would end the year by winning the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award, a prestigious award in British sport. Foster would, of course, also go on to found Tyneside’s Great North Run, the first staged on the 28 June 1981, when 12,000 runners participated. In 2018 over 57,000 people took part. It's a fitting legacy for an athlete who spent a lifetime encouraging others to take up sport. Also seen in the film are the Bomarsund Welfare cricket team. The side won the National Village Cricket Championship in 1974 for the only time in their history. They beat Collingham, from Nottinghamshire in the final at Edgbaston. However, the game was originally intended to be played at Lords but was rained off. The village of Bomarsund was a coal mining town from 1905 until 1965, when the mine was closed. However, the village has existed since the mid-1800s. The cricket club still exists today and consists of two amateur sides, as well as junior teams. Their first XI plays in the Northumberland and Tyneside Cricket League Division 3. Bomarsund is now home to the Northumberland Brewery, which has been making ales since 1996. References: https://gatesheadharriers.com/club-history https://englandsnortheast.co.uk/blyth-bedlingtonshire/ https://bomarsund.play-cricket.com/website/web_pages/197695 |
