My former colleague Bob Pryce was one of several journalists of his generation who loved sport without being wholly obsessed with it, and found their natural home on the Guardian sports desk.
Bob, who has died aged 74, joined the paper in 1986 and immediately found a niche by covering the American sports that, with football at its nadir, were nibbling away at its pre-eminence in Britain. The national game bounced back; luckily he was equally at home with that, and for the next 20 years was a regular member of the Guardian’s troupe of football writers. He wrote his first report on the day Wimbledon made their debut in the top division. “So this is the big time,” it began.
