Gary Andrews

Exciting times. I’m now a published writer (of sorts).

A couple of years ago, due to some time off between switching jobs, I spent a week researching and writing a series of posts on fan ownership, activism and the successes and limitations for Pitch Invasion. I’m normally pretty critical of my work, and, as ever, there’s things I’d change, but it’s also some of the work I’m most proud of, given the amount of work I put into it. Oddly, I still get the occasional media enquiry to talk about fan ownership off the back of it.

A while back, Tom Dunmore, the editor of Pitch Invasion, contacted me to say he was putting together an ebook of the best of Pitch Invasion’s writing and would I be ok with including my work in it.

Naturally, I jumped at the chance.

That was some time ago, and I’d put it somewhat to the back of my mind until recently when the book became close to being finalised. Along the way it grew another head and Tom decided to produce a print version. I can’t wait to hold this in my hands.

So, yes, The Best Of Pitch Invasion is now out and available for Kindle, as an ebook or as a physical copy.

I’d urge you all to buy a copy – not really so much for my writing, but because there are a LOT of essays from some truly excellent writers. Pitch Invasion has always been a markedly different blog to many other soccer sites and there’s always a lot of thought, depth, knowledge and research in the pieces.

If you’re a regular reader of When Saturday Comes, World Soccer or even The Blizzard, it may well appeal (not that I think my writing can hold a candle to these publications).

So, yes, please buy a copy. You’ll be doing some in the knowledge that you’re supporting a genuinely independent publication, and will own a book that should at least make you think and look at football in a slightly different light.

written by Gary \\ tags: football writing, Pitch Invasion, Pitch Invasion book, The Very Best Of Pitch Invasion

During my journalism training days, we once joked what journalism would have looked like had the internet not been invented. I facetiously commented that some reporters would have to find a method other than using Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.

Joking as I may have been, with staff numbers down and pressure to produce rolling content on the up, there’s a lot more churnalism and reliance on syndicated agency content. Much as journalists would like to be out and about, exposing wrongdoing and reporting original content, modern demands make this kind of hard.

As such, there’s a lot of copy and pasting from other sources. If one paper, radio or other media source carries a story, others will take the main line and reproduce this, namechecking the original.

Actually, this isn’t a new thing. It’s sort of vital for the news industry to exist. One outlet will look slow if they’re not leading with the line obtained by their rivals, so often they’ll take the main points and rewrite into their own news story. It’s pretty common and generally accepted practice in the news industry. Whether it’s a practice you feel is proper journalism is another question (although it’s quite a skill to be able to rewrite agency copy well).

Where it isn’t accepted is in the blogging community, which is much more open to quoting, attributing and, most importantly, linking back to the original source. As somebody who’s been blogging in various guises since in 2003, this is nearly second nature to me and something I’ve carried into online journalism without any problem.

But when two very different worlds collide, there will be problems, and this was the case earlier this week. Gav Stone, who writes the specialist Les Rosbifs blog, focusing on the careers on English footballers abroad, pulled off something off a coup by securing an interview with former England, FC Twente and Wolsburg manager Steve McClaren about his time managing in Europe.

Let’s just emphasise this. A fully independent blogger who edits his site as a hobby and no typical mainstream access secured an interview with a reasonably recent England manager and who is still active in the game today. Unless it’s part of a PR event, these type of interviews are unusual on independent blogs and rarer still to be in such depth.

Understandably Gav was, to put it mildly, a bit miffed when a chunk of his interview turned up a few days later as a lifted and rewritten news story (“Macca: Twenty joy my career high) on Sky Sports, Team Talk and other sites that Sky had syndicated the story to.

After emailing and receiving no response, Gav called them out on Twitter. The response from the journalists on these sites was a mixture of defensive, patronising, a tad arrogant and one that showed very little understanding of the web.

Chief among Gavin’s complaints was the lack of a link back to the source of the story. Team Talk et al had credited the interview to Les Rosbifs (although with no explanation as to who or what the site was) and hadn’t linked back, and hadn’t asked permission to use the quotes in the first place. What started off as a slightly miffed request from a blogger has escalated into a stage where lawyers are being consulted.

To my mind, there are four different aspects to this: the moral and ethical and legal implications of Sky’s actions, the issue of proper crediting, the issue of hyperlinking, and the general attitude of a mainstream media publication towards an independent blog.

Morals, ethics, and legality

Legally, Sky were probably just about on the right side of the law (although my own copyright knowledge is somewhat hazy). The fair dealing exception, whereby content is used for comment or rewritten is very common in journalism, and largely expected among media organisations – getting a paper or news bulletin out would be nigh-on impossible without it.

It’s also worth pointing out Sky didn’t, technically, steal the interview. The articles – now removed (in itself curious given the robust defence of their methods offered by Team Talk members on Twitter) – did lift several lengthy quotes from Les Rosbifs. However, the news angle was changed, there are some (admittedly, not many) original words in the pieces and much of the context and depth provided by the original interview wouldn’t be apparent without reading the full original piece.

So, setting legal concerns to one side (and it would be interesting to see if any lawyers think Sky overstepped the mark and the piece was problematic legally, the moral and ethical concerns still come into play. And largely politeness too.

Had Sky approached Gavin for permission, it’s likely that the response and conversation would have been much more amicable. But that in itself causes problems. As Tom Phillips commented on my Google+ (subscribers only, sorry), permission is an odd thing. Many bloggers quote from the mainstream press liberally. Should they contact the journalist or publication every time they want to write their own article based around somebody else’s work. The idea seems somewhat absurd when turned around, even if it is good manners.

But it still somehow feels wrong, ethically. This isn’t a writer working in the cut and thrust of journalism, this is a blogger who has done this work in his spare time, and now sees somebody else profiting from the work he has done. The attitude of some of the journalists working for Sky was far from classy and left something to be desired. Gav wasn’t playing with the big boys, who was pursuing an interest.

One final point here. Gavin secured the interview with McClaren on the basis that he was not mainstream press. When McClaren’s quotes (perhaps to be expected, and perhaps a small touch of naivety on both McClaren and Gavin’s parts) found their way onto Sky, that hurts the relationship built up by Gavin.

Relationships between the media and many football figures are touchy at best. By trampling over Les Rosbifs’ interview, Sky have strained that relationship between McClaren, the press and bloggers just that little bit further.

In the credits

From Sky / Team Talk’s point of view, they’d credited Les Rosbifs. From their perspective, that was it. The credit, though, isn’t entirely clear who or what Les Rosbifs is. The credit simply reads “In an interview with Les Rosbifs…”.

Be honest here. Unless you were a football blogger or happened to know Gav personally, would you know what Les Rosbifs was? For all was made clear, it could have just as easily been a French cooking blog that happened to have interviewed McClaren about nutrition, and wider football issues.

Gav himself has said there’s been no real spike in traffic and other articles that have appeared on other sites haven’t even carried Les Rosbifs’ name. That credit may work fine for, say, The Mirror, but again, feels disingenuous in the context of Gavin’s site. Should you wish to find the whole interview, there’s no indication how to go about this (and remember, many readers are lazy).

But where the issue really becomes important is that of hyperlinking.

The links effect

The hyperlinking issue is where we can see clear effects, differences between Gav and Sky, and, on the part of Team Talk, a complete misunderstanding of how the internet works.

Mark Holmes, one of Team Talk’s journalists, first told Gav on Twitter that Team Talk knew how to credit properly, but then went onto express amazement as to why anybody would ever request a link to the source material in a post. This is somewhat staggering from an online journalist.

I’ve written in the past how hyperlinks are one of the most valuable pieces of currency on the internet. From the most basic point of view, it’s just good practice to link back to your sources – it provides an easy way for readers to find the original in one easy click, shows how much has been taken and is an open and transparent way of acknowledging original material.

Adding a link is quick, easy (and wouldn’t, unlike Mark Holmes claimed, add 10% more work to Team Talk’s day) and good practice, and helps deliver more traffic to the original site. Personally, I’d like to see all agency syndication include links to sources in their copy – and it’s up to the site to decide if they want to link or not.

But this is just a small part of the benefits of linking back to the source. Had a site like Sky or Team Talk, with a high trust ranking in Google, linked back to the original article, then this in itself would provide an excellent virtual form of payment to Gav and help boost the SEO for his site and especially the McClaren article.

By not linking to the source, this becomes more of an issue. Some time after publication, the Sky article ranked higher than the Les Rosbifs article in Google. Not only had Sky lifted a chunk of the interview, it was now benefitting in search terms. Even entering LEs Rosbifs into search saw Gav’s site rank lower.

Mark Chalcraft at 2nd Yellow has written about the implications of duplicated content for bloggers in terms of SEO and Google ranking. What, to a big site, may seem like an insignificant link actually has big implications helping deliver hits to smaller, independent blogs (I’m personally of the view that all sites should link to source material, unless there’s a compelling reason not to).

This is why, to me, the issue of crediting online shouldn’t just be a throwaway line about the origin. It should be clear, transparent and include links wherever possible. Not only does this benefit the reader, it benefits and rewards original material with minimum of effort.

But you’re just a blogger…

And this all comes back to the original attitude of several Sky journalists, who seemed amazed that the blogger they’d taken the content was rather persistent in asking for a link.

To say Gavin wasn’t being professional and should be more polite when asking for a link back to content they’d taken from his site in the first place is not just patronising, it’s incredibly arrogant. Without the legwork Gavin put in, there would be no story at all.

We’re frequently told the boundaries between blogging and journalism have broken down. This is true to an extent. When everybody from the BBC to ITV to the Guardian to the Telegraph blogs, you can safely say it’s a valid medium.

The boundaries between bloggers and journalists, though, have still, if this incident is anything to go by, most definitely not broken down. Gavin’s interview is a well researched and written piece of journalism, although he’s not a journalist. The rewrite is only tenuously journalism insofar as it’s published on a journalistic platform. Yet it is the latter who are seen as the gatekeeper still.

Team Talk and Sky will always get the bigger hits, but that’s not what this is about. Les Rosbifs is niche, and makes a virtue of this. The work is just as valid this way (and, if anything, more impressive given it is written outside of a day job). There is a hierarchy in terms of page views, yes, but not so much in status.

Should bloggers expect to be compensated when their work is lifted? Debatable. I’d say proper, fully-linked crediting isn’t a bad payment.

Should bloggers be asked to have their quotes used elsewhere? Again, possibly. These aren’t, strictly speaking, journalistic publications. There is no established culture of lifting and rewriting content, thankfully. There is more of a culture of openness, transparency and respect for source material and this is something journalists would be well advised to be mindful of when using independent blogs as a source.

Was it stealing? In my view, no. I have nothing against the practice per se, even if I don’t necessarily like how lifting is a commonplace tactic in the industry (copy and paste is, after all, hardly journalism). It’s a necessary evil, sadly.

But even though it isn’t stealing, in the legal sense of the word, it is, overall, poor form, and reflects badly on Sky and Team Talk, both for the initial perceived transgression and subsequent attitude towards the complaint. What could have been sorted quickly and easily escalated into something much more unpleasant. Social media crises have been created for brands out of less.

As with so much on the internet, it comes down to a judgement call. It is absurd to request permission from every single source, every single time (although there is absolutely no reason for not crediting and linking to them). But if the site is a small, independent blog like Les Rosbifs rather than one of your main competitors, it hurts nobody to use a bit of politeness.

Who knows, if they’d asked nicely, they may have even got an original piece of content from Gavin, based on the interview, which would have been a win-win situation for everybody (ok, maybe not necessarily with this particular content. But it’s an entirely plausible scenario).

written by Gary \\ tags: blogging and journalism, journalism ethics, Les Rosbifs, Sky, Sky Sports, Steve McClaren, Team Talk

Earlier this week my long-time collaborator Chris Nee announced he was closing twofootedtackle.com, the site he set up in 2008 and I’ve co-edited with him for coming on for a couple of years. Chris had been wanting to do something different for a while now and, given my lack of time, it felt like the right time to call it a day, although the podcast – which we both hugely enjoy – will continue.

All of which left me with some decisions to make. TFT has been where I’ve posted the majority of my somewhat infrequent football writing over the past couple of years, interspersed with guest posts elsewhere, and paid work. And since I started football blogging back in 2008 for Soccerlens, the industry and community has changed – both overtly and subtly.

There’s a few thoughts I’d like to consider around that, but my main thought is, with the football writing, it’s probably time to call it a day and largely leave it behind although, like Orson Welles in Transformers, I’m sure I’ll return will an occasional ill-judged foray in order to pay the bills. Or I have something equally ill-advised to say.

Back in 2008, football blogging was a very different community. There were a handful of well-known sites, with one eye on commerce, such as Soccerlens or Who Ate All The Pies, and some smaller or less well publicised blogs, often done by an individual out of love for the game.

The idea of a football blogging community was almost unheard of. Twitter existed but was still the preserve of early adopters. The idea that bloggers would contact each other, let alone converse with established football journalists seemed fanciful.

Fast forward to 2011 and around fifty football bloggers and writers gathered together to drink beer, eat pies, watch football and mingle or network with like-minded people at the Socrates football blogger meetup. Later this year the second NOPA awards for football bloggers will be held. It has attracted more entries and interest than the inaugural event. The football blogging sub culture is alive and in incredible rude health.

The makeup of these bloggers has changed. There are more football blogs than ever before, as younger writers who’ve grown up with the Internet take it further into the mainstream. Many of these aim for or are already writing for mainstream publications, either traditional publications like the Guardian and Mirror or newer entrants such as BT Life’s A Pitch. The lines are most definitely blurred.

Guest posts are common between bloggers, there are more niche focused football sites than anyone would have imagined possible, and the conversation across Twitter is constant. This is to say nothing on the thousands of football fans who don’t blog but do have football specific Twitter handles.

If you wanted to, you could spend all day consuming and talking about football. Some do. Like Sky Sports, football is never ending. There is always something to discuss, shout about or get outraged over. If you love football, it’s probably an ideal that sounds close to Utopia.

Which is why it probably sounds pretty odd that I’ve decided to, by and large, call it a day, right?

When I first pitched Soccerlens to see if they’d like me to write for them, I’d just moved to London from a journalism job into the world of PR. I wanted to keep my hand in at writing and, given I’d thought of setting up my own football blog, it seemed like a pretty good fit.

And it was, largely. From Soccerlens, led to other writing, some paid, some unpaid (I’m particularly proud of the work I wrote for Pitch Invasion), and then onto twofootedtackle.

But even in the early days, there was a certain weary cynicism of football blogging on my part, which takes a bit of explaining.

During my training as a journalist, one mantra was beaten into me: Tell your reader (or listener) something they don’t already know. And yes, blogging isn’t quite journalism (the lines are very blurred, but there are slim distinctions, I think), but that’s a maxim most writers would do well to consider.

The trouble is with sports journalism – and especially football journalism – is that much of it states the bleedin’ obvious. There is a large amount of dog-bites-man reports that ‘s practically dog-gets-taken-for-a-walk stories.

Of course no striker who has scored for the last five games isn’t going to target more goals, or a goalkeeper who has let in three goals will say, “Actually, I’d rather not keep a clean sheet next week.” In an entirely unscientific estimate, probably about half of sports news stories could write themselves, or be randomly generated, and stand a good chance of being roughly accurate.

And much as bloggers like to consider themselves independent, a large portion of what they write will be dictated by the news agenda; the same bland non-stories that tell us nothing new, although make for good headlines (and, ergo, good sales). Bloggers write because they want traffic, hits, think it’s important, or simply because they believe they should be writing about it

The are many exceptions to this, admittedly, and who head down a singular path. They are in the minority though (although I may be wrong here).

Yet, and I’m as guilty of this as anyone, The Good Blogger Manual and received wisdom says you should post content on a regular, even daily basis, and keep writing to bring the punters back. Which inevitably means regular regurgitation of the main Premier League headlines of the day and a discussion or post that, in truth, has probably been written twenty times elsewhere already, with at least two of them being better than the one you’re writing.

This is fine for some. It will bring in readers, and possibly advertisers and money. Or if you’re shrill and pushy enough, and a good self-publicist, then you’ll also pull in the readers. If that’s your desire, then fine. It’s not for me to say how to run a website.

But if writing something for the sake of it – and writing something already written at that – means that’s the task in hand, then I’d rather close down my laptop and do something more worthwhile with my life. There seems little point for me in writing just to either look like I have an opinion or tempt in extra readers who, in all honesty, probably already know about this and don’t need opinions from an oik like me.

In truth, the most read posts we’ve seen on twofootedtackle have been one-offs that happen to have been well-written and very occasionally happen to coincide with a genuine talking point. These readers rarely returned on a regular basis. It was the content rather than the site that enticed them in, not a steady slew of pieces on Carlos Tevez.

I’m also not getting any younger. There was a period where becoming a sports journalist looked like a distinct possibility. At the very least, I could have freelanced and made enough to get by on. But that lifestyle has never appealed and the days where I had the time and commitment to attempt re-entering journalism in a different discipline are long departed.

I have plenty of non-footballing interests. I have a busy, challenging non-football job that I genuinely enjoy, and I get to write as part of this. There’s no burning desire to leave my position or spend significant amounts of time moonlighting as a football writer on the side.

I have infinite respect for those who do stay up all hours honing their posts, but that life is also not for me anymore. And most importantly, I don’t want my football blogging to feel like work. A hobby should be fun. It shouldn’t be something I’d rather procrastinate over by putting in extra hours for work rather than churn out another post. And work is what it feels like at the moment.

Equally, I don’t feel the need to say yes to every offer that comes my way, be it from PR or from more respected publications offering the opportunity to write on their site. For free. Again, for some it’s a necessary evil to take on unpaid blogging to pick up better paid gigs (or should be, if they’re serious about making money). I don’t want to build my profile, and while I’m always flattered, I dislike the implication that I should be grateful that I’ve been considered and offered this opportunity.

This isn’t to suggest that my work is perfect – anyone reading this can tell I could benefit from an editor, for a start. But I’d rather do what feels right for me than jump because a well-known brand is offering me an unpaid platform for my ill-conceived ramblings.

All this is a rather long way of saying that what feels right for me right now is to step back from football blogging. There is no strong need or compulsion to produce regular football content, and much of what I’d want to write about will have been written better by somebody before I get round to placing finger on keyboard.

More than this, though, I want to remind myself why I fell in love with football in the first place. Some reading this will have also read a rant on why I’m falling out of love with modern football. Cathartic as writing that piece was, football and me are not done, my enthusiasm for the ridiculous basics of the game are undiminished. It’s just my passion isn’t currently served by spending time considering new angles on whatever game I’m watching or reading about. As I said at the start, Orson Welles and Transformers.

This isn’t storming away from football blogging, vowing never to as much make reference to Luton Town’s Johnstone’s Paint Trophy victory in any blog post. I know I’ll still be roused to opine and write on occasions, and there are most likely outlets to publish this. I just don’t envisage this more than a handful of times a year at the moment.

The podcast will remain. That’s one fortnightly hobby I genuinely look forward to. Unobjectively, I think it’s sounding better than ever (down, in no small part, to our guests).

But blogging has changed. And so have I. If I’m going write on a subject I’m passionate about, then I don’t want to chase page views or court the approval of the professionals (although I’d certainly welcome forensic feedback pointing out potential improvements).I just want to write something that tells the reader something they don’t already know.

If that takes two months to research and put together or two minutes to put down loose thoughts, then so be it. And at the moment, there’s nothing I can say that you don’t already know.

Apart from my experimental recipes. But then you didn’t come here for a lesson in cooking.

written by Gary \\ tags: blogging history, changes in blogging, Football Blogging, twofootedtackle

Predictably, as we’re now at the end of the football season, I decided it would be an excellent time to get back into recording the odd football podcast or two.

For twofootedtackle, we headed down the pub for a special two-parter with the Sound Of Football team as we reviewed the season just gone, tackling all the five top leagues in England, Germany, Italy and France and what’s currently happening in MLS and the Russian Premier League. It was originally going to be an hour but we were having so much fun, we extended it to about 90 minutes. It’s best listened to in chunks. Click here to listen to it.

We’re hoping to return next season in slightly less rowdy surroundings, but hey, it’s been a long season and we all needed a drink.

After that, Sound Of Football presenter Chris Oakley whipped out his digital recorder and the six of us spent 40 minutes putting the mess at FIFA to rights on the final Sound Of Football podcast of the season.

Finally, I guested on the 90th Minute podcast, where I waffled on a lot about lower league football (and surprised myself in how much I knew in the process).

written by Gary

It’s not often that I use this place to hawk out my football-related work (you’d all get bored quickly, I’m sure), but the latest podcast I’ve recorded is about more than just sport.

For the last two months, I’ve been working on a special one-off twofootedtackle podcast on attitudes to homosexuality within football and what the authorities are doing to tackle homophobia in the game.

As somebody who started researching this from a position of knowing very little about the subject, it’s been fascinating to look closer at the topic. I’ve spoken to a range of people, from a member of a gay football team, to a transgender fan, to one of the few sports journalists to write about homophobia in the game. Every single interview has made me think and often reassess my own views. Hopefully it’ll do the same when you listen to it.

The documentary is just under 45 minutes long, so please do stop by twofootedtackle to have a listen. I’ll be really interested to hear what you think.

written by Gary \\ tags: football and homophobia, football podcast, homophobia in sport, the Justin Campaign, twofootedtackle

I’m not generally a huge fan of cross-promoting football writing on here, as I know what all five readers really want is another fish pie recipe. I’ll make an exception for the last piece written for twofootedtackle though.

The title’s Why the Premier League has failed every one of the League’s 92 clubs. The content is exactly that. To me, it’s increasingly clear that the road the Premier League is currently going down is storing up a lot of problems, financially, not just for the 20 clubs in the top flight, but all the way down the league (and even into the non-league game as well).

The Premier League in itself isn’t intrinsically bad in my book, but the circumstances it has ended up creating will (and I use will instead of could here) lead a large number of club down the road to financial ruin, while simultaneously killing off any hope England will ever have of winning a major tournament.

I’m a naturally pessimistic person, but I don’t think the above is hyperbole.

And all the while, I – and many others I know – are getting increasingly disillusioned with the Premier League. A few people have asked me what my opinion has been on the Rooney saga over the last week and all I can muster is a ‘meh’. Frankly, I couldn’t really care less about where he goes or what he does. The finances behind Manchester United are much more interesting to me than a highly paid megastar throwing a strop for more money.

And all the time, the level of fandom seems to be getting more extreme (although I suppose that’s what the ultimate definition of a fanatic is). Any level of debate that contains just the slightest smidgen of nuance is drowned out by the clamour to blame it on the ref, the manager or one player, and often looking at it through some of the most one-eyed tinted glasses.

Any level of perceived criticism, no matter how balanced the piece, is leaped upon as an example of bias against the club or evidence that said writer is a closet fan of a rival team.

In truth, I’m finding myself skimming over a lot of Premier League writing and highlights without always taking in a huge level of detail. Many Premier League focused blogs, which are the worst examples of the above, have been culled from my RSS reader. I’m not even that bothered about missing Match Of The Day these days.

Even though my team has never had, and probably never will, have a hope in hell of reaching the Premier League, I’ve always followed it with a fair level of devotion, taking in twists and turns and tuning into most games that I could. This season is the first season I’ve not quite had the will to take much other than a passing notice.

I’m not quite sure if there’s any quick fix to pull in those like me (and I’ve spoken to a surprisingly large number) who are turning their back on England’s top flight, and even if there was, I wouldn’t trust the governing bodies to implement it properly.

I still love football. I still watch much more of the game than is probably healthy. But every time I watch the Premier League, my soul dies a little more.

written by Gary \\ tags: England football, football, Premier League

September 4th. Mark that date in your calendar. There’s no Premier League or Championship football that day due to the international break, while England play the night before.

A football free weekend, right? Wrong. There’s still hundreds of non-league matches being played up and down the country that day, and James Doe has come up with a fantastic idea to support them.

James has declared September 4th Non-League Day and is urging football fans who’d normally watch a higher league game that day to head to a non-league match and show their support for grassroots football.

It’s a fantastic campaign and one that’s so simple you wonder why it’s never been done before.

As somebody who got rather fond of non-league during Exeter’s time in the Conference and still watches the occasional non-league game, I think it’s a cracking idea.

It’s also a great way to reacquaint yourself with the real heart and soul of football, especially if you’re in any way disillusioned with Premier League football. Who knows, you may even get the non-league bug.

Ironically, I can’t make it to any game that weekend due to a longstanding prior commitment, but if you’re in footballing limbo that day, pop down and support your local club.

You can follow James on Twitter (@non_league_day) or sign up to the campaign on Facebook. And if you fancy going to a game but aren’t sure where to head to, feel free to leave a comment here, along with your location (roughly), and I’d be happy to suggest a game for you.

written by Gary \\ tags: football, non-league day, non-league football, Premier League, September 4th