I SPLIT my sport watching pretty-much between football and rugby; Yes, particularly now the Olympics are under-way, I also look at other sports, but, the bulk of my time is devoted to the two different codes of football.
With the Junior teams now in the process of migrating across to the West and East of Scotland Leagues, football is now becoming more like rugby in that governance is now all under one roof at Hampden, however, the round-ball guys are still some way behind the oval-ball guys when it comes to other aspects of game management.
Football, or rather two Glasgow-based teams, grab the majority of the space on Scotland's sports pages, with rugby coming a poor second in the coverage stakes. Indeed, while the print media in Scotland appears to be withering on the vine, it is a self-evident fact, that while neither of Scotland's two “posh” papers – The (Glasgow) Herald and the (Edinburgh) Scotsman now has a staff writer bearing the title: “Our Rugby Correspondent,” both papers relying on the excellent and hard-working Edinburgh-based freelance writer David Barnes for their coverage.
The Herald, whose staff has truly been decimated from the days when it was a decent newspaper, still however finds the cash to have dedicated journalists covering The Old Firm, while across in Edinburgh The Scotsman's sister paper, The Edinburgh Evening News has dedicated journalists covering Hearts and Hibs.
The 2021-22 Scottish season is now underway, with the group stages of the League Cup, this year named The Premier Sports Cup. But, if you look at the sports pages, they are mostly about the two big Glasgow clubs and their latest transfer targets – or who the writers would like to think are their transfer targets.
This is not healthy. If Scottish football had really grown-up in its 148 year history, there would be more attention being paid to the other clubs playing.
There is an old saying, along the lines of; If the media does not meet your needs, become the media. I commend this action to the SFA and the SPFL.
If the papers will not cover more than the two big clubs, if the broadcast media cannot be bothered going too-far from their headquarters on the south bank of the River Clyde, then set-up your own media and tell the broader story.
For instance, the above-mentioned David Barnes, sensing the two Scottish papers which had long covered rugby were no longer interested in taking the game seriously, set-up his own media outlet: The Offside Line, which is now the go-to outlet for rugby news up here.
Is there no football journalist with the drive and ambition to do the same job for football?
The SRU's media department is, to be brutally honest and to use one of the S|RU's own favourite judgements: “not fit for purpose,” but, it still does a damned sight better job of selling football than the SFA's media department does in selling its game.
For instance, the official SFA website is tortuous to navigate around. I am currently doing research for a piece on the international team and trying to use the archive part of the SFA site – well, let's just say I gave up, it was such hard work.
Then, there is how they present news stories. This merely shows, they are not using journalists to put the pages together.
I would wager, the right stories, told in the right way, and concentrating as much on the “diddy” clubs as the big two, could make an SFA in-house website a must-visit site for today's fans.
Give it a try SFA and SPFL, you have nothing to lose but your image as a bunch of stumble-bums.
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