Were you involved in sport when you were in Oxford?
Not at University level, I rowed and played football and cricket for my college. I’ve still got a couple of blades that I won rowing, at torpids and eights. My cricket team got to the Cuppers final but I wasn’t good enough to play for University.
Were there any fixtures or sporting events you particularly looked forward to in an Oxford year?
Any Varsity match really, that’s what Oxford sport’s all about, especially the rugby or the Boat Race. I still want Oxford to win, you can’t not can you? You’ve always got a bit of bias towards your own University, it’d be stupid if you wanted Cambridge to win. I used to watch David Gower who was a bit of a hero when I was a kid, so I’d go to the Parks and watch him play cricket, it was great. I didn’t really look forward to any Cuppers rugby match or something like that.
How did you get into sports journalism? Was it a passion more for sport or journalism?
It probably arose out of a passion for sport and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do when I was at university. I didn’t want to do law, accountancy or all the usual things that students go on to do. I started doing journalism at university and then I did a post-graduate course to get more specific training and I got a job after that as a general news reporter on a tiny little weekly paper. I’d always wanted to work for national papers, which not everybody does because there are lots of good jobs at regional papers. Then I started getting shifts in London working one day a week, one day off. And that just snowballed until what I do now.
What is your day-to-day routine as a sports journalist?
I work for a Sunday paper so it’s slightly different from daily papers. You’re obviously building up to Saturday which is the key day of the week. Traditionally there was a lot of sport being held on Saturdays but there is less so now because of TV, and Sunday isn’t sacred anymore for lots of reasons. So there’s even more need to come up with original things every week. Ideally you want the greatest story of the week; for instance last week we had a story about Wayne Rooney which nobody else had. You can’t tell that because it looked like everybody got it, because they stole it off us but that’s just the way it works. We know we got it first. So for our daily routine, it gets more and more busy towards the end of the week. At the start of the week there are fewer people in the office and by the end of the work there are loads of people in the office. You’re constantly trying to get a good story, that’s the main focus but sometimes you have to do the routine stuff, things that happen every week that are a bit boring to set up. In sport you know in April it’s the Masters, in May it’s the Cup Final, in the summer it’s Test matches so there’s all that structure.
You’ve obviously written about many sportsmen/women, what characteristics to you think are required for someone to become the world’s greatest in their discipline?
Mental strength is the main one. Top-level sportsmen have competed with thousands of people to get where they are, from under 10 years old and upwards, and were the ones who survived. They’ve been through all those levels when they could have been rejected, and they’ve got through every time because they’ve been able to handle the pressure and they worked the hardest.
How do you get football transfer rumours? Is there any rigour attached to their authenticity, or can the source basically be ‘some bloke in a pub’?
We would never print something that wasn’t true, especially on the word of somebody in a pub. Sometimes there are different degrees, because if you know that a football club has contacted an agent to enquire about certain players and you know the club are interested, it’s legitimate to write a story saying that that club are interested by that player. That player might never be signed by them, the club might never admit it because it’s not in their interest. But a lot of the time, the agents are trying to make their own players look attractive so that they get wage increases or better contracts. But it’s always difficult to sort the rumours from the truth. You might follow up a tip that somebody told you. Sometimes we get people ringing in saying ‘My wife’s brother is a patient of a physio who works for Arsenal or Manchester United or Chelsea and he told me that they’ve been treating Fernando Torres who told him he was buying a house in London and that means he’s going to Chelsea. Can you pay me some money?!’ It might be just rubbish, but those things do happen and you check it out. If it’s true – great! You’ve got your story from a total unexpected source.
On the note of football coverage, do you think it overly dominates sports journalism or do you think that the number of editorial inches it’s given is justified in light of the public interest?
There’s no doubt it dominates sport and sports journalism. The more coverage you give it, the more coverage people want. Thirty years ago you’d never have had MPs saying they supported a football club. The establishment didn’t like football but nowadays it’s trendy and you can’t be a public figure without supporting somebody. And it’s hard for any sport to fight against football and for us to juggle other sports every week. The Mail on Sunday is a traditional tennis and golf paper; people who watch those sports will probably buy our paper and wouldn’t buy The Sun which has a lot more football in it.
Which football team do you support?
I’m more of a cricket fan to be honest but I support Liverpool because I was born nearby and also because when I was growing up Liverpool were a big club that won things. They’re still a big club but they don’t win very much these days.
Who do you think will finish in the top 4 of the Premier League this year?
Safe to say Man U, Man City, Tottenham plus one of Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool.
It looks likely that for the first time in a while, the Champions League will not feature both Arsenal and Chelsea. What impact do you think that will have on their club?
A big impact. You get into the Champions League and that’s a guaranteed income of £20 million to £50 million depending on how far you go, so it’s bound to have a massive impact. And that’s probably going to be played out over the next three or four weeks. If Chelsea don’t make the Champions League next season, you have to say that Andre Villas-Boas might not stay in the job.
Do you think that’s what he future depends on? A Champions League spot?
Well, he seems to think that he has the backing from Roman Abramovich to stay in the job regardless. But the problem is that nobody knows what Abramovich is thinking because he’s the most reticent owner of any football club for years. I don’t think it would surprise anybody in Fleet Street if he came back from his New Year’s Eve party and decided to give him £100 million to spend or to sack him. It’s easier when people know a bit more about the football owner in question. The only people that are close to Abramovich are two or three of his advisors from Russia or Israel or Europe. Nobody in this country.
Media is this country is notorious highly critical of the England football team; do you think that they will ever be capable of winning a major competition with the media building such a powerful influence?
I think that there are a whole load of influences on the England team. A lot of England players think that if they do badly they’re going to get another slating, but they also enjoy quite a lot of benefits of being in the England team and getting the profile they get from the media – increased contracts, better endorsements, the status of being an England player. You can’t have one without the other. However, England games are relatively infrequent so people probably do tend to overreact and certainly the media is quite short-termist in its view of not just the England team but of sport, politics, everything in general.
Do you think that because sports players rely on publicity to increase their salaries and promote themselves that they should put up with our press or do you think they have a right to privacy? Do you think they have a duty to behave better than they do as role models from young men? Or do you think they are justified in their conduct and it’s their own business?
I think everyone has a right to a privacy of some kind. It’s not a black and white issue being a role model for young people because most players will say “I not a role model, I’m just a football player”. And the vast majority of football players act responsibly, do lots of community work, and the vast majority of football players don’t get paid massive wages. In the Premier League you get paid good money, about an average of £1 million per year but in the lower league you don’t get paid anywhere near as much. I would say that people in the public eye are undoubtedly role models in the sense that what they do influences other people. Whether that means they are morally obliged to act better is another question. They’re obliged to act in a certain way if they want a certain career. The can’t go out drinking every night if they want to play at the highest level, especially not now – it’s more athletic, it requires more speed and fitness than it ever has done before. Besides, you can’t allow yourself to be used as endorsements for certain products and then be surprised when people look at you more closely. If you’re doing things that are perfectly legal in the privacy of your own home, then you’ve get a right for that to be private. If you’re doing things in a public space then you’ve got the same rights as the rest of us.
How much notice do you think that sportspersons take to negative speculation printed about them and how much of an affect do you think it has on their performance/moral of the team?
Most players claim never to read the papers but they all know what is written about them. Different people react to criticism in different ways. Often managers like to use it to create the cliché of a ‘siege mentality’. Just like the rest of us, some sportsmen and women are more affected by outside influences than others.
Do you as a journalist like it when footballers or other sportsmen misbehave because it’s a story? Are there any sports characters that give you great news stories on a plate and do you thank then for that?
It’s undoubtedly true that Mario Balotelli is more interesting than covering, for example, Gareth Barry. He’s a bit of a gift, isn’t he? I don’t think you can say that you want people to misbehave, but it can make life more interesting.
With the Olympics coming up are newspapers really excited by the prospect of London 2012? Who are our best British hopes?
The media is very excited. There’ll be wall-to-wall coverage between now and August: supplements, pull-outs, special editions, there’ll be just endless coverage. Personally, I’m excited – having the Olympics in our own country only happens once in a lifetime. Regardless of the cost of it or whether we should actually have it, now it’s here, you should get as much out of it as you can and soak up the atmosphere. I think we will have more British medallists that we have had in one Games for a long time, certainly in post-War times, because of the home effect.
What do you think about the way the tickets were distributed? Do you have tickets yourself?
I have got tickets to see handball and two hockey matches. I applied like everyone else and like everyone else I got about a tenth of what I asked for! I think it was carefully managed to ensure the demand was high at the time, but it’s harder to think of a fairer system, because first-come-first-served would have been a complete disaster: website would have crashed.
So cricket is one of your passions. What do you think is the future for England cricket, for test cricket, and do you think we can hold on to the number one spot?
We’ve got a particularly brilliant team at the moment, the best we’ve had for 25 years. In the past there were stages when we were a bit of a laughing stock: England’s collapses were run of the mill, but now if it happens, it’s a major event, it’s so rare. We do have some excellent players, but much of it is down to Andy Flower, the coach, and Andrew Strauss, the captain.
Were you backing Strauss for SPOTY or did you think Cavendish was a good winner?
As a newspaper department, we did nominate both Strauss and Cavendish in our top 10. Strauss would have been a deserving winner, but Cavendish did do pretty well in 2011. For a cyclist to win in a non-Olympic year is impressive.
Who do you think is the greatest sportsperson of all time and why?
I didn’t see him in his prime, but most people would have to say Muhammad Ali, just because of the impact he had outside of his particular sport.
In fifty years time, who do you think will be most remembered from our generation for their sporting achievement?
Messi, perhaps, or Ronaldo maybe for his fake tan and hair! But lot of people think that even though Messi has got the most incredible record for Barcelona in terms of goals and assists, he’s not a great player yet because he hasn’t won the World Cup. Until he’s won a global title with Argentina, is he as good as Maradona or Pele?
