Sporting Bygones: Three decades of sport from the ‘games department’ that pioneered Monday supplements

On that Monday, Peter Sutcliffe uttered his first words in public – at the Old Bailey – following 17 weeks in custody after being charged with a series of murders which would forever make him “the Yorkshire Ripper”.

In France, Francois Mitterand had been elected as his country’s first socialist President since 1936; five people had been killed in road accidents in Yorkshire that weekend; Ireland’s rugby union team left for France, naively proclaiming that their visit would aid the campaign against apartheid; Prince Andrew of Russia, the last surviving relative of Tsar Nicholas II, died in Kent at the age of 84; on ITV Ivy and Bert Tilsley were coping with unwelcome guests in Coronation Street, and across on the BBC Jeremy Paxman was in Uganda for Panorama.

But what greeted readers of the Yorkshire Post that day was something totally new. The launch of Sports Monday marked the debut of the first sport-only separate section of a morning newspaper in the country.

The response was immediate and almost universally gratifying for those who had been involved in its production. Wives were delighted they could read the pages they looked forward to while husbands enjoyed all the news of the weekend’s sport.

Those who travelled to work by bus and train loved the tabloid format, making reading the news of their favourite team less of an irritant to those around them. Boys pushed copies into their school bags to read surreptitiously in class or, more openly, at break. We even had a picture of a group of colliers, lamps shining on a communal Sports Monday, reading the rugby league pages as they ate their sandwiches below ground.

The idea of a completely separate sports section in the newspaper had grown from a visit to the United States of several executives from Yorkshire Post Newspapers, anxious to investigate ways of improving their product and make the most of changes in production techniques, including the use of colour, which were already transforming the industry across the Atlantic.

David Wright, the company’s newspaper sales director, was impressed with the way many American newspapers sectionalised their papers and when he and his colleagues reported on their findings to the YPN board the go-ahead was given for the possibility of separate sections for the Yorkshire Post to be explored. Sport would be one, women’s issues and the arts among others.

The discussions took only a few weeks, the planning even less with Chris Oakley, then the YP’s deputy editor who would later return to Leeds as chief executive of YPN when it came under the ownership of Regional Independent Media, playing a key role. The target was to launch as the winter and summer seasons overlapped, thus attracting readers whose main interests were football and both codes of rugby alongside those who wanted to read of cricket, golf and other summer sports.

May 11 – the Monday after the FA Cup final – was set as the day of destiny and, with what seemed at the time almost indecent haste, the project was completed on time with much relief for all concerned. The main sport story of the weekend in Yorkshire was not the Cup final – in which a Manchester City side including Joe Corrigan, Peter Reid and Tommy Hutchison had drawn 1-1 with a Tottenham Hotspur line-up featuring Steve Perryman, Glen Hoddle, Ossie Ardiles and Ricardo Villa – but an attempt by Leeds United’s manager Allan Clarke to sign striker Waldemar Victorino from Uruguayan club Nacional Montevideo.

Also on the front page was an interview with Denis Lillee as he looked ahead to the forthcoming Ashes series, and confirmation that Headingley would host the final of rugby league’s Premiership after Hull had beaten Castleford 12-11 and neighbours Hull KR had overcome St Helens 30-17 in the weekend’s semi-finals. Inside we carried Barry Foster’s thoughts on the big match at Wembley and Terry Brindle’s report from Derby where Yorkshire’s Benson and Hedges match had been affected by rain but Chris Old, Graham Stevenson and Arnie Sidebottom had been among the wickets and Geoffrey Boycott and Bill Athey had opened when Yorkshire replied. There was also, as ever, comprehensive coverage of the weekend’s league cricket across the region.

Raymond Fletcher’s views on the Premiership semi-finals led the rugby league coverage; Sandy Lyle won the French Open with Yorkshire’s Howard Clark tied for third alongside Severiano Ballesteros; Huddersfield’s Phil Mellor shone as motor-cycle racing thrilled thousands at Oliver’s Mount in Scarborough; Kenny Carter returned to the speedway track for Halifax only five weeks after suffering a broken jaw; and tennis correspondent Reginald Brace was in New York watching Eddie Dibbs earn himself £50,000 by beating Brazil’s Carlos Kirmayr in straight sets. Those were the days.

Many people have been involved with Sports Monday since then and there have been many Monday highlights down the 30 years – a personal favourite being the edition on November 24, 2003, which carried a 16-page sub-section on England’s Rugby World Cup triumph– but none have worked harder than those who helped produce that first Sports Monday on the long Sunday night of May 10, 1981: Peter Snape, Raymond Fletcher, Barry Foster and Tony Kelley.

They were the pioneers of what remains an essential part of your Yorkshire Post.