GARY LINEKER was the wrong man to present the BBC’s live golf coverage, claims the man he replaced.
Steve Rider, who over the weekend, left the Beeb in 2005 to join ITV.
With Rider, now 75, having presented the BBC‘s live coverage prior to his exit, the Corporation opted to replace him with host .
Rider initially kept quiet about his replacement, until in 2015 when Lineker took a swipe at the R&A in St Andrews.
The former captain was upset with the R&A’s decision to flog rights to the Open, previously held by the Beeb, to Sky Sports.
Lineker called the R&A “pompous”; and “superior”; – which Rider took issue with.
The veteran presenter called Lineker at the time “the wrong man in the wrong job”;, before adding: “Gary was honest enough to step aside from the golf, but his attack on the R&A was sour and misguided in the extreme.”;
Rider has now claimed that Lineker “blundered”; into politics during an interview with the Telegraph.
Reflecting on the presenter’s controversial BBC exit, Rider added: “To put forward his opinions so energetically, you need to step outside the framework of the BBC.
“That message was never convincingly conveyed to him by the BBC, and that’s where they are at fault.
“He needed people looking after him before he pressed the button on some fairly volatile retweets. He needed to be saved from himself. So, there was a kind of inevitability about it.”;
Rider has not spoken to Lineker since criticising his swipe at the R&A a decade ago.
During his stint with the BBC, Rider hosted Sports Personality of the Year alongside Des Lynam.
Taking aim at the current incarnation of SPOTY, the outgoing ITV stalwart said: “The commercial aspect took over.
“The thinking was, ‘Let’s take it to a 5,000-seat arena with a big shiny floor’. It killed the chemistry.
“Unfortunately, this happened just as the BBC’s involvement in sport started declining.
“Now it’s very, very uncomfortable to see. It’s not the type of programme you would invent now.
“It has become a bit of a ball and chain.”;
