Gary Shaw

Birmingham born football speaker and former England player Gary Shaw was a popular part of the Aston Villa team who, in the early 1980s, achieved both the First Division Championship and the European Cup. A West-Midlands boy born and bred it was almost inevitable that Gary would become a football speaker and player for the Birmingham based club; growing up in Kingshurst Gary’s youth was spent kicking a ball around in the area’s local grassland, known as the island. Gary eventually embarked on his professional career in 1978 when he joined Aston Villa, where he would stay for the next ten years.

Thanks to his long-standing association with the club, and the continued local pride held for him in and around Birmingham, Gary Shaw is often called upon to appear as a sports speaker at local Birmingham based events or at Villa’s after-dinner speaker functions. Shaw left Villa in 1988, following a knee injury that effectively ended his professional career, though he continued to work as a football speaker and striker for a number of teams around the world, including the Copenhagen based Kjøbenhavns, the Austrian Klagenfurt and the Hong Kong-based Ernest Borel FC, he was unable to match the heights gained during his time at Villa.

Alongside his domestic career, Gary Shaw also spent time as part of England Under 21’s National team, where he gained seven caps; he was voted PFA Young Player of the Year in 1981 and made it into the initial pick for the World Cup team in 1982; following these experiences Gary often finds himself called upon to appear as a football speaker for youth teams and at educational sporting events. Gary Shaw retired from professional football in 1992 but has remained an active sports speaker for the last twenty five years. His experience as a global sports personality as well as his time spent at one of Britain’s most popular clubs mark him as an unusual and proficient player with a vast selection of stories and anecdotes to share with his audiences as an after-dinner speaker.