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

One night this week I, for some reason unknown, thought it’d be a good idea to make a playlist of one song off every album that I own.

That’s a lot of music, by the way.

So, a couple of hours later and this Spotify playlist is the result.

You’ll probably have noticed that I’ve got a slight preference for noodling electronica and female singer-songwriters, with an added dash of blokes with guitars thrown in for good measure. It’s nothing if not varied.

A few points to note though:

1. Spotify didn’t have every album I owned. Where possible, I’d try and then find a song off that album and include that in the playlist, so don’t necessarily think I go owning some of the more random albums on there. In particular, I was surprised at the lack of Underworld albums on Spotify. There’s also several obscure folk bands, Roisin Murphy’s Ruby Blue and 4 Hero’s Two Pages missing, not to be found for love nor money. And the Sneaker Pimps track is off a remix album – the original is nowhere to be found.

2. Compilation albums, thankfully, weren’t included in this, although film soundtracks were, hence a few songs from Chicago, Jackie Brown and Kill Bill in there.

3. Yes, there are a lot of greatest hits albums. What of it? I wasn’t exactly flushed with cash and best ofs were often a good way to collect a lot of songs I liked in one place. If you’re wondering why not so much Blur or Suede in there – I owned their albums on cassette tape, until The Great Gary Clearout of quite a few years ago where a lot of stuff I shouldn’t have chucked out got chucked. Including a NES. Boy, do I regret that.

4. Ahem, yes, your eyes do not deceive you. I do own three U2 albums. In mitigation, I only purchased one of them. There are also a lot of albums I own but didn’t buy. I don’t shoplift, I’ve just acquired a lot of free stuff over the years.

5. Sadly there’s no Echo and the Bunnymen in this list. I do not own any album that has The Killing Moon on it, and this makes me sad.

6. I own more albums by Eliza Carthy than anybody else. This is no bad thing. I probably don’t have enough albums by Eliza Carthy, if truth be told. She is excellent and I’ve seen her more times than any other act, bar the Super Furry Animals.

And that’s it. I’m not going to write out the tracklisting as I’d be here for ever. Grab a pair of earphones and have a snigger.

written by Gary \\ tags: albums, Eliza Carthy, poor musical taste, Spotify, Spotify playlists, The Killing Moon, U2

Last year, this post almost certainly wouldn’t have got written. I’d have probably been busy running around, bottle of beer in hand peering at people’s nametags and having mutually agreeable conversations that what we were doing was the future. Today, this post nearly didn’t get written because I got distracted by The Big Lebowski on TV.

Somewhere along the line, I’ve morphed from Riggs into Murtaugh.

It’s not that I didn’t want to go to Twestival tonight. I even had a ticket and had every intention of going. But it clashed with podcast recording night, and we were running a bit late, and the studios were across the other side of London, and I had lots to do and didn’t want to be tired at work, and home is back the other side of town, and so on and so on. And so the sensible, but boring, decision was taken to head home rather than party into the night.

(And in many respects I’m rather gutted I didn’t make it. The Twestival team have done a fantastic job from turning it into a small one-off in a bar near Trafalgar Square into a global phenomenon. I’m always slightly humbled whenever I see what they’ve achieved).

Gone are the days where I’d run across London, make three social media parties in a night, and still come in bright and cheerful the next morning.

But it’s also interesting as I don’t think I’m the only one. When it comes to partying or cracking on and doing something, the latter is often the default setting.

Perhaps its because social media has been around for long enough that it’s no longer new, it’s not a phenomenon, any people have stopped going “Ooh, isn’t this cool,” and moved towards “Right, how can we use this better.” Or, put more crudely, “How can I make money from this?” [1]

It’s not that in social media that people have now met all the useful people. But we’ve got a better idea of who we need to contact and how to get hold of them. And while partying was, you know, fun, websites don’t just built themselves, and Twitter doesn’t update itself, and money doesn’t just magically appear in your bank account, and willyalookatthateverybodysdoingsocialmediathesedaysholyshitwebetterupourgame.

And the thing is, we generally get it now. Not all of it. That implies there’s no more to get. But now social media is more commonplace and even if not everybody in any given is immersed in social media, they know it’s important and they’re prepared to create new jobs for people to show them how to do social media and these people have stopped going “Well, there’s a lot to learn<’ and instead are saying “It’s not that hard. Look, I’ll show you. And, actually, we can do something VERY cool with this.”

So, yes, doing things. That’s what we’re largely doing now. Burying ourselves in work – and this isn’t necessary dull, because a lot of it is putting the VERY cool things into practice rather than just talking about them. There’s less of a need to jump around and drink lots and generally tell people how cool the projects are you’re doing. We know. We’re probably working on something similar.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t party from time to time, right? And every last person at Twestival well deserves every drop of beer drunk tonight because they’re all contributing to something amazing and making a huge difference to people’s lives in places where debates over Foursquare are, frankly, insignificant. And this wouldn’t have been possible without social media.

And tomorrow we’ll get our heads down to working again, either with hangovers or tinges of regret about not being able to make it. And we’ll enjoy it.

I’m getting old. I’m also working hard with VERY cool things. And while I’m careering slowly towards not being able to name the majority of artists in the Top 40, I’m still loving every minute of it. Social media isn’t the future any more, it’s part of the future, and I’m bloody glad I’m part of that part.

PS The podcast tonight was so much fun, I’d happily have missed most things to record it. It’ll be up at the usual places tomorrow and should be sounding fantastic.

[1] Not that I necessary subscribe to the latter viewpoint. It may surprise people, but I make precisely zero from the podcast. It’s currently done solely for the love of podcasting and football.

written by Gary \\ tags: digital evolution, social media, Twestival

And I have been for a bit, just busy. And about to enter what I’m terming The Epic Month of Business.

So, in case I disappear for days on end, here’s a couple of things you may have missed while I was away.

1. A small piece from me at Reputation Online about the general nature of my work and why it’s important to change things.

2. A truly bizarre story of two American girls who decided to hop across the Atlantic to watch Oldham Athletic. Away. At Millwall. I had a chat with them. Hopefully, they’ll be on the podcast next month, which should be entertaining!

Back to hermiting

written by Gary

There are many reasons for a man to disappear, or at least go very quiet. Reggie Perrin had his reasons, as did Lord Lucan. Brian Wilson went a bit mad, while everything gone downhill for Mike Ashley after he decided to do away with both the reclusive and the multi-millionaire bits of his description when he brought Newcastle United.

I’ve not purchased the Toon Army. Neither have I taken control of Exeter City. But it’s fair to say that football has played a reasonable part in the slight silence on here over the last couple of weeks.

This isn’t to say that I’ve got obsessed to the point of installing 15 TVs in my house obsessively detailing how Scunthorpe United profit from their use of long throw-ins. In fact, it may come as a surprise if I say that I’m usually not too bothered if other events clash with any given game. Football can be put to one side.

But not now, not at this current point in time. It’s the business end of the season, you see, and there are so many twists and turns and then double-twists and then turns that aren’t so much turns as slight bends in the road that, nonetheless, still have an impact on the league.

In short, football is currently just too exciting. The Premier League is actually, for once, reasonably interesting. The Championship still has plenty of surprises. Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga make me wish I lived on the continent. Burton may just bottle it. And, of course, Exeter City can still gain their second successive promotion in as many years if they beat Rotherham away next week.

If you’re one of those who enjoy reading my ill-thought out analysis on the state of the media than you may want to blame Exeter that it’ll take a week longer to get back to normal service. You see, all of this could have been avoided today if we’d just beaten bloody Morecambe at home, rather than freeze for the first 45 minutes and only manage a 2-2 draw.

Had Exeter won, there would have no doubt been eulogies on here before I wound down the football excitement and started posting stuff that actually interests people. Instead, I’m still wound tighter than a watchspring ahead of next week’s trip from St Pancras to Up North (it’s all up north from Exeter, really). And then, if we balls it up at the Don Valley Athletic Stadium, then we’ve got the playoffs to come. Christ on a bike and all that.

The best you can hope for in that case, is that Exeter end up playing Dagenham, which is an easy journey for me, and means I can still get home long before the last tube and still have time for fish and chips before Match of the Day. Marvellous.

You probably don’t really need to know any of this. You don’t need to know that I have at least a dozen posts in my draft folder that probably won’t get written until the end of the season for League Two clubs.

Unless you’re planning on emailing me with important stuff, you don’t need to know that I’m mostly replying to people saying: “Sounds great, but I’ll have to wait until after the football.” And you also don’t really need to know that I should really apologise to the lovely people at BT MyPlace who sent me a load of stuff that I took a glance and liked a lot at before firing off an email saying: “Yes, this looks ace, I’ll almost definitely write something about it,” before getting distracted on an article on Boca Juniors and River Plate, or something similar.

And now I feel I should apologise again because I’m writing this long, rather pointless apology rather than writing about their service, which I quite like, and linking it into wider social media trends and no doubt throwing in an arbitrary quote from, say, Mark Twain, just because I can.

That’s the problem with us bloggers. We’re so damn unreliable.

So, yes, apologies to people waiting for anything that isn’t football on here. I’ll get back to writing about exiting new trends in PR and social media. I would add journalism to that list as well, but it’s got enough problems as it is without needing the added pressure of exciting new trends.

Anyway, this is a rather lengthy, rambling way of saying an awful lot when I don’t have anything much to say at all, other than being able to discuss the not-so-finer points of Exeter’s 2-2 draw with Morecambe, and you probably don’t want to read about that here.

Normal service will be resumed soon. In the meantime I’m off to read about the Eredivise.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Exeter City, football, Morecambe

The best kind of nights, I’ve always found, are the ones where you end up in a completely unexpected place. Last night, for me, that unexpected place was a fascinating in-depth discussion of Belgian politics and media, and contrasting it with the UK.

This isn’t normally what I spend my nights down the pub doing, but then it’s also a neat illustration of why I enjoy going to the assorted social media meetups. Or in this case, Tweetup.

Back in December, Lolly and I decided we’d quite like a Twitter meetup that was easy to get home from (The Shoreditch Twit is ace, but for those of us south of the river, it’s a bit of a trek back) and the Dirty South Twit was born.

The first one was a nice chilled evening drinking cocktails in Clapham with a bunch of people who’d never really met before, but were all on Twitter. Then we both got a bit busy, remembered we’d do another one and organised the DST2 at the Roxy Bar and Screen in London Bridge.

It also happened to clash with St Patrick’s Day (completely unintentional on our part) and Guinness were kind enough to help the craic with assorted hats, inflatable pints, T-shirts and other goodies. Oh, and free booze. I’ve now got a few cans sitting in my kitchen needing care and attention. They really were too good to us (well, it was the 250th anniversary of signing their brewery lease in Dublin. Any excuse for a party is good enough by me). You can see photos here.

But one of the joys of these events is, as well as catching up with a few familiar faces, you get a chance to speak to people you’d never normally meet, such as PBizzle, Rufus Evison and Julie Bodart and Pascal. Somehow with the latter two, I got onto the topic of Belgian politics and media (not entirely randomly, given that she’s Belgian).

There’s some fascinating differences between the UK and Belgium. It certainly doesn’t sound as if blogging is as big over there as it is amongst the media in this country. The regional press also seems to thrive, mainly because there isn’t one main national paper. Instead the big papers are split between the Flemish and Walloon regions, depending on their point of view. I’d imagine it’d be a similar thing here if Scotland were larger and really agitating for a split from England.

I’ve taken a mild interest in Belgian politics since they went for around nine months without a proper government in 2007 / 08 and found the political system, basket case though it was (probably outdoing Italy in places), fascinating.

Certainly from Julie and Pascal’s point of view, our government seems a lot more stable. Yes, I probably replied, but it also makes it quite dull. And harder to kick the bastards out, I didn’t add. Certainly I’d appreciate something to re-engage me with the political process and makes it seem exciting and interesting again.

Ok, it may not be entirely fun when you’re living in a country that can barely form a government let alone rule effectively. But at least it makes things interesting. Hell, I’m very jealous of America where, thanks to Obama (and, dare I say it, probably helped by the fact Bush was the previous incumbent) politics has become interesting, cool and sexy again. Go on, try and apply any of those three adjectives to our political system, I dare you. You’ll fail miserably.

I’ve gone a bit tangential here. But that’s kind of like the conversation last night. I met some fascinating people at the Dirty South Twit, had some very interesting conversations (I won’t recount the whole Belgian politics and media chat, partly because I can’t quite remember it all) and had plenty of Guinness. And that’s why I love Twitter meetups.

A slightly more coherent, less tangential write-up, with no mention of Belgian politics, is on the Dirty South Twit blog.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Belgian politics, Belgium, Dirty South Twit, Guinness, St Patrick's Day

Not around my waist, although I have recently gone up a trouser size.

So, in addition to this week’s Soccerlens column, which is mainly on Burton Albion’s title wobbles and includes references to Wilde and an impotence joke, there’s exciting news on the assorted football stuff I do.

As from next Tuesday (hopefully), my good friend Chris Nee and I will be producing the Two Footed Tackle podcast. Which is essentially chat about football, but hopefully an entertaining chat about football.

It’s not like this was planned. We’d both chatted about various podcasts we liked, he happened to mention he may have access to a radio studio, I mentioned my broadcasting background, and at that point we thought “why the hell not”.

It’ll be fun to get behind a broadcast desk again and even more fun to chat football for 40-odd minutes.

It’s very much a communal effort and we’ll be reviewing the big stories on the blogs as well as the papers, plus we’re hoping to get some guests, bloggers and general football fans, in the studio to counterbalance our witterings. Should be fun.

At some point in time, I should also be contributing (hopefully) to the excellent Soccerlens podcast, which is a couple of episodes old and a very good listen indeed. It’s also different to the one I’ll be doing with Chris, so you don’t get football fatigue.

It also means that all three of you who missed my dulcet tones after left the newsreading business will be able to get, um, aural pleasure from it again.

Or something.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: audio, Burton Albion, football podcasts, podcasting, Soccerlens, Two Footed Tackle