Voices of Football: Martin Tyler – The Pre-Premier League Years

After more than thirty years, Sky's voice of football hung up his microphone in the summer of 2023. But where did he emerge from in the first place?

For anybody under the age of forty, until the end of the 2022/23 season Martin Tyler was the voice of the Premier League. Bombastic in style, though we suspect somewhat aware of the ridiculousness of it all, Tyler’s position, as the main commentator on Sky Sports, made him the soundtrack to the football lives of millions of people for almost three decades. Small wonder that he kept going until his mid-70s, considering he played amateur football for Isthmian League side Corinthian-Casuals and has worked as a coach for a number of non-league teams, including Walton & Hersham, Kingstonian, Hampton & Richmond Borough and the team he’s supported for many years, Woking.

But Tyler didn’t appear fully-formed in football’s Whole New Ball Game in the summer of 1992. By the time the Premier League started, he’d been commentating for almost twenty years, and those years offer us a fascinating insight into the recognition of talent, and the benefits that can come from taking a gamble. Martin Tyler has got to the top of his profession and stayed there on merit, of that there is no question, but sometimes – as he has surely said himself once or twice over the 46 years of his commentary career – you make your own luck.