On good sports writing
20/01/2010 10:43:00 a.m.
IT’S 20 years since I was discharged into the world of journalism and quickly discovered that a) sports reporters get double time (it was 20 years ago) and b) a press pass can get you into every possible thing you want to go and see.
I used to enjoy covering events like the New Zealand Sevens when it was held in Manawatu, even if Lindsay Knight reproached me for bringing a dozen cans of beer into the press box as my personal Muse. Test cricket matches were a bit different – I only went to the press box when it was time for lunch, preferring to spend my time on the bank at the Basin and writing up a report from the scores (it wasn’t like I was working for a major daily paper).
Twenty years on I’m still at these events, but now in a corporate box or in the stand trying to prevent a well-known Wellington lawyer from being ejected by security.
A lot of the journos from the time I was writing for a living are still around, such as Richard “Stir It Up” Boock (easily the best cricket writer, if not sports writer, in the country).
A funny thing has happened in that 20 years though. The overall standard of sports writing has not improved. My goal, had I stayed in the game, was to be as good as the English writers I used to read when the Guardian, Times, and Telegraph arrived off the boat (20 years ago, no internet, kids).
Ian Wooldridge, James Lawton, Richard Williams, Simon Barnes – all could take words and a funny old game and bring it alive. No matter how long I spent finessing an article, I couldn’t do the same.
Funnily enough, given the almost universal domination of sports writing in New Zealand by men, the two who came closest to achieving a similar sort of sporting poetry were two women. Margot Butcher and my old mate Suzanne McFadden both had a touch of the gifted raconteur when it came to writing about sport.
Butcher’s features were always insightful, never clichéd, and delightfully human. But no-one since has picked up the torch.
Instead we continue to be served up dire tripe by people who can’t be trusted with a general reporting round.
Sportspeople needing to achieve invariably face “a daunting prospect”. Teams that are winning are “a well-oiled machine”. A player coming off the bench is always “an impact player”, no matter the sport. If I have to read the phrase “hard yards” one more time I’ll kill someone.
Sports offers up so many great elements of humans struggling against themselves and their opposition. You only have to peruse a copy of the Best American Sportswriting annual to see how interesting it can be.
Here, we get stuck with the same thing served up over and over in a clichéd hackneyed fashion.
Of course, major sports like rugby are to blame for some of it, given their over-zealous management of media access to players.
Nonetheless, it would be nice to think that after 20 years of pining for it after I failed to make my words sing, someone out there is going to make sport interesting again for readers in 2010.
In spite of his protestations we think Paddy Lewis is one of the best sports columnists in the country - Ed.
I used to enjoy covering events like the New Zealand Sevens when it was held in Manawatu, even if Lindsay Knight reproached me for bringing a dozen cans of beer into the press box as my personal Muse. Test cricket matches were a bit different – I only went to the press box when it was time for lunch, preferring to spend my time on the bank at the Basin and writing up a report from the scores (it wasn’t like I was working for a major daily paper).
Twenty years on I’m still at these events, but now in a corporate box or in the stand trying to prevent a well-known Wellington lawyer from being ejected by security.
A lot of the journos from the time I was writing for a living are still around, such as Richard “Stir It Up” Boock (easily the best cricket writer, if not sports writer, in the country).
A funny thing has happened in that 20 years though. The overall standard of sports writing has not improved. My goal, had I stayed in the game, was to be as good as the English writers I used to read when the Guardian, Times, and Telegraph arrived off the boat (20 years ago, no internet, kids).
Ian Wooldridge, James Lawton, Richard Williams, Simon Barnes – all could take words and a funny old game and bring it alive. No matter how long I spent finessing an article, I couldn’t do the same.
Funnily enough, given the almost universal domination of sports writing in New Zealand by men, the two who came closest to achieving a similar sort of sporting poetry were two women. Margot Butcher and my old mate Suzanne McFadden both had a touch of the gifted raconteur when it came to writing about sport.
Butcher’s features were always insightful, never clichéd, and delightfully human. But no-one since has picked up the torch.
Instead we continue to be served up dire tripe by people who can’t be trusted with a general reporting round.
Sportspeople needing to achieve invariably face “a daunting prospect”. Teams that are winning are “a well-oiled machine”. A player coming off the bench is always “an impact player”, no matter the sport. If I have to read the phrase “hard yards” one more time I’ll kill someone.
Sports offers up so many great elements of humans struggling against themselves and their opposition. You only have to peruse a copy of the Best American Sportswriting annual to see how interesting it can be.
Here, we get stuck with the same thing served up over and over in a clichéd hackneyed fashion.
Of course, major sports like rugby are to blame for some of it, given their over-zealous management of media access to players.
Nonetheless, it would be nice to think that after 20 years of pining for it after I failed to make my words sing, someone out there is going to make sport interesting again for readers in 2010.
In spite of his protestations we think Paddy Lewis is one of the best sports columnists in the country - Ed.
