He told Desert Island Discs: “To be honest with you, my love for football had slightly deserted me prior to [Hillsborough] because it was a bad decade, the 80s, and hooliganism was a major part of that.
“We had a lot of personal injury with fans attacking each other at grounds. And we had Heysel, for different reasons obviously, and we had the fire at Bradford.
“The game went to an all-time low, I thought. And then the tragedy of Hillsborough. I did wonder whether football would get back on its feet after that. But I’ll tell you what turned it.
“We had the 1990 World Cup within a year, England in the semi-final, Gazza’s tears.”
Motson joined the BBC in 1968 as a radio sports presenter and went on to commentate on more than 2,000 games, including World Cup and FA Cup finals. But his role changed to disaster reporter during the Hillsborough as he provided live coverage for the thousands of listeners who thought they were just tuning into the FA Cup semi-final game between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.
Motson was the first person to say there was no misbehaviour on the part of the fans.
He said: “From where I was sitting it looked as a case of overcrowding. So I wanted to get any suggestion of crowd misbehaviour out the way and I’m glad I did, but I’m also glad I was right.”
He was educated at Culford School, near Bury St Edmunds, and showed an aptitude for journalism from an early age, founding the school newspaper. He also showed his love for football, something frowned upon at the rugby-loving school.
He said: “It was a rugby school. Rugby in the autumn term, hockey in the spring term, cricket in the summer term but no football.
“Not only no football, but if you got a few people together with a ball and tried to play an impromptu game it was frowned upon. [My father] wrote to the school…and the headmaster has since made that letter very public, it has caused a few chuckles.”
His discs included Three Lions by David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, Annie’s Song by John Denver and Abide With Me by the Westminster Abbey Choir.
He also asked to take his running shoes as his luxury item and Catcher In The Rye by JD Salinger as his book.
Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 today at 11.15am
