SATURDAY’S were big for me growing up, they still are big for me now, and they have been constantly filled with sport from the word go.
I remember being aged four, and being left with my granny. She had a café across from Elland Road, which was where my mum and dad met, and when mum wanted to see dad (Terry Yorath) play for Leeds United, I’d be left with granny.
She would take me back to her home, and when the Grandstand music would come on around five o’clock, I’d know that mum and dad would be home soon after that.
Saturday’s were dominated by sport as a child, then when I had my own career, they were spent working and watching Kenny, and now it’s me working and our kids participating in their chosen sports.
Last Saturday was the first in ages that none of us had anything on; Lois didn’t have a riding competition, Reuben didn’t have any sports school or rugby, Kenny wasn’t doing anything, and I wasn’t working. It was the first non-scheduled Saturday we’d had off as a family in ages. Being honest, it felt quite strange, looking at each other wondering if we shouldn’t be doing something else.
With my childhood, it didn’t take long before the sport, and for me it was gymnastics, became quite time consuming, because there was a constant sense of urgency.
You looked around at your role models, and in gymnastics, no-one was over 20. So, there was a rush to become good quite quickly if you wanted any sort of career. Reuben plays rugby. He has no sense of urgency, or panic if he wins or loses. In gymnastics though, if you were 12 and it went wrong in a competition, you’d be thinking you wouldn’t make it to the next level, or the national squad.
It was high-pressured, if you aimed high, which is what me and my sister Louise did. There are only 11 months between us, so we couldn’t be closer, unless we were twins. And it was great having someone in the house doing the same sport.
Our brother, Daniel, would be trying to kick a football while we were practising in the hall – I’d use the radiator as a ballet bar – and we’d constantly be playing music for routines. There would be tape cassettes lying everywhere as we tried some very unsophisticated editing, or, my sister would be decorating her ribbons. It must have looked like a cross between Blue Peter and the Moscow State Circus.
Gymnastics hardly gained any TV coverage then, so the one big televised event of the year would be recorded and then replayed endlessly. Which is why a lot of people of a certain age, and involved with other sports, will reference Trans World Sport on a Saturday morning. That showed more obscure sports, including rhythmic gymnastics, so that would be on as we had our breakfast.
Louise was very good but didn’t make the Commonwealth Games team that we were going for together in 1990, and kind of lost interest after that. But we were training locally, or, getting up at crack of dawn and heading for places like Bedford, Lilleshall, Milton Keynes or Bletchley for training and competitions, or getting dropped off by my mum at some junction on the M1 for our coach to collect us and take us somewhere further afield.
It meant our younger brother, Jordan, who came along when I was 13, was constantly in a car seat being whizzed around by my mum, as we all went to various sporting events, in her Volvo or Peugeot estate cars, always full of kids and equipment, and invariably, running late. I’m sure he is still traumatised by the entire experience.
It is much the same today. Having been away with Lois at a competition, Kenny turned up to watch Reuben playing rugby in a seven and a half ton horse truck, complete with horse, which he parked in amongst all the other cars and 4x4s. How to get a name for yourself.
Saturdays took another twist when I went to university because quite quickly I began working on the local radio station. I did the Saturday and Sunday morning news shift, which meant travelling from Durham to Newcastle, getting up at 4.45am for a six o’clock start and working till noon, then I’d watch university sport, or, Newcastle United.
Within a year of graduating, I was doing On The Ball, the Saturday lunchtime football show – and that was Saturdays filled in one way or another for the next 20 years.
When I met Kenny, he’d play most Saturdays and I’d attempt to go and watch wherever he was. I’d get off air at ten past one, jump on a motorbike, get to Heathrow for a 2.30 flight to Edinburgh, and could be at Murrayfield for the start of the second half. Mad.
But, one particular day, when Scotland were playing Wales, I rang my mum and asked how Kenny was doing in the match and she said he was getting mentioned all the time. She told me the score, and I thought, ‘hmm, that’s strange,’ but she was adamant; “they just can’t stop talking about him.”
I was running up the stairs at Murrayfield to find my seat and met these guys coming the other way with daffodils on their heads, who announced; “Gabby, Gabby, your boyfriend is having an absolute shiter!”
Kenny had a really bad day kicking, hence the TV mentions and comments of the Welsh fans. I just pulled up my collar and sank in my chair.
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