[3] At the age of 18, he played in the football tournament in the 1936 Berlin Olympics for Great Britain.
[4] Edelston played league football with Fulham and Brentford (following his father, Joe Edelston, then a coach, to both clubs), non-league football with Wimbledon and Corinthian and in April 1939 he joined Reading (where his father was manager) and played for them successfully as an inside forward until 1952.
He reached his peak around the late 1960s and early 1970s, when he was broadcasting almost every week, covering European finals and England matches, as well as a number of league title deciders (Arsenal's victory at Tottenham Hotspur in 1971, and Wolves' defeat of Leeds which handed the title to Derby County in 1972).
By the mid-1970s, his career was somewhat in decline as the emergence of Alan Parry was denying him the chance to commentate on matches such as England vs Scotland in 1975, and the controversial European Cup final in which Bayern Munich beat Leeds United four days later.
However, he continued to cover tennis during the summer of 1975 and was still broadcasting regularly when he died suddenly from a heart attack in Tilehurst on 30 January 1976,[7] aged 57.