Kelly Cates' decision to quit Sky Sports job despite having ‘nothing else to go to’

Football presenter Kelly Cates opened up about the time she suddenly chose to depart Sky Sports News. The popular presenter is best known for her regular appearances covering Premier League and English Football League football – but in 2006, she abruptly exited turned her back on the broadcaster.

At the dawn of the new millennium, Cates was already a familiar face, revered for her presenting prowess both in-studio and on location. During the 10-year interlude between her stints at Sky, she kept herself busy, lending her voice to BBC Radio 5Live’s ‘606’ show and fronting Channel 5’s English Football League highlights programme.

It wasn’t until a decade later that she made a surprise comeback to Sky Sports, initially commandeering the Saturday night slots covering EFL games.

Reflecting on that pivotal moment, Cates opened up about why she chose to part ways with the network that launched her career in sports journalism. Speaking to The Overlap’s ‘Not Just Football’ podcast, Cates said: “I left Sky Sports News in 2006, after the Germany World Cup.

“I’d been there for eight years and I had just turned 30, or I was just turning 31. I was engaged, but not yet married. I knew I wanted to have children quite soon at that point.

“It had just been, for a long time, kind of filtering away and running in the back of my head. I came to the end of my contract and was working under my new contract and within the space of about three days, made the decision.

“I was driving into work one day, I walked in and I said, ‘I don’t want to sign this new contract, I want to go!’ I had nothing to go to.

“I just walked away, but I was so sure that I had to go and make that change. I did it when I left university to go to Sky, which is different, because then you get something that’s really exciting, shiny and new, dangled in front of you and you think, ‘I’m going to take this jump’.

“But that’s the scariest one I did where I just went, ‘that’s it’. I just made that decision.”

During an intimate conversation with Christine Lampard, Cates confirmed her confidence in her choice, when she said: “It’s when you wake up the next morning and you still feel good about it. That’s when you know you made the right decision, when it feels like a weight off, rather than a sinking feeling.”

Cates, whose dad is Liverpool and Celtic icon Kenny Dalglish, would return to Sky in 2016. While re-signing initially for coverage of the EFL, she later made the switch to work around Premier League fixtures one year later. She has been a huge part of the coverage ever since, working closely with the likes of Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher.