Ray Stubbs
Encyclopedia
Raymond "Ray" Stubbs is a broadcaster and former footballer. He works for ESPN
ESPN (UK)
ESPN is a sports television channel in the United Kingdom and Ireland owned by American sports broadcaster ESPN Inc. The channel launched on 3 August 2009...

, presenting live Premier League and Scottish Premier League
Scottish Premier League
The Scottish Premier League , also known as the SPL , is a professional league competition for association football clubs in Scotland...

 matches, having joined the satellite sports channel from the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 in 2009.

Football career

He was initially a professional footballer, leaving Calday Grange Grammar School
Calday Grange Grammar School
Calday Grange Grammar School is a non-denominational selective state grammar school, founded in 1636, situated on Caldy Hill above the town of West Kirby on the Wirral . The school admits boys from the ages of 11 through to 18, and girls for the sixth form only...

 to join Tranmere Rovers
Tranmere Rovers F.C.
Tranmere Rovers Football Club are an English team based in Birkenhead, Wirral. The club currently compete in League One, the third tier of the English football league system...

 for five years. He also played for Bangor City
Bangor City F.C.
Bangor City Football Club are a semi-professional Welsh football club from the City of Bangor. The club compete in the Welsh Premier League, being ever present since the league was founded in 1992....

 between 1978 and 1980. After ending his playing career with Tranmere, he stayed with the club in an administrative capacity and then spent three years with BBC Radio Merseyside
BBC Radio Merseyside
BBC Radio Merseyside is the BBC Local Radio service for the English metropolitan county of Merseyside and north Cheshire. It was the third BBC local radio station to launch on 22 November 1967 initially serving the south west of historic Lancashire....

 as a reporter and presenter.

BBC career

In 1986, Stubbs moved to BBC Manchester
BBC Manchester
BBC Manchester is the British Broadcasting Corporation regional headquarters for the North West, the largest BBC region in the UK. BBC Manchester also forms a key part of BBC North....

 as an assistant producer, working on sports including snooker, darts and bowls
Bowls
Bowls is a sport in which the objective is to roll slightly asymmetric balls so that they stop close to a smaller "jack" or "kitty". It is played on a pitch which may be flat or convex or uneven...

, and on the quiz show A Question of Sport
A Question of Sport
A Question of Sport is a long-running BBC quiz show which started on 2 December 1968 and continues to this day. It is currently recorded at The Studios, MediaCityUK...

. He also worked as a producer, reporter and presenter on BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...

's investigative sports series On The Line, which took him to Italy in 1990 to report on England football fans at the World Cup
FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup, often simply the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association , the sport's global governing body...

.

Later that year, Stubbs began working as a reporter on Grandstand
Grandstand (BBC)
Grandstand was a British television sport programme. Broadcast between 1958 and 2007, it was one of the BBC's longest running sports shows, alongside BBC Sports Personality of the Year.Its first presenter was Peter Dimmock...

, Match of the Day
Match of the Day
Match of the Day is the BBC's main football television programme. Typically, it is shown on BBC One on Saturday evenings during the English football season, showing highlights of the day's matches in English football's top division, the Premier League...

and Sportsnight
Sportsnight
Sportsnight was a midweek BBC television sports programme that ran from 1968 until 1997.-Sportsview:Sportsnight was a successor to Sportsview which started on 8 April 1954. Sportsview was devised by Paul Fox, later Controller of BBC1 and Peter Dimmock was the original host for a decade...

. He reported from the Irish camp during the 1994 FIFA World Cup
1994 FIFA World Cup
The 1994 FIFA World Cup, the 15th staging of the FIFA World Cup, was held in nine cities across the United States from June 17 to July 17, 1994. The United States was chosen as the host by FIFA on July 4, 1988...

 in America, and was the BBC's reporter-in-residence in the England camp during Euro 96 and the 1998 FIFA World Cup
1998 FIFA World Cup
The 1998 FIFA World Cup, the 16th FIFA World Cup, was held in France from 10 June to 12 July 1998. France was chosen as host nation by FIFA on 2 July 1992. The tournament was won by France, who beat Brazil 3-0 in the final...

 in France. Stubbs was a co-presenter at all the subsequent major international tournaments between 2000 and 2008 as well as the 1998 Winter Olympics and the 1998 Commonwealth Games
Commonwealth Games
The Commonwealth Games is an international, multi-sport event involving athletes from the Commonwealth of Nations. The event was first held in 1930 and takes place every four years....

.

Other programmes he hosted included two editions of Match of the Day Extra at the start of the 1998-99 season, a round-up of the latest sports news at the beginning of Grandstand, coverage of the live FA Cup draws and 6-0-6
6-0-6
6-0-6 is a football phone-in, broadcast on BBC Radio Five Live throughout the football season; when the programme started, it typically went on air at 6:06pm on a matchday . It covers topics relating to the current affairs of football in the United Kingdom. It currently airs on Saturdays and...

, the football phone-in on BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC Radio 5 Live is the BBC's national radio service that specialises in live BBC News, phone-ins, and sports commentaries...

. He also reported for BBC One's
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...

 On Side as well as occasionally reporting for both Football Focus
Football Focus
Football Focus is a BBC television show, broadcast on BBC One on Saturday lunchtimes, covering football, presented from the 2009/2010 season by Dan Walker...

, after leaving the programme as presenter in 2004, and Match Of The Day Live
Match of the Day
Match of the Day is the BBC's main football television programme. Typically, it is shown on BBC One on Saturday evenings during the English football season, showing highlights of the day's matches in English football's top division, the Premier League...

.

Stubbs worked for the BBC for 26 years, presenting and reporting on a number of sports, including football, darts and snooker. He fronted Football Focus
Football Focus
Football Focus is a BBC television show, broadcast on BBC One on Saturday lunchtimes, covering football, presented from the 2009/2010 season by Dan Walker...

from 1999 until 2004, leaving to become the presenter of Score
Final Score
Final Score is a BBC TV programme produced by BBC Sport. The programme is broadcast on late Saturday afternoons in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, usually on BBC ONE. BBC Northern Ireland opts away during the last ten minutes to cover local results, BBC Scotland runs a different programme...

 on the BBC Red Button (formerly BBCi) as well as Final Score
Final Score
Final Score is a BBC TV programme produced by BBC Sport. The programme is broadcast on late Saturday afternoons in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, usually on BBC ONE. BBC Northern Ireland opts away during the last ten minutes to cover local results, BBC Scotland runs a different programme...

 on BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...

. He also presented live matches for the BBC and either worked as a presenter or reporter at all 10 of the major international tournaments from 1990 until 2008.

He was a stand-in presenter on both Match of the Day
Match of the Day
Match of the Day is the BBC's main football television programme. Typically, it is shown on BBC One on Saturday evenings during the English football season, showing highlights of the day's matches in English football's top division, the Premier League...

 (since the start of the Premier League in 1992) and Match of the Day 2
Match of the Day 2
Match of the Day 2 is a football highlights programme shown on BBC Two in the United Kingdom...

 (since the show started in 2004) and became the BBC's England reporter in 2007. As well as covering football, Stubbs also fronted the BBC's darts coverage, co-hosted the BBC's snooker coverage with Hazel Irvine
Hazel Irvine
Hazel Irvine , is a television presenter from the United Kingdom.- Life and career :Educated at Hermitage Academy in Helensburgh, she achieved an M.A. in History of Art at the University of St. Andrews, and competed in golf, netball and athletics at university level. In her final year she was...

 and presented and reported on other BBC sports programmes, such as Grandstand
Grandstand (BBC)
Grandstand was a British television sport programme. Broadcast between 1958 and 2007, it was one of the BBC's longest running sports shows, alongside BBC Sports Personality of the Year.Its first presenter was Peter Dimmock...

and Sportsnight
Sportsnight
Sportsnight was a midweek BBC television sports programme that ran from 1968 until 1997.-Sportsview:Sportsnight was a successor to Sportsview which started on 8 April 1954. Sportsview was devised by Paul Fox, later Controller of BBC1 and Peter Dimmock was the original host for a decade...

.

ESPN

In 2009, Stubbs left the BBC after over 26 years, to join ESPN
ESPN (UK)
ESPN is a sports television channel in the United Kingdom and Ireland owned by American sports broadcaster ESPN Inc. The channel launched on 3 August 2009...

. Stubbs said "The opportunity of joining one of the world's leading sports broadcasters on day one of the new ESPN channel in the UK was just too good to turn down."

During the Liverpool - Wolverhampton Wanderers game on Boxing Day
Boxing Day
Boxing Day is a bank or public holiday that occurs on 26 December, or the first or second weekday after Christmas Day, depending on national or regional laws. It is observed in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and some other Commonwealth nations. In Ireland, it is recognized as...

 2009 he was taken ill at half time and taken to hospital
Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....

 as a precaution.

Charity work

Stubbs has been a big supporter of Sport Relief
Sport Relief
Sport Relief is a biennial charity event from Comic Relief, in association with BBC Sport, which brings together the worlds of sport and entertainment to raise money to help vulnerable people in both the UK and the world's poorest countries...

and has become the project's action hero. In 2002, he was dropped 100 feet into a pile of boxes; in 2004, he was suspended from a crane, and swung into a giant ball of dung; and, in 2006, was tied to a post and bombarded by 15,000 bouncy balls.

In 2007, Stubbs took part in Comic Relief does Fame Academy
Comic Relief Does Fame Academy
Comic Relief Does Fame Academy is a spin-off of the original Fame Academy show where celebrities sing as students of the Academy. The programme was launched in 2003 to help raise money for the charities supported by Comic Relief, with the final of the show occurring on Red Nose Day...

, and made it to the last five, before being struck down by an upper respiratory tract infection
Upper respiratory tract infection
Upper respiratory tract infections are the illnesses caused by an acute infection which involves the upper respiratory tract: nose, sinuses, pharynx or larynx...

. Despite his illness, he still performed twice on the night, before being voted out by three of his fellow students so he could go home and recover. Stubbs also takes part in the Great North Run
Great North Run
The Bupa Great North Run is the world's largest half marathon, taking place annually each September. Participants run between Newcastle upon Tyne and South Shields in England. The run was devised by former Olympic 10,000 m bronze medallist and BBC Sport commentator Brendan Foster.The first Great...

 each year for charity, and is an honorary member of Gateshead Harriers.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK