Bloody hard as it turned out!
I was invited to an activities evening at Tynecastle last night having responded to a recent advert for volunteers to help their media team at both home and away matches. The format of the evening involved the 30 or so invitees being split into four groups and rotating through a series of activities. These focused upon match reporting, composing a news bulletin from a press conference, conducting a one on one interview and commentating on 3-4 minutes of football from Hearts’ recent pre-season friendly against Blackburn Rovers.
Having been given my name tag and shown through to the Executive Suite, I joined the collection of other potential volunteers shuffling nervously as we awaited Marketing Manager Lawrence Broadie’s welcome speech. Following Lawrence's short talk and explanation of the evening's format we were split into our groups before commencing the arranged tasks.
My group tackled the match reporting challenge first. This was the part of the evening that I was least worried about. I figured that considering that I write a fair bit in my spare time, it would be a doddle to compose a few eloquent paragraphs about my favourite team playing my favourite game. About two minutes in the exercise however, the horrific realisation of exactly how difficult a skill match reporting is firmly hit home. We were given seven minutes of highlights from Hearts' visit to Aberdeen last season (the one featuring the Eggert Jonsonn overhead kick) which was pretty much packed solid with chances or incidents played back to back. We then had a further five minutes to compile all these incidents into a match report and summary before downing tools and saving the document. I tried my best but I struggled to even reach the goal incident and was nowhere near finishing when time was up. Amal Daher the regular match reporter and long standing media team volunteer admitted that the exercise was tough given the lack of natural lulls in the action. “How on earth do you do this?” asked the guy next to me. “I get 90 minutes” she laughed, “everyone's has different approaches, I normally don't write anything for the first ten minutes, I prefer to watch and get a feel of the game first”. Rather than continue the report on the sly after Amal has signalled an end to the exercise, I reluctantly accepted that I should probably write this task off. I followed the four other fairly shell shocked looking participants and headed back to the Executive Suite with my tail between my legs to the awaiting mock press conference.
The second challenge involved listening to a seven minute long interview with Jim Jefferies and compose a short bulletin of about 150 words. The idea was to pick out a keyline from the press interview and produce a news worthy piece. Paul Kiddie, Hearts' Communications Manager told us after our time had expired that he'd picked out two main keylines from the press call. The first potential keyline stemmed from a brief comment from the Hearts' boss that he would be keen to add to the midfield personnel within his squad should the right deal be possible before the end of the transfer window. The second was Jim Jefferies' assertion that Hearts disciplinary problems are now a thing of the past and we will never again witness a repeat of the ill discipline shown at New Douglas Park when Hearts last played Hamilton on the road. Kiddie reassured us that it was not a problem should we have chosen to compose a piece surrounding Jim Jefferies' talk of the upbeat mood in the Hearts camp following the slightly disappointing opening day draw against St Johnstone. That was, after all, what the first five minutes of the interview had been about and, low and behold, it was what I'd decided to base my short article upon. I felt that I managed to compose a reasonable piece and follow an appropriate structure despite perhaps not choosing the most dynamic angle and picking out the same keyline that a seasoned hack would have gone for. Nevertheless if I hadn't realised exactly how amateurish my scribblings were before this event, I was certainly starting to realise it now!
By this stage my group had all dropped their guards somewhat. All the others participants seemed really decent guys and we'd begun to all chat happily about proceeding and indulge in a bit of nervous swearing about how 'fucking difficult' it was. One guy commented that the remaining challenges involved the 'fun activities' and as nervous as I'd been about the prospect of commentating on a game I was inclined to agree with him.
The next stop saw us slipping into a side room and joining Lawrence Broadie for a chance to practice one on one interviews. Lawrence gave us a bit of information about interview techniques and gave us some insight into his philosophy on the club's communication with fans. As Hearts Marketing Manager little gets released from the club without it going through Lawrence first. The format of the challenge was that Lawrence acted as Jim Jefferies whilst we each conducted an interview with him asking around three questions each. Just as I began to quickly compose some questions in my head, Lawrence gave the warning that many radio journalists are so fixated upon a series of questions that they've prepared that they often ignore the subject’s answers. This lead to them missing the opportunity to delve further with appropriate follow up questions, being as rigidly fixed as they are upon their pre-prepared questions. I decided at that point to abandon the idea of mentally composing a second and third question, choosing instead to simply be led by Lawrence (or Jim's) answers to my opener. Lawrence then asked who wanted to go first and I finally broker the resulting three second silence by blurting out “go on then, I'll go first” in the vague hope that extra points may be awarded for displays of bravery.
This of course meant that I got the least amount of time possible to come up with my questions so I based my first on a purely imaginary scenario and led with...
“So Jim a good day at the office today, a 3-0 win for Hearts, you must be very pleased with the team's overall performance?”
No only bland and uninspired but I also managed to drop in a clichéd metaphor. Good work.
Lawrence to his credit gave a lengthy and believable reply mentioning the contribution of Craig Thomson. Quick as a fox I pounced upon this opportunity by following up with...
“You made reference to Craig Thomson there, is Craig a player you're hoping will really push on this season, cementing his place in the first team and making his position his own?”
Lawrence again gave a lengthy football manager-esque reply, which allowed me to finish with...
“Finally Jim do you remain keen to add to the squad prior to the closure of the transfer window at the end of the month?”
And there we had it. It was certainly more Jeremy Kyle than Jeremy Paxman but I felt comfortable enough during the process. I thought that I'd held my own and I couldn’t be too disappointed with my first stab at interviewing someone face to face in what was pretty intimidating circumstances.
Finally we made our way upstairs for the final and probably the most difficult challenge, three minutes of commentary with Mark Donaldson, the owner of Multimedia Sport, anchor man for Hearts World and former Sports Editor and Head of Sport (and presenter) at Radio Forth and Talk 107 respectively. Mark's association with Talk 107 allowed him the opportunity to work in London for talkSPORT as their Scottish Sports Correspondent and the range of events Mark has covered throughout his career is pretty phenomenal (viewable by clicking this link). Mark is shortly leaving Scotland for the USA having landed a dream job commentating on top level football (soccer?) action for ESPN, involving Champions League, International competitions and other top level tournaments. It was therefore great to get the chance to meet him before he departs in order to start his new life and embark upon the fresh challenge ahead.
Prior to the evening commencing I'd ben absolutely shitting myself at the prospect of doing the commentary task. I'd spent part of the afternoon trying to memorise the names of the Blackburn team only to find that team sheets were available for us! Still, I'd made some useful notes on things I could drop into the conversation during my brief stint on air and I hoped that these little sound bites may come in handy for filling any awkward silences tht may occur. Mark read out our names in a random order and it turned out that I was to go last, this gave me a chance to listen to the other lads which helped put me at ease as it soon became clear that everyone appeared to be as nervous about this particular task as I was! The commentary itself was intended to be an audio commentary as supposed to commentary intended for a TV audience. This is surely the harder to the two mediums. The lack of pictures means that radio listeners are relying on the commentator to paint them a picture of the action that’s occurring, rather than just adding detail to the picture in the way in which a TV commentator would.
As soon as I slipped the headphone on though I immediately absolutely loved it. I started pretty badly however,
“Morten Gamst Pederden collects the balls for Blackburn just inside his own half and slide the ball out wide to.......erm” ...cue a short silence.
I did manage to collect myself thereafter and keep the commentary steady throughout my short stint. I gave the all important score and time check and invited Mark in on occasion to pass comment on certain developments. Given that I'd been handed the tail end of a pre-season friendly to work with, I was often struggling to find any real action to talk about. This led to me dropping in any relevant facts I'd scribbled down earlier in the day. I recall coming out with some awful line about both teams recently released kits and how Blackburn Rover's Crown Paints sponsorship “evokes memories of Liverpool in the 80s”. I also went on about how Neil McDonald was orchestrating from the touchline in the absence of Sam Allardyce and bored everyone with some chat about their working relationship. I waffled a lot of the time (so busy was I to have stuff prepared on Blackburn I probably neglected to talk about Hearts enough!) and occasionally continued this waffling when the ball was back in play and I should have been calling the action. I'm under no illusions that I was any good but I absolutely loved every second of it, so much so that I now think, at the age of 30 and as unrealistic as it is, I've finally discovered my dream job.
The commentary task brought the activities to an end and as such we returned to the Executive Suite for a final thank you from Lawrence and the kind gift of two complimentary tickets each to he forthcoming CIS cup tie against Elgin City.
Lawrence assured us all that he would speak to the rest of the team over the next few days and would be in touch to tell us the outcome during coming week. I probably fell into the 'reasonable' category, however, there will have been a couple of attendees who really shone and as such I don’t expect to be writing any official match reports or conducting any new bulletins for Hearts any time soon. Regardless of that though I obtained a fantastic insight into the work that goes on within the Hearts media team. It was a wonderful experience and I remain extremely grateful for the chance to go along, take part in the evening's proceedings and meet some very interesting and talented people.
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