Worth flagging for any of those who read or listened to Kevin's work over the years. Sadly, the Scottish football writer (for The Guardian, Times and Scotland on Sunday) and author Kevin McCarra has passed away aged 62. I imagine a lot of people on here will have read his excellently-written match reports for The Guardian, or heard him as one of the original voices on the 'Football Weekly' podcast with James Richardson et al.
A couple of incredibly heart-warming obituaries below (linked here and here), and it's lovely to read that the impression he gave of being such a warm and friendly person was genuine. Lots of lovely comments under Jonathan Wilson's piece as well. Feck Alzheimers, a horrible disease and one that I desperately hope the world can eradicate.
A couple of incredibly heart-warming obituaries below (linked here and here), and it's lovely to read that the impression he gave of being such a warm and friendly person was genuine. Lots of lovely comments under Jonathan Wilson's piece as well. Feck Alzheimers, a horrible disease and one that I desperately hope the world can eradicate.
Kevin McCarra obituary
Football writer for the Guardian, Times and Scotland on Sunday who was able to turn match reports into works of art
Kevin McCarra, who has died aged 62 of Alzheimer’s disease, was football correspondent for the Guardian from 2002 to 2012 and prior to that a football writer for the Times, Sunday Times and Scotland on Sunday. One of Scotland’s finest sportswriting exports, he was blessed with original thinking, a deep and genuine understanding of football, and an extraordinary talent for phraseology that allowed him to turn what might otherwise have been mundane match reports into works of art.
He was born in Glasgow, the youngest of three children, and grew up in Clarkston, on the outskirts of the city. His mother, Adele, was a pharmacist who later went into science teaching, and his father, Joe, was also a teacher.
Having attended Holyrood secondary school in Glasgow, Kevin took a degree in Scottish literature at Glasgow University, becoming heavily involved in the Third Eye Centre, a contemporary arts venue. At that stage lecture halls looked to be his natural domain, and after graduation he enrolled for a PhD.
However, an invitation from the Third Eye Centre to curate an exhibition about Scottish football was followed by a commission to write a book entitled A Pictorial History of Scottish Football, which was published in 1984. In turn that led to writing work with Scottish Field magazine. Kevin’s deft touch and sharp observations quickly caught the eye of the newly established Scotland on Sunday, which in 1988 took him on as a staff writer – and the PhD was ditched.
When the entrepreneur Fergus McCann saved Celtic football club in 1994 Kevin was at the forefront of reporting on the story and shortly afterwards he accepted a move to the Times, initially as Scottish football correspondent but later covering English matches after the direct intervention of the newspaper’s editor prevented a move to the Scotsman.
It was at the Times during one particularly raucous European football night at Ibrox that Kevin dictated to the copytaker down the phone that the Rangers manager Walter Smith had “returned to his previous central defensive pairing of Richard Gough and Gordan Petric” – only to find the phrase rendered into “tedious central defensive pairing” when it appeared in the paper the following morning.
There was, however, never any prospect of Smith, Petric, Gough or anyone else in the football world becoming angry with Kevin. Similarly, even in such a tribal environment as Glasgow, where support for either half of the Old Firm is generally kept under wraps, he had no fear of revealing his lifelong allegiance to Celtic, as even Rangers fans knew he would not allow that to cloud the judgment in his work. His writing was of sufficiently high quality and balance to render such thoughts redundant.
In 2002 he succeeded David Lacey as the main footballing writer at the Guardian, moving with his wife, Susan Stewart, an investment banker, whom he had married in 1986, to Stoke Newington in north London.
During his time at the Guardian Kevin was a constant source of support to other journalists, both established and aspiring. Self-deprecating about the scale of his own talent, he felt uncomfortable at receiving so many emails from inquisitive teenagers keen on pursuing a life in the sports media. He regarded his own route as too unorthodox to be helpful and was perhaps unaware that even just a return communication from someone of his standing – which he always gave - would nonetheless be gratefully received.
Support was not reserved for the young: in the late 2000s, when Hugh MacDonald, then a sportswriter with the Herald in Glasgow, arrived in London to preview a Champions League tie involving Arsenal, Kevin drove him to the club’s rural pre-match press conference and then back to his hotel. It only emerged later, and by accident, that all of this took place on Kevin’s day off.
He also allowed me to stay in his home after being instrumental in arranging some work experience at the Guardian. Many years later a ticking off arrived by email for my use of “plethora” in relation to opportunities missed during a football match. True to the word’s definition, which relates to a larger amount of something than is needed, he reminded me that “teams cannot create too many chances”. If such a note had arrived from any other journalist, ego would have led to annoyance, but from Kevin it produced only a smile. In an industry where cynicism is embedded, he stood out for his kind, gracious and graceful approach. No one had a bad word to say about him, and that spoke volumes.
In 2012 his book Celtic: A Biography in Nine Lives was published; he had written several others over the years, mainly about Scottish football and beginning with One Afternoon in Lisbon (co-written with Pat Woods in 1988) about Celtic’s European Cup glory in 1967.
In 2012 he left the Guardian to return to Glasgow. Susan gave up her job and spent more and more of her time helping him as his health deteriorated. Season tickets at Partick Thistle and Celtic allowed for plenty of football to be watched, and there were trips, too, to Venice, their favourite city – but nothing like the time for travel that they had planned.
He is survived by Susan and his brother, John.
• Kevin James McCarra, journalist, born 1 February 1958; died 24 October 2020
Football writer for the Guardian, Times and Scotland on Sunday who was able to turn match reports into works of art
Kevin McCarra, who has died aged 62 of Alzheimer’s disease, was football correspondent for the Guardian from 2002 to 2012 and prior to that a football writer for the Times, Sunday Times and Scotland on Sunday. One of Scotland’s finest sportswriting exports, he was blessed with original thinking, a deep and genuine understanding of football, and an extraordinary talent for phraseology that allowed him to turn what might otherwise have been mundane match reports into works of art.
He was born in Glasgow, the youngest of three children, and grew up in Clarkston, on the outskirts of the city. His mother, Adele, was a pharmacist who later went into science teaching, and his father, Joe, was also a teacher.
Having attended Holyrood secondary school in Glasgow, Kevin took a degree in Scottish literature at Glasgow University, becoming heavily involved in the Third Eye Centre, a contemporary arts venue. At that stage lecture halls looked to be his natural domain, and after graduation he enrolled for a PhD.
However, an invitation from the Third Eye Centre to curate an exhibition about Scottish football was followed by a commission to write a book entitled A Pictorial History of Scottish Football, which was published in 1984. In turn that led to writing work with Scottish Field magazine. Kevin’s deft touch and sharp observations quickly caught the eye of the newly established Scotland on Sunday, which in 1988 took him on as a staff writer – and the PhD was ditched.
When the entrepreneur Fergus McCann saved Celtic football club in 1994 Kevin was at the forefront of reporting on the story and shortly afterwards he accepted a move to the Times, initially as Scottish football correspondent but later covering English matches after the direct intervention of the newspaper’s editor prevented a move to the Scotsman.
It was at the Times during one particularly raucous European football night at Ibrox that Kevin dictated to the copytaker down the phone that the Rangers manager Walter Smith had “returned to his previous central defensive pairing of Richard Gough and Gordan Petric” – only to find the phrase rendered into “tedious central defensive pairing” when it appeared in the paper the following morning.
There was, however, never any prospect of Smith, Petric, Gough or anyone else in the football world becoming angry with Kevin. Similarly, even in such a tribal environment as Glasgow, where support for either half of the Old Firm is generally kept under wraps, he had no fear of revealing his lifelong allegiance to Celtic, as even Rangers fans knew he would not allow that to cloud the judgment in his work. His writing was of sufficiently high quality and balance to render such thoughts redundant.
In 2002 he succeeded David Lacey as the main footballing writer at the Guardian, moving with his wife, Susan Stewart, an investment banker, whom he had married in 1986, to Stoke Newington in north London.
During his time at the Guardian Kevin was a constant source of support to other journalists, both established and aspiring. Self-deprecating about the scale of his own talent, he felt uncomfortable at receiving so many emails from inquisitive teenagers keen on pursuing a life in the sports media. He regarded his own route as too unorthodox to be helpful and was perhaps unaware that even just a return communication from someone of his standing – which he always gave - would nonetheless be gratefully received.
Support was not reserved for the young: in the late 2000s, when Hugh MacDonald, then a sportswriter with the Herald in Glasgow, arrived in London to preview a Champions League tie involving Arsenal, Kevin drove him to the club’s rural pre-match press conference and then back to his hotel. It only emerged later, and by accident, that all of this took place on Kevin’s day off.
He also allowed me to stay in his home after being instrumental in arranging some work experience at the Guardian. Many years later a ticking off arrived by email for my use of “plethora” in relation to opportunities missed during a football match. True to the word’s definition, which relates to a larger amount of something than is needed, he reminded me that “teams cannot create too many chances”. If such a note had arrived from any other journalist, ego would have led to annoyance, but from Kevin it produced only a smile. In an industry where cynicism is embedded, he stood out for his kind, gracious and graceful approach. No one had a bad word to say about him, and that spoke volumes.
In 2012 his book Celtic: A Biography in Nine Lives was published; he had written several others over the years, mainly about Scottish football and beginning with One Afternoon in Lisbon (co-written with Pat Woods in 1988) about Celtic’s European Cup glory in 1967.
In 2012 he left the Guardian to return to Glasgow. Susan gave up her job and spent more and more of her time helping him as his health deteriorated. Season tickets at Partick Thistle and Celtic allowed for plenty of football to be watched, and there were trips, too, to Venice, their favourite city – but nothing like the time for travel that they had planned.
He is survived by Susan and his brother, John.
• Kevin James McCarra, journalist, born 1 February 1958; died 24 October 2020
Kevin McCarra: a pioneer who changed football journalism
The former Guardian football correspondent, who has died aged 62, was crisp, prescient and transformative in his writing
It was around about 1990, long before journalists had mobile phones. Kevin McCarra, the former football correspondent of the Guardian who died from Alzheimer’s disease on Saturday aged 62, was travelling from Glasgow to cover a game at Easter Road for Scotland on Sunday when his train got stuck somewhere near Falkirk. Time passed. It became clear Kevin wasn’t going to make kick-off. Still the train didn’t move. He wasn’t going to make half-time, either.
Unable to contact his desk but knowing they had a space to fill and needed copy, he composed a piece about being on the train with frustrated fans, filed when he was finally able to disembark and somehow produced something true and insightful, and far more memorable than anything that had been written at the game itself.
It was a moment of improvised unorthodoxy typical of Scotland on Sunday at the time. It was a bright, fresh paper, fizzing with imagination in every section. Kevin’s role was vital. In the era of Fever Pitch, fanzines and Italian football on Channel 4, Kevin was one of those who transformed football journalism. Out went the jaded hackery of old, and in came a far more literary sensibility.
Kevin had been doing a PhD placing the 15th-century Scottish poet Robert Henryson in his European context when an arts centre where he worked part-time asked him to put on an exhibition about Scottish football. That led to him being commissioned to co-produce A Pictorial History of Scottish Football, published in 1984. He wrote it on an Amstrad PCW using the deeply unintuitive Locoscript. As anybody who sat near him during a game knew, it was the last thing to do with computers he ever really mastered. “Technology is a word we only use when it goes wrong,” he would say; he used it a lot.
The contacts made during his research led to further writing opportunities. As disillusionment with academia set in, Kevin became a regular in Scottish Field before being invited to join Scotland on Sunday when it launched in 1988. He also co-founded the Mariscat Press, publishing poetry editions including Edwin Morgan’s 1984 work Sonnets from Scotland.
Kevin later worked for the Sunday Times and the Times before succeeding David Lacey as the Guardian’s football correspondent after the 2002 World Cup. It was his dream job. He even took a pay cut to move, although only because he misremembered his salary during negotiations (characteristically – practicalities were never a forte).
It was Lacey he most admired and Lacey whose prose his most resembled, crisp and free of cliche, capable of summing up a game with deceptive economy. Looking back at old pieces now what is striking is both his prescience and the unusual cadences of his writing.
He was rarely controversial, although there was the incident after a friendly against Spain in 2007 when the England manager Steve McClaren referred to the upcoming Euro 2008 qualifier in Israel as “the real bull”, apparently a laboured bullfighting analogy. Kevin, taking his turn with transcription, was understandably mystified and decided McClaren had said “rainbow”, leading to McClaren being mocked up on the back of the tabloids with George, Zippy and Bungle. With somebody else, it might have created major issues, but McClaren and everybody at the Football Association knew that with Kevin it would have been an honest mishearing, no mischief intended; there was never any malice to either him or his writing.
The affection in which he was held became clear during Euro 2016, when he went missing in Avignon. The football community rallied to appeal for help and the following day he was found, confused and dehydrated, by an England fan who had seen his photo on Twitter.
Kevin never savaged anybody, remembered always the person behind the mistake he might be describing. Only once did a manager ever really lose his rag with him, and that was, of all people, Tommy Burns, who had been taught by his father. “I can’t believe Joe McCarra’s boy could write those things,” he hissed, pinning Kevin against the wall, before the preposterousness of the situation overcame the pair of them. It was Burns’s No 10 Kevin later had on the back of his Celtic shirt.
He co-wrote a book on Celtic’s 1967 European Cup win and there was a sense he never enjoyed anything quite so much: Kevin was a famously terrible footballer – so bad that after he’d reluctantly agreed to make up the numbers for a team at Glasgow university, he was quickly subbed off as his teammates decided they would be better playing with 10 – but he enthusiastically acted out the key moments of that campaign as recreated for him by Jimmy Johnstone in his living room.
Some journalists end up covering football because it’s where they are shunted, some do it because it’s a job; Kevin did it because he loved football. That perhaps came through most obviously in his broadcast work. Kevin was one of the original regular guests on Football Weekly and a huge part of its early success.
After leaving the Guardian in 2012, Kevin returned to Glasgow and wrote another book, telling the history of Celtic through the biographies of nine key figures. Long after illness struck, he kept going to Parkhead and Partick Thistle. He was, as his friend Philippe Auclair put it, “a gentle fanatic”, obsessed by Celtic but never partisan.
He was unashamedly erudite, but also had great warmth. He was a pioneer who changed Scottish football journalism but, most fundamentally, he was a thoroughly nice man.
The former Guardian football correspondent, who has died aged 62, was crisp, prescient and transformative in his writing
It was around about 1990, long before journalists had mobile phones. Kevin McCarra, the former football correspondent of the Guardian who died from Alzheimer’s disease on Saturday aged 62, was travelling from Glasgow to cover a game at Easter Road for Scotland on Sunday when his train got stuck somewhere near Falkirk. Time passed. It became clear Kevin wasn’t going to make kick-off. Still the train didn’t move. He wasn’t going to make half-time, either.
Unable to contact his desk but knowing they had a space to fill and needed copy, he composed a piece about being on the train with frustrated fans, filed when he was finally able to disembark and somehow produced something true and insightful, and far more memorable than anything that had been written at the game itself.
It was a moment of improvised unorthodoxy typical of Scotland on Sunday at the time. It was a bright, fresh paper, fizzing with imagination in every section. Kevin’s role was vital. In the era of Fever Pitch, fanzines and Italian football on Channel 4, Kevin was one of those who transformed football journalism. Out went the jaded hackery of old, and in came a far more literary sensibility.
Kevin had been doing a PhD placing the 15th-century Scottish poet Robert Henryson in his European context when an arts centre where he worked part-time asked him to put on an exhibition about Scottish football. That led to him being commissioned to co-produce A Pictorial History of Scottish Football, published in 1984. He wrote it on an Amstrad PCW using the deeply unintuitive Locoscript. As anybody who sat near him during a game knew, it was the last thing to do with computers he ever really mastered. “Technology is a word we only use when it goes wrong,” he would say; he used it a lot.
The contacts made during his research led to further writing opportunities. As disillusionment with academia set in, Kevin became a regular in Scottish Field before being invited to join Scotland on Sunday when it launched in 1988. He also co-founded the Mariscat Press, publishing poetry editions including Edwin Morgan’s 1984 work Sonnets from Scotland.
Kevin later worked for the Sunday Times and the Times before succeeding David Lacey as the Guardian’s football correspondent after the 2002 World Cup. It was his dream job. He even took a pay cut to move, although only because he misremembered his salary during negotiations (characteristically – practicalities were never a forte).
It was Lacey he most admired and Lacey whose prose his most resembled, crisp and free of cliche, capable of summing up a game with deceptive economy. Looking back at old pieces now what is striking is both his prescience and the unusual cadences of his writing.
He was rarely controversial, although there was the incident after a friendly against Spain in 2007 when the England manager Steve McClaren referred to the upcoming Euro 2008 qualifier in Israel as “the real bull”, apparently a laboured bullfighting analogy. Kevin, taking his turn with transcription, was understandably mystified and decided McClaren had said “rainbow”, leading to McClaren being mocked up on the back of the tabloids with George, Zippy and Bungle. With somebody else, it might have created major issues, but McClaren and everybody at the Football Association knew that with Kevin it would have been an honest mishearing, no mischief intended; there was never any malice to either him or his writing.
The affection in which he was held became clear during Euro 2016, when he went missing in Avignon. The football community rallied to appeal for help and the following day he was found, confused and dehydrated, by an England fan who had seen his photo on Twitter.
Kevin never savaged anybody, remembered always the person behind the mistake he might be describing. Only once did a manager ever really lose his rag with him, and that was, of all people, Tommy Burns, who had been taught by his father. “I can’t believe Joe McCarra’s boy could write those things,” he hissed, pinning Kevin against the wall, before the preposterousness of the situation overcame the pair of them. It was Burns’s No 10 Kevin later had on the back of his Celtic shirt.
He co-wrote a book on Celtic’s 1967 European Cup win and there was a sense he never enjoyed anything quite so much: Kevin was a famously terrible footballer – so bad that after he’d reluctantly agreed to make up the numbers for a team at Glasgow university, he was quickly subbed off as his teammates decided they would be better playing with 10 – but he enthusiastically acted out the key moments of that campaign as recreated for him by Jimmy Johnstone in his living room.
Some journalists end up covering football because it’s where they are shunted, some do it because it’s a job; Kevin did it because he loved football. That perhaps came through most obviously in his broadcast work. Kevin was one of the original regular guests on Football Weekly and a huge part of its early success.
After leaving the Guardian in 2012, Kevin returned to Glasgow and wrote another book, telling the history of Celtic through the biographies of nine key figures. Long after illness struck, he kept going to Parkhead and Partick Thistle. He was, as his friend Philippe Auclair put it, “a gentle fanatic”, obsessed by Celtic but never partisan.
He was unashamedly erudite, but also had great warmth. He was a pioneer who changed Scottish football journalism but, most fundamentally, he was a thoroughly nice man.
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