Gordon Parks’ Sevco match report today … wow.
That has to be one of the most sophomoric pieces ever penned by a mainstream journalist. It squeals with the delight of a footballer’s wife who just found out her husband is buying a yacht. It gushes praise at Sevco like a groupie meeting her idol. It is pathetic, it really is, the sort of article that a blogger would have been ashamed of.
The general writing of it is car-crash quality.
Look at this particular segment and if you can manage not to wince at you read it you’re made of stronger stuff than me.
“The was a first-leg play-off which was all about Russian interference, not so much collision but plotting to disrupt the tie at every opportunity and trying to escape Govan not with a victory but as much nuisance value as they could muster.”
Good grief. Trying to shoehorn an analogy about the Mueller investigation into a footballing story and getting into a godawful mess doing it. That is cringe worthy. Who the Hell edits work over there before it goes into the world?
Let’s take the word “collision.” I assume the one he meant to use was collusion, but even then it would have been dreadful writing, using a word out of proper context in an effort, God knows why, to try and bring something topical into the piece … uuuugh.
Save me – save us all – from Scottish sports journalists who think they are more knowledgeable about the world outside their bubble than they are. Save them from themselves because God alone knows how this “standard” is viewed elsewhere.
Do their English based colleagues all sit around at lunch time with their reportage and read it out to each other for laughs? I know I would. I would make it a daily routine.
I would also highlight the first sentence. “The Journey. It was used as the (Sevco) slogan at the start of a climb back from the depths of Scottish football and beyond …”
Back from the depths of Scottish football and beyond.
And they pay him for that sort of stuff.
So what’s the article actually about? It’s about Fortress Ibrox. Yes, I kid you not. It’s about how they’ve recaptured (or are recapturing) the fear factor for teams going there. Perhaps he hasn’t noticed that they’ve only played five matches at the ground. Perhaps it’s escaped his attention that four of the teams have no idea what the Ibrox Fear Factor is or was. Perhaps it’s escaped his notice that only one of those games was against a club who might, and that was newly promoted St Mirren.
Perhaps he failed to consider the quality of opposition as a whole.
And then again perhaps not.
Because, as I said, an article which describes Lafferty as “the Prodigal Son” and which heaps praise on a Sevco team that did the bare minimum is pitiful.
It describes the club as “ready” for simultaneously handling a domestic and European schedule, which the manager himself doesn’t believe they are, and describes their Russian opponents in one paragraph as “a step up in quality from previous Europa League conquests” before later saying they were “a side which fall into the ‘limited’ category.”
But the overall tone of one of rampant optimism and glee. It is the work of someone who is barely able to contain his growing enthusiasm and surety that corners have been turned and all in the world is well. It is the same old egotism gone mad.
What it isn’t is anything approaching serious journalism.
It was fan-boy stuff that could have come from the writers at Ibrox Noise.
This article has been amended to correct the name of the writer of the noxious article. Gordon Waddell apparently objected to being “credited” with it when it was, in fact, his equally clueless colleague Parks. I am happy to make the amendment; in my defence, the mistake is easy to make based on the core similarity of everything that paper’s sports team produces; i.e. it is equally badly written and at times absolutely delusional. Waddell has been the subject of many a piece on this blog. I don’t doubt he’ll have another place in the spotlight soon.