Starting his career at
BBC Radio Merseyside, he joined the BBC in
London in 1973, and immediately started regular football commentaries. Within a short time he was covering
England matches, and by 1975 he was covering the
European Cup final. After the death of
Maurice Edelston he started working alongside
Peter Jones covering the
FA Cup Final in 1976. By the mid-1970s he was also
BBC Radio's athletics commentator, covering the
1976,
1980 and
1984 Summer Olympics,
1974,
1978 and
1982 European Athletics Championships,
1974,
1978 and
1982 Commonwealth Games and the first World Athletics Championships in
1983. From 1981 he largely relinquished his radio
football commentary to commentate for
Match of the Day on
BBC television and in
1982 was a member of the BBC Television commentary team for the World Cup in Spain his most famous commentaries was the shock 2-1 win by Algeria over the
1980 European Champions West Germany and West Germany's controversial 1-0 win over Austria in fact he did all 3 of West Germany's 1st round group games for the BBC ironically the ITV commentator was Hugh Johns who was at that time ITV's chief Football commentator in the Midlands a role that Alan Parry would later take for Central Sports Special and The Central Match and also he was a member of the BBC's
Euro 1984 commentary team alongside John Motson. In 1985, he left the BBC to join
ITV, initially as an athletics commentator after the commercial channel won the rights to cover British athletics. However, by the late 1980s, Parry had also become a key football commentator for the network, and in 1990, Parry was
Brian Moore's number two at the
World Cup – this was a role he would retain until he left the network. When not working for Sky Sports, Parry has been heard commentating Premier League matches for Premier League Productions, a venture of IMG Sports Media who produce, package and broadcast the live production of games for the Premier League for its international broadcast partners. The same productions are also shown domestically for highlights packages on Sky Sports' "Football First" programme. ==Notes==