Gary Andrews

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

Ding! Another day, another poorly worded and conceived pitch arrives in my personal inbox, and my heart sinks a little further towards despair. If it weren’t for the Germans, and Portugal’s goal fest against the North Koreans, I’d have received more useless pitches than goals this World Cup.

Quite simply, judging by the majority of pitches than have landed in my inbox, general PR from companies looking to take advantage of the World Cup has ranged from poor to truly shocking. Most have made no attempt to remotely engage.

At least one email has been so laughably bad, I’ve sent it on to friends and colleagues so they can marvel that, yes, some agencies are still much worse than had previously been imagined.

I’m not in the habit of naming and shaming, but at least one agency has come close to me breaking this general self-imposed rule. Not that they’d know – judging from their emails I’d be shocked if they’ve even ever bothered to read anything I write.

Here’s a few selected highlights:

• An email starting with the words: “Hi, we’ve created some virals for your blog.” No, no you haven’t.
• An fairly obvious copy and paste email email urging me to cheer on England three days after they were knocked out.
• A general assumption that I was a fanatical England fan. I support Wales. This is fairly obvious.
• An email asking me to send a copy of my publication to agency x if I ran a piece on the product they were hawking.
• The PR who sent a pitch during the opening game. We had better things to do at that stage.
• Several emails that had nothing to do with the World Cup, other than a hastily added sentence to include a reference. You’re fooling no-one here.
• All bar two emails started with ‘Hi’. Not ‘Hi Gary,’ or any attempt to make it personal. Just ‘Hi’.
• One insinuating I would be so desperate for content during a two day break of football that their pitch was the only way I could keep my readers hooked.
• Hardly any emails made any reference to the fact I write for half a dozen places at the best of times. It was always ‘for your blog’. Do they mean this place and its five readers?

There have been two exceptions to this general trend – two well-crafted, engaging pitches where the PR had clearly read the type of things I write about, read my profile and made a general effort.

They were the only two I replied to – and if they’re reading, you know who you are, and I’m sorry I’ve not been able to write about the information in your pitch. It was simply a case of lack of time. But I really did appreciate your emails and the personal touches. If I was using good examples of how to pitch to bloggers, these would be among them.

Speaking to other bloggers, the trend seemed to be depressingly similar. They too had received endless pitches from PRs labouring under the illusion that we were so excited about the World Cup, we’d write about any old tat that mentioned it.

They were half right. We’ve all been very excited about the World Cup.

I’d even go as far as to say that once the World Cup kicked off, unless the pitch was something very pertinent to the general narrative of the tournament, then football bloggers should have been the last people to pitch to.

The reason: we’ve all got more than enough to write about. With three games a day for the first two weeks, and then a couple more a day for a week after that, it’s really not as if any football blog is struggling for content during the World Cup. And as most bloggers generally have day jobs, unless it’s a pretty spectacular, the pitch is likely to be deleted, assuming it even gets read.

The really smart PRs – and there have been a few – would have got their campaigns and pitches in at least a couple of weeks in advance of the tournament. That stage is a bit of a deadzone, with a lack of any content or decent talking points.

And – on a small tangent – twofootedtackle’s Chris expressed amazement that I’d received so many general PR pitches. I’m such an infrequent writer, and aren’t fixed to any specific publication that I’m not an overly easy writer to target. Quite often the editors of the places I write for receive the same release, which is a bit of a waste of an email. There’s really not a great deal of point sending me a general release at the moment.

I’d like to stress that I’m definitely not PR-unfriendly – quite the contrary, if it’s a well-written, personalised and targeted pitch then I’ll make an effort to write about it, although this isn’t always possible. I’ve written some very interesting and enjoyable pieces off the back of good pitches.

But as somebody who has done plenty of blogger outreach, and still does the occasional bit in this area, I’m far less tolerant of badly done pitches, especially because I know that this stuff really isn’t rocket science and really isn’t hard to do well.

And at the end of the day, I can just hit the delete button. The guys at the brand who’ve paid for blogger outreach – and have no doubt been told that x number of blogs have been hit – are throwing thousands of pounds down the drain for incredibly bad PR and probably don’t even realise it.

UPDATE:

And the day this is published, the PR company I’ve already requested remove me from their mailing list, sends me another email inviting me to something I don’t want to go to. In Manchester. Next weekend. It’s fairly obvious, that I don’t live in Manchester. Or Birmingham, where the same thing I don’t want to go to is happening, but the weekend later. I have plans both those weekends. Exactly how many bloggers do they expect to get to this event? Or are they just box ticking?

My bad. I misread the email. They’re not inviting me to go to the events. Just write an enthusiastic blog post about them. Which is even less appealing.

Also, Chris O, as a final post on the excellent – and soon to be departed – Some People Are On The Pitch blog has done a list of every company that’s pitched them to write about brands that, if you ever read SPAOTP, you’d know they’d have little or no interest in writing about.

written by Gary \\ tags: football bloggers, pitching football bloggers, pitching to bloggers, PR, PR and bloggers, World Cup, World Cup PR

For the first time, and quite possibly the last, I’ve written that an action in a football match erred on the side of a utilitarian rather than a deontological (in the strictest Kantian sense) decision. Well, that and other stuff.

Luis Suarez’s handball on the line in the dying moments of Uruguay’s quarter final against Ghana struck me as fascinating in so many ways that I sat down and wrote a rather large essay on it.

That essay can be found at Pitch Invasion. It contains ruminations on moral philosophy and football, economics and football, and what the sport can learn from rules from other sports.

Unsurprisingly, it says a bit more than just Ghana woz robbed.

written by Gary \\ tags: football rules, Ghana, handball, Luis Suarez, moral philosophy, Uruguay

EDIT: Since posting this last night, The Sun have since dropped the World Cup blogger sweepstake after Who Ate All The Pies and other blogs complained.

Look at the screenshot of The Sun’s World Cup Blogger Sweepstake above. If you were a PR who’s been pitching football bloggers recently you might skim the blogs and think “Wow, that is a pretty impressive line up of bloggers. They’ve even managed to get some notoriously hard-to-reach, popular and high-class well respected blogs on board. I wonder how they managed that?”

Short answer: They didn’t.

Sure, they spoke to some bloggers. And some bloggers said no, and left it at that. And then saw their blog in the pages and on the website of The Sun.

Chris Taylor from It’ll Be Off was one of those bloggers. He’s not best pleased:

“I ignored this email, hoping that if I didn’t respond, I wouldn’t be involved in all this savage wankery. But sadly I am. My blog is now apparently Chile, and The Sun have publicised this site in a YouTube clip and on their website. I received another email from them yesterday asking for a little coverage of all this on my blog. So here you go:

I want to make it abundantly clear to everyone: I have nothing to do with this. I want nothing to do with this. And I am furious that the good(ish) name of my little blog, that ceased to be a concern some six months ago, is being used by the worst of all tabloids as some fucking publicity machine for their horrendous sweepstake generating iPhone app, and their even more horrendous newspaper.”

Tom Dunmore at Pitch Invasion picked up on Chris’ post and it quickly became apparent in the comments that several other blogs, namely Unprofessional Foul, Run Of Play, Sport Is A TV Show, The Onion Bag, and Two Hundred Per Cent were all included without permission as well. And none of them are particularly happy about it.

The Ball Is Round and twofootedtackle (the latter of whom I write and podcast for) agreed to enter into a prediction league but not the sweepstake and didn’t give their permission to be included or to use their logos.

There may well be more.

So what, you may say. Surely the bloggers should be happy that The Sun’s giving them free publicity. Surely they’ll gain readers and make more money and the like from this?

Possibly in same cases, but that isn’t really the point.

I’ve got no problem with the blogs that were happy to take part and are publicising it on their blogs. It’s their choice and they’re happy to take part. That’s fine.

But for those who declined or didn’t respond there’s several reasons why they’re well within their rights to be unhappy.

First off, The Sun has used their logo and blogs without permission. There’s a huge irony here given their owner, Rupert Murdoch’s, criticism of Google for stealing content on their news aggregation pages. So it’s not ok for Google but it’s fine for News International.

[EDIT: Sian asks in the comments what the legality of this is. I'm not entirely sure. It may be that The Sun haven't done anything wrong, legally, in using the names of logos. I'd be fascinated to hear from anybody who is a little more clued in than me on this]

Also, it’s then incredibly cheeky to use these logos when permission hasn’t been given and then email said blogger and mind if they’ll give it a bit of publicity on their blogs.

Secondly, the sweepstake isn’t just a bit of fun. It’s being used to promote an iPhone app. The implication here is that these bloggers, by taking part in the feature, endorse the application.

This leads to the third point. Several of the blogs The Sun’s included have built their reputation on independent, thoughtful analysis and have positioned themselves very much as an alternative viewpoint to the tabloid football frenzy, often criticising these writers. They are a world away from The Sun and often don’t take advertising and will very rarely, if ever, accept PR pitches, especially for something like an iPhone application.

In short, it affects their reputation. Especially if, in Chris Taylor’s case, they have serious ideological differences with The Sun and are critical of their coverage.

Finally, aside from the above, the whole thing is massively patronising to the blogs involved, especially those whose analysis and writing regularly outdoes the national press.

The “aren’t you lucky to be taking part” attitude sticks in the craw, the taking logos without permission then expecting an uncritical link back is sheer chutzpah and the prize for winning this sweepstake – an interview with The Sun’s chief sports writer – is a piece of condescending bone-tossing from old media to new media, to remind bloggers of their place in the hierarchy.

It does a disservice: to the bloggers involved who said no to the original request, to the readers who will assume that these blogs endorse The Sun, and to any hardworking PR who has spent ages building relations with these blogs for a very tiny mention, especially PRs from other papers.

(Disclosure: I have, in the past, been one of those PRs. And I worked hard to ensure any pitches were respectful and non-condescending and were more than just “we’re a big company, write nice things about us”. And I know several PRs from other papers and similar companies and they also adhere to the above.)

The sad thing is, there are so many football blogs that with a bit of time and research they could have probably found 32 bloggers willing to take part AND promote it on their sites. And if their initial blogger outreach was better and there was a better incentive at the end of it, they may have even got more bloggers onside.

Hell, it could have actually been fun, if you were one of those who wanted to get involved. (I wouldn’t have been but it’s not my place to tell other bloggers who they can and can’t endorse).

Instead, we’ve got some very unhappy bloggers.

Not, you suspect, that The Sun care much. After all, they’ve got a World Cup Sweepstake app to promote.

UPDATE: Arseblog makes a pretty decent point in the comments of Tom’s post:

“I’m no huge fan of The Sun but it’s not like we’re being hugely exploited here. To be honest, I don’t think anyone who reads the paper gives the slightest shit about any of the blogs and they’re hardly using our logos to make money.”

Which is a fair point and it’s worth putting perspective on this. It isn’t the end of the world. But it’s also very bad practice, not to mention manners and it’s only by pointing this sort of thing out that you might (ha!) get a change of tune. It’s the principal of it all, innit.

He’s probably right that the majority of Sun readers probably don’t really care or read the blogs involved. I’d love to see them tackle one of Brian Phillips’ wonderfully cerebral pieces at The Run Of Play though.

UD 2: Brian’s pointed out that The Sun don’t even do them the courtesy of linking, so none of them have seen ay surge in traffic. It now appears that they do, through clickable images. Although I can’t find this, but I’ll take Brian’s word for it.

And, as Fredorraci points out in the comments below, despite this being billed as the UK’s top 32 blogs, several aren’t based in the UK. Brian’s site, for a start, is an American site.

It also seems that the total amount of traffic blogs have received through this has varied between nothing and not very much at all.

written by Gary \\ tags: blogger outreach, blogs and newspapers, copyright, ripping off bloggers, the sun, The SUn World Cup Blogger Sweepstake

A couple of small things to keep this blog ticking over. First off, our final regular twofootedtackle pod of the season was recorded last week, but still sounds fresh as a daisy now. We always go all out at the end of the season, and this was no exception as we got the Sound of Football team in to join us.

Plus, we also taste-tested those special World Cup-themed crisps (except you’re not really allowed to call them that because of merchandising rights, and the like). Spanish Chicken Paella may, quite possible, be the most revolting thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.

Second off, as Ebbsfleet United and MyFootballClub.co.uk are one of of the few football issues I mention on here regularly, I thought I’d draw you attention to my post at twofootedtackle on The Five Pound Football Club.

I shouldn’t be surprised that these schemes keep popping up. Somebody, somewhere either thinks they can succeed or make money from it but until the solve the annual renewal issue, it’s just not feasible in my book.

My book also reckons they should start a club from scratch, but that’s a completely different post for a different time.

Finally, a few people have asked what I’ll be doing for the World Cup and the answer is sitting around, drinking beer and watching football. That and a few arbitrarily timed podcasts.

I’m probably not going to write much, if anything at all, about the World Cup, partly because there’ll be so many others fighting for your attention, and partly because I don’t feel international football is enough of a speciality of mine for me to bring anything different to the table. That may change if I get inspired, but I’d rather enjoy the tournament rather than worry about spouting the same lines as everybody else.

Besides, things like the unexplained disappearance of Grays Athletic from the footballing map are far more interesting.

written by Gary \\ tags: crisps, Ebbsfleet United, Five Pound Football Club, football podcasts, MyFc, twofootedtackle, World Cup

Hi, it’s me. Yes, you may remember me. I used to write things on here. Not, perhaps, overly insightful things, but things – generally known as words – nonetheless. And then it went a bit quiet.

So, er, yes. Sorry about that. Things got a bit busy, then I decided to take a short break, then I changed jobs. And, in between that, I spent the best part of a week writing a lot of articles for Pitch Invasion on fan ownership and Supporters’ Trusts in football.

All the articles are collected here – and if you’re interested in this aspect, please do stop by there, have a read and leave a comment. It’s less about on-the-pitch, than off-the-pitch business and cultural aspects, although the game itself obviously informs things. I did several interviews for this and the answers were completely fascinating.

The articles, individually are:

An overview of the current state of Supporters’ Trusts

The successes, so far, in the Trust / fan ownership movement.

And the failures.

A break from me writing as Terry Duffelen explores the Bundesliga fan-ownership model.

An interview with Brian Burgess, ex vice-chairman of Brentford, long-standing member of Bees United and Supporters’ Direct board member.

How the concept of fan ownership is currently taking hold in England.

Where fan ownership goes in the future.

And that’s that. I think that’s more words than I wrote for my dissertation. Maybe I should do another degree on this topic.

Anyway, I’m now back, I’m slowly setting into the hugely enjoyable new job, my Macbook – which died last Sunday – has come back to life and I have a host of posts in my head.

So expect the next post on here sometime in May.

written by Gary \\ tags: fan ownership, Pitch Invasion, supporters' trusts

As pleasant surprises go, finding your podcast has been nominated in the Best Podcast category for the 2009 Soccerlens Awards is, well, rather nice.

What’s really impressive is the twofootedtackle podcast’s co-nominees. EPL Talk and World Soccer Daily are pretty good, but Football Ramble and especially the Guardian’s Football Weekly are the dons of the football podcasting world. I suspect anybody starting a footballing podcast has Football Weekly in their mind when they do so.

Essentially, Chris and I are two people who host a podcast in our spare time. Said pod is less than a year old and has a relatively modest number of regular listeners. To even be in the same company as those on the list is a real delight and one I think Chris and I are still a tad surprised by.

I know we’ve not won (and I don’t in a million years expect us to do so), but I’d like to say a few words of thanks to a few people as just getting to the list is an achievement. First off, to Chris for being a great co-host and always coming up with fresh ideas, to Porter Novelli for letting us borrow their studio each week, and, most importantly, to every single one of our guests on the podcast.

Seriously, it would be nothing without the variety of opinions we get from you all, and it’s genuinely enjoyable to head into the studio each week not knowing where we’ll be heading on our footballing chat journey.

At this stage you’re probably expecting me to jump up and down and implore you all to vote for us, but I find that all a bit embarrassing (and a tad egocentric. And frankly, I don’t need any extra help to sound like a tosser at the best of times).

What I will say, though, is if you listen to the show and really like it, then please do press the button next to our name. But only if you genuinely think we should win. The rest of the list is populated by great podcasts, so I seriously won’t be offended if you think they’re better (as they probably are).

Voting form is here.

written by Gary \\ tags: 2009 Soccerlens Awards, football podcast awards, football podcasts, Football Ramble, Football Weekly