GLF 63:Derek keeps up to date with the modern sports' news media.
News In A Modern Age
The transfer window has had many critics,certainly amongst football people,but there is little question that for normal people it is a good thing.Not only do newspapers actually have to come up with some proper stories during the regular season-well,some of them anyway -rather than prattling on about impossible transfers,the transfer window creates a wonderful focussed frenzy in the month of January.Let's be honest,none of us really need an excuse to hang about online looking for transfer stories and when it is restricted to just the last few days of January it almost becomes a justifiable way to waste away your life.
What's even better is that the closing of the transfer window ties in perfectly with the modern media. Radio Scotland's 'Through The Window' programme is excellent listening with reporters being reasonably relaxed and actually spending specific time on each club as midnight approaches. While it's easy to follow the Old Firm signings for days through the press if you want to it is good to know exactly who our rivals have been bringing in and pushing out. But even better for the transfer window is the new phenomenon of minute-by-minute updates online. I believe the Guardian was the first to pioneer this coverage for the 2005 Ashes series of covering the cricket over by over. Its format - simply a reporter watching TV and updating readers - is wonderfully simple and by the time readers get drawn into email conversations on a variety of topics it makes compulsive reading. That format has now been copied by several other organisations and while it works well with almost any sport - golf, tennis, football being notable examples, it comes into its own with the transfer window. Rather than having to dot about several media sources you can leave the one 'minute by minute' window up and reload it waiting for news. While there is a concern that it focuses on the bigger clubs, 'Well got a few mentions throughout the day and some sarcastic comments from the reporter about how many of our support actually read the Guardian.
However despite the new ways of following the transfer window things stayed the same with regard to the real action.We lost Richie Foran to our new parent club, Southend, but this was a brilliant deal for us.Maybe we'd have preferred Richie to stay but he wasn't signing a new deal and with his contract expiring in May we did very well to get the cash we did.Krisztian Vadocz has arrived on loan from Auxerre and while the chances of him being a foreign dud are reasonable, it is also possible he could be a gem.The debate about signing foreign rubbish over Scottish rubbish will rage forever but the nature of the market means that British players currently come at an inflated rate; good value foreigners can still add an awful lot to the side.
And finally, as the clock ticked down,we had one last furore over Scott McDonald.It didn't matter that it was essentially a non-story as we had dismissed Rangers' enquiry/bid out of hand but it was spun out by the radio guys till the last second.The club did well to reject the offer, as all things being equal the cash offered wasn't nearly enough.So much now depends on McDonald's reaction and the reaction of the other players to him.While they will all understand a desire to better yourself as a footballer, they may not take too kindly to the way Skippy effectively rubbished their place of work.McDonald is a very good player but he still isn't the player he thinks he is.
With us looking safe from relegation, is it fair to say McDonald has potentially three more games in the Scottish Cup to decide how he is remembered at Fir Park?Let's hope he doesn't let us down, any more …...
Derek Wilson
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