It wasn’t Twitter but I suppose it was as close as we got to it in the 1980s
Anyone dialling in for the whole match could end up paying as much as £35 when the service first came into existence
In August 1998, Kinnear rang ClubCall as part of the service that delivered interviews with managers and players, and proceeded to launch a similar diatribe
At a time of falling attendances and with English football’s post-Heysel reputation wavering somewhere near the gutter, increasingly hard-up clubs were desperately attempting to generate revenue
He then forgot to hang up, and left the tones of the Super Hoops’ ClubCall man Tony Incenzo continuing on loop for the remainder of the evening. It cost him £500
ClubCall’s merry band of journalists had the sort of access to players that the modern football scribe would give their eye teeth for
Ian Wright, meanwhile, was also a lively ClubCall presence, labelling referees as ‘incompetent’ on the Arsenal line before telling the callers that David Elleray was there “for players to talk to, not to be a little Hitler”
Not really, Khris, I’ve been sacked. It’s been a pleasure speaking to you – you were much better than the previous fella – and God bless
In a premonition of what was to come, suddenly the content of press conferences wasn’t appearing first in the next morning’s newspapers; it was available almost instantly on the club’s phone line
Perhaps the most surprising thing, though, in an era when Twitter and the like dominate the public consciousness, is the fact that the service is still in operation – and attracting calls running into the thousands
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