One of this website’s latest followers on Twitter, Simeon F. W. Pickup states his interests as ‘Reading FC, Atheism, Labour. In that order.’ Although Ed Miliband’s negligible impact on the polls may have something to do with his party being relegated behind Brian McDermott and Richard Dawkins in Simeon’s thinking, I did read this as tongue in cheek. Nonetheless, therein lies a message. Football has always been a major tugger of primary impulses but in recent years, its importance has become more intense. While before, communities will have rallied around a political party, a cause, a labour union or a…
All posts tagged Sky
Book Review: There’s a Golden Sky
There’s a Golden Sky, By Ian Ridley Published by Bloomsbury, £18.99 ISBN: 9781408130407 It’s often been asserted that the one remaining advantage mainstream media has over bloggers is the issue of access to the game’s personalities – Jonathan Wilson made this point on establishing The Blizzard earlier this year and Kevin McCauley expounded on the subject in an overview of a spat between blogger Les Rosbifs and Teamtalk that fired up the twitterati last week. Given my limited appetite for another story that proclaims Robin van Persie to be ‘really happy to be scoring goals for Arsenal’, I turned to this new…
Social Media: a Brave New World
We are grateful today to the Bristol City matchday programme for allowing us to co-publish an article from Paul Binning aka The Exiled Robin, one of the contributors to our recent season preview. Here, Paul looks at the extraordinary impact of social media on the game and in particular Twitter. When you bear in mind Twitter only came into being five years ago, its growth has been phenomenal. The way it is used, sometimes abused and is revolutionising communication is fascinating and scary in equal measure. The world of @’s and #’s may seem bewildering but it is rapidly turning into the…
The Monday Profile: Steve Morison
Most of us who braved the icy pavements of South Bermondsey on Saturday evening were rewarded with a performance that belied Millwall’s recent barren spell. And, as less hardy folk watching from centrally-heated living rooms will have noted, this was in no little part due to the persistence of Sky Sports’ man-of-the-match Steve Morison.Interviewed on the turf after the 3-0 demolition of Scunthorpe, Morison admitted a desire to play top-flight football, and he has applied himself during the past 18 months like a man with clear ambition. Unlike an erstwhile rival for the `rags-to-riches’ cliche, though, time is not on…
20 Years of Fan Culture Part 2
One early Nineties issue of When Saturday Comes depicted a grinning Frank Rijkaard giving the thumbs up to Channel 4’s landing of Serie A coverage for a mere million pounds and comparing this favourably with the £304 million price BSkyB forked out for the right to bring us the newly formed Premier League. At the time, with Liverpool in the early stages of decline and George Graham’s unremarkable Arsenal side the reigning Champions, the sum did seem pretty ridiculous and as the fledgling broadcaster struggled to land subscriptions in its early months, the last laugh was certainly with the Italians.In…
James: Are the wealthy middle classes really the ones to back a football team...
Lanterne Rouge: Garath McCleary on signing for Reading today:
"It's amazing to be a...
Lloyd: On the Oxford / Reading thing, Lanterne, you write that "there is no c...
Ben: Yes, it does loom a bit, doesn't it? Moxey's comments on the ground re...
