Bill Arthur, Sky Sports’ rugby league commentator who died in July, has won the 2024 Glen’s Spirit of Super League Award.
He died aged 68 after living with prostate cancer for more than a decade.
His career in broadcasting and journalism stretched back more than 40 years, in which he had been a mainstay of Sky Sports’ rugby league coverage for three decades.
Bill’s last match commentary was the 2023 Grand Final between Wigan Warriors and Catalans Dragons.
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His contribution to the sport will be celebrated at next week’s Rugby League Awards Night, when the Glen’s Spirit of Super League Award will be presented to his family – days before the 2024 Betfred Super League Grand Final at Old Trafford, live on Sky Sports.
Barrie McDermott, his former Sky Sports colleague who will join Bill’s family in accepting the award on his behalf at next week’s ceremony, said: “It will be an honour to join Bill’s wife Cherry in accepting this award, and I consider myself very fortunate and privileged to have worked with him so closely for so long, and to have called him a friend as well as a colleague.
“He was a wonderful support to ex-players like me when we started working for Sky, and he had an amazing ability to ask the tough questions that sometimes need to be asked while remaining liked and respected by everyone in the game.
“It is right that we remember him ahead of the Grand Final – the first one he’ll have missed – and I think the list of former winners of this award is also fitting. Bill worked with them all and they sum up the qualities which made him fall in love with Rugby League.
“He was a champion for our sport both in the heartlands and most of all the outposts, and for me that’s why he embodied the spirit of rugby league.”
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For the first Grand Final in 1998 – and for the next two decades – Bill spent his time in his supporting role as pitch-side reporter while Eddie Hemmings and Mike Stephenson called the action from the commentary box.
Then in 2019, following the retirement of Hemmings, Bill commentated on his first Grand Final – St Helens’ victory over Salford Red Devils – and his run of five Grand Finals behind the microphone included probably his most memorable commentary moment, Jack Welsby’s dramatic late winning try for Saints against Wigan in a match played behind closed doors in Hull because of the Covid pandemic in 2020.
The Glen’s Spirit of Super League Award was introduced in 2019 to recognise those who epitomise the values of the sport, with a strong emphasis on sportsmanship and community.