tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72245234497612605492008-03-20T18:16:31.333-07:00Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comBlogger50125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-41899106154299754472008-03-09T08:40:00.000-07:002008-03-10T05:16:24.326-07:00

The specialist rugby writers are like the long-serving cast of Coro, Eastenders or Neighbours. They are the journalistic equivalents of the actor who plays Ken Barlow, smug and content in their own little world and without the ability, or the ambition, to move on to new challenges. Most of them have been around as long as William Webb Ellis. When someone like Stephen Jones of the Sunday Times

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-69602439599115880552008-03-09T08:23:00.000-07:002008-03-09T08:38:42.774-07:00

Can someone at the Independent - preferably with more than a couple of years in journalism - PLEASE take Angus Fraser to one side and demonstrate how to compose an intro? And while you are at it, Simon Kelner, can you also tell him that any half decent writer should be aware that adjectives are the curse of modern sportswriting? Here's the former England trundler on Ryan Sidebottom's Hamilton

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-69021271949343939082008-03-09T08:14:00.000-07:002008-03-09T08:23:48.021-07:00

Saturday's "guest predictor" in the Guardian (if you haven't caught this it's a bit of typical Guardian furniture in which notables are paid to make fools of themselves with some sporting soothsaying) was Krishnan Guru-Murthy who, as it turned out, was not a Guru at all. He had Chelsea to win 5-1 at Barnsley, Manchester United to beat Portsmouth 2-0, Liverpool to beat Newcastle 1-0 and Blackburn

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-81477067354817389322008-02-24T03:22:00.000-08:002008-02-24T04:01:40.433-08:00

Provincial newspapers have always had to struggle by on minimal editorial resources. It shows in the quality of their writing staff and it shows in the breadth of their coverage. A glance at the rugby pages in today's Scotland on Sunday is a microcosm (and the SoS microcosm is getting even more micro by the week) of the problems sports editors in the sticks face under the strictures of the bean

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-29633892262502138102008-02-23T15:27:00.000-08:002008-03-01T01:41:24.643-08:00

Who on earth needs Frank Gorshin, Mike Yarwood or Alistair McGowan when you can tune in to BBC Sport? "Super Saturday" kicked off with Football Focus and the great Garth Crooks, who does a Burt Lancaster (as Elmer Gantry) which has to be seen, and heard, to be believed. Elmer was succeeded by Sir Matthew Pinsent, impersonating an investigative reporter, and on the loose in Beijing at licence

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-13353044193090316722008-02-23T01:59:00.000-08:002008-02-23T15:16:47.372-08:00

Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing at the Daily Star? Does the sports desk ever converse with the news desk, or vice versa? Are editorial conferences spent on anything else apart from debating the size of the bazookas on page one? Like, for example, content? Page One today reveals that Cheryl Cole is set to spoil "love rat" husband Ashley's big Wembley day and shun the Carling

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-21789252883494372902008-02-11T07:18:00.000-08:002008-02-11T07:58:22.174-08:00

When I started out in this daft business the first lesson hammered into me by my first sports editor was that when you wrote a headline the words had to be reflect what was in the intro. The second was that you always include a name. Whichever Sunday Times sub came up with England Can't Cut the Mustard to illustrate England's one-day cricket defeat by New Zealand got it right on the second point

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-58419170097878624152008-02-10T12:29:00.000-08:002008-02-10T12:43:41.659-08:00

I gave the England v Switzerland match two minutes on Wednesday having vowed that if anyone disturbed the minute's silence for the victims of Munich I'd switch off and never watch another football match again. Full marks to the Wembley fans, no bother at all. I still switched off, though, in protest at the antics of BBC commentator, John Motson, who was still going through the team line-ups 10

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-91868568201463582972008-02-07T01:07:00.000-08:002008-02-07T03:50:09.498-08:00

I thought I had read every conceivable variation of meaningless tosh written about Munich '58, but I'd forgotten we hadn't heard from Simon Barnes in the Times. Here's his latest session of verbal wanking: "Sport is life. It is the most vivid form of being alive, at any rate in public. Sport's triumphs and disasters, joys and sorrows, shame and glory have an intensity impossible to find

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-86747588439316318592008-02-05T06:36:00.000-08:002008-02-05T07:26:12.089-08:00

There is not a lot new to say about Munich '58, but most newspapers have had a good try this week - and it has not made edifying reading. Survivors and families have been wheeled out for various anniversaries almost non-stop down the years, most of them with little complaint and with the infinite patience which has become their trademark. The occasion of the 50th anniversary, tomorrow, found them

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-2465560777229974502008-02-05T06:17:00.000-08:002008-02-05T06:36:03.497-08:00

From Nick Halling "in Phoenix" for the Independent comes more evidence that the reportage of indigenous sport should be left to the natives. We can laugh as long and as loud as we like at the efforts of the Yanks to trivialise the technicalities of football (sorry, soccer), but Halling and the rest of the Brits who are hanging on for dear life to the rear wheels of the NFL bandwagon sure do

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-6972183765691671152008-01-20T14:21:00.000-08:002008-01-21T02:47:54.549-08:00

Jeff Powell, the befrizzed Australian who, impossible as it may seem - given that he is not exactly Mr Popularity in the business - is still writing for the Daily Mail, reckons he can trace the decline of Liverpool back to a seminal moment 34 years ago. The day Bill Shankly retired, says Powell, was the day "Liverpool began selling their soul". If this writer would care to key the words "Bob

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-64008954064238838472008-01-20T11:41:00.000-08:002008-01-20T12:13:49.575-08:00

As if the Toon Army hadn't enough problems. Racing eccentric (nutter to you and me) John McCririck, it turns out, is a Newcastle fan and has been "most of my life". At least that what he told Sky Sports News today. Punctuated by cries of "Howay the Lads", the obligatory mention of the new Messiah and , tooled up in a black and white jersey, McCririck was in the sort of full tic-tac rant mode

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-68409228396973089012008-01-18T02:44:00.000-08:002008-01-18T06:22:36.281-08:00

"It gives me enormous pressure to welcome Kevin Keegan." Well, yes, Chris Mort, chairman of Newcastle United, it sure does. Perhaps he meant pleasure, but there again maybe Mr Mort is a student of Freud. Or maybe like a lot of the Toon supporters looking on from the Shearer Bar, he'd had a few Newcy Broons. In vino veritas, and all that.

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-69206491157156356082008-01-17T00:59:00.001-08:002008-01-18T02:46:14.211-08:00

The return of Kevin Keegan to Tyneside certainly buried the bad news on Fabio Capello for the FA (I always wondered what happened to Jo Moore; she's alive and well and working in the next office to Brian Barwick in Soho Square). Unfortunately, for little Havant and Waterlooville, it also buried the good news about them. The greatest night in the history of the Conference South side was washed

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-4400711249801396392008-01-14T06:03:00.001-08:002008-01-14T06:17:53.058-08:00

As an example of superficial sports writing technique this takes some beating - Paul Kimmage going all ga-ga in the Sunday Times over Russian tennis princess Maria Sharapova: "And that’s when it happens. Suddenly, inexplicably, I start to envy her dog. I want to be Dolce. I want to die and come back as that fluffy Pomeranian pooch and for the next five minutes I completely derail. It’s like

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-79254289745847390682008-01-13T04:10:00.001-08:002008-01-13T04:53:22.195-08:00

Neither Steve Cram or Brendan Foster are journalists, but as Olympians they should be able to offer cogent comment and opinion on "their" sport. Don't hold your breath. Like many former participants, whose livelihoods depend on propagating the image of a particular branch of sport, they have mastered the art of fudge and tend to vanish whenever anything remotely controversial crops up. As has

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-56524858491808806982008-01-11T01:50:00.000-08:002008-01-13T04:02:40.934-08:00

During his 13 years as the editor of the Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie showed little, or no, interest in sport - except on the occasions it became the news. Events like Heysel, bungs, the pants down activities of Premiership footballers or Gazza's various meltdowns would turn Macca into a temporary sports fan. But the whereabouts of Hillsborough - let alone the name of the team that plays there - would

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-57874167141154220962008-01-09T06:01:00.000-08:002008-01-09T06:29:56.328-08:00

This is the image chosen by Times online to illustrate the news that the Gloucester wing Lesley Vainikolo had been named in the England rugby union squad. Vainikolo was born in Tonga and used to play rugby league for Bradford Bulls. Does anyone else think that the Times online picture editor is either a) racist; b) a Twickenham debenture holder or c) both?

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-1488053002286549542008-01-08T07:36:00.000-08:002008-01-09T05:49:47.966-08:00

Like the sport they serve, specialist cricket writers work to a set of rules and codes unintelligible to much of the the rest of the world. As has been pointed by Peter Whiby in his excellent media critiques in the Guardian, the majority of them regard themselves as the equivalent of rather grand theatre critics. They are there to analyse and muse on what is going on in the field, but without

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-62441751638068955762008-01-06T09:00:00.000-08:002008-01-08T06:17:12.512-08:00

As any author will tell you, it's next to impossible to earn a mention for your pride and joy in the review sections of a national newspaper. Unless you work for that newspaper, that is. No problems, then, for Jon Henderson of the Observer who was granted the best part of half a page - in the Observer - to plug his offering, Best of British: Hendo's Sporting Heroes. I may be alone in this, but I

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-16940965784490245882008-01-05T03:20:00.000-08:002008-01-06T05:56:10.010-08:00

"STINGY KOP" cries the Sun in reporting that Liverpool have refused to donate their share of the gate money from tomorrow's third round FA Cup tie - around £200,000 - to "cash-strapped" opponents, Luton. A classic piece of Sun dissemination, this. Firstly, there is no precedent for bigger clubs gifting gate money to less fortunate brethren - Luton are currently in administration - and certainly

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-5224387170059385832008-01-03T13:53:00.000-08:002008-01-03T14:11:09.379-08:00

In an extended rant against sports perceived as rich men's playthings, a Guardian Leninspart, Steven Wells, takes a swing at Tiger Woods' favoured game, telling us that "Golf is the quicksand at the end of the existentialist rainbow, sucking the unwary ageing hipster into a half-life of gin-pissed conversations about house prices, airport car parking and immigrants." Strange how writers who

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-70066360327915854492008-01-03T09:13:00.000-08:002008-01-03T14:20:11.902-08:00

In the gloating manner unique to The Sun, Anthony France (or rather the sub-editor who wrote the story for him) reports that "jailed soccer bad boy" Joey Barton nightly cries himself to sleep behind bars. The newspaper's back bench, with a strapline "All Together Now, AAh!" invites us to join in their gruesome sneeralong. The story has all the ingredients: a list of the player's misdemeanours, a

Gutter Snipehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02136579985257028657noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224523449761260549.post-11969176139601030442008-01-03T03:55:00.000-08:002008-01-03T12:08:16.282-08:00

Foreign newspapers have always been a rich source for the sort of speculative sports story in which we specialise over here. Armed with Babel Fish and a few keywords (Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United, Capello or England for starters), UK-based hacks regularly raid the online pages of La Gazzetta dello Sport, L'Equipe or El Pais for titbits. This week, with the January transfer window imminent

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