A Plea For The Publishing Of Big Reads In Scotland

WITH THE television jammed on BBC1, (unresponsive remote) last night, I was forced to browsing the internet in search of entertainment. I found myself checking out the New Zealand Herald's website, where I struck gold.

 New Zealand rugby writer Chris "England and Wales are rubbish" Rattue

The Herald gets something of a bum rap from the movers and shakers in the London-based UK media machine. Yes, it is perhaps a greater cheer-leader for the All Blacks than even the Daily Mirror or the Sun are for the England football team. Of course, sports writer Chris Rattue knows instinctively which button to press to upset the English and Welsh rugby media, but, their continuing battle of minds with my old mate Steve Jones is a constant joy.

But, as I had confirmed last night – the Herald treats sport far-more seriously than even our own broadsheets do, and, in as sports-mad a nation as New Zealand, that sells.

For instance, they currently have up on their website a round-up of the “50 most-influential women in New Zealand sport.” This is a list onto which the wonderful Portia Woodman only just scrapes at number 50, one of the few rugby players to make it. I might try a similar Scottish list, but, there would be Judy Murray, Liz McColgan, Winnie Wooldridge, Rhona Martin, Eve Muirhead and Julie Fleeting apart, very few household names on it – such is the cavalier manner in which our msm treats the distaff side of sport in Scotland.

They also in New Zealand, regularly do something which even our “serious” newspapers do infrequently, if at all: “the Big Read,” (this is an article sometimes running to over 2000 words – twice the length of the average Aristotle blog post) and, so-engrossed in one or two that I found did I become, that before I knew it, it was 2am and I was still reading.

Two wonderful athletes in the all black of New Zealand, Sir Peter Snell, left, and Sir Murray Halberg

There was a cracking piece on Sir Peter Snell, New Zealand's three times Olympic gold medallist (800 metres in 1960 and 1964, 1500 metres also in '64); now there's a hat-trick which eluded even Coe and Ovett. They even, with the help of Air New Zealand, sent the writer to Texas to interview Sir Peter, who has lived there for many years and who turned 80 last month.

Then there was a piece of the kind I used to do rather well out of, back in the days when the Glasgow office of the Sunday Times had a bit more freedom to locally source stories: the “Where are they now” piece. Such articles used to be a summer staple – I still recall the fun I had tracking down: “The Lost Boys,” the members of the legendary Scotland Under-16 team who lost a Hampden Junior World Cup Final to the “Saudi Arabia Under-23s”, but who failed to match Brian O'Neil and Paul Dickov, to name but two and go on to win a full cap.

I still laugh at one proud father's explanation for his son's failure to train-on to greatness: “He fell among rogues and vagabonds at Dundee United, sharing a flat with Duncan Ferguson and becoming his 'gofer'.”

But, I digress. I was fascinated by one long read, topped-off with a picture of New Zealand's “Boys of '92” - the legendary New Zealand Schools XV of 1992. Everyone has heard of Carlos Spencer, Jeff Wilson and Jonah Lomu,three of the ten All Blacks to emerge from that team. Or future Samoan internationalists Trevor Leota and Ngapaku Ngapaku, but, this Big Read concentrated on the guys who didn't make it. Guys like captain Jamie Haynes, already being tipped as a future All Black, but, who gave up rugby because of his Jehovah's Witness beliefs, or Matthew Grace, who, on the day Lomu's autobiography was published, arrived at work to find a photocopied picture of the '92 team stuck to his computer terminal with the message: “What the fuck happened to you?” scrawled across it.

What the fuck happened to Matthew Grace? asked a work-mate

Then there is Heath McDonnell, the one who has disappeared completely – not even the Herald, with all its resources, could track him down.

I just love these types of articles and it is a crying shame that, thanks to the current obsession with “personality-type” pieces about sport today, not forgetting the increasingly-tight departmental budgets and the lack of space, our home-grown media does not do them.

Rugby is particularly well-suited to Big Reads, there is so much happening below the PRO14, which is about as deeply into rugby's hinterland as the mainstream media digs.

Frazier Climo - by Taranaki standards, urbane and sophisticated

The Herald did a wonderful Big Read piece on the Dean Cup – a little local competition played between three clubs in the backwoods of Taranaki, between teams containing players who make Ayr's Frazier Climo – another Taranaki boy – appear urbane and sophisticated.

It gives the impression the background music to the matches is duelling banjos, or a third XV Border League – wonderful stuff, illustrated with some marvellous photographs.

The likes of Big Barney, across at The Offside Line, the guys on Scottish Rugby Blog, or Weegie R Ugby, even me, I dare say we could do such pieces online, but, they could never have the impact, or the circulation, of a Big Read, copiously illustrated with good pictures, across two pages.

Such pieces raise the game's profile, get people talking about rugby and, in these days of wall-to-wall football coverage, mostly banal in the extreme, I would reckon any paper brave enough to start publishing Big Reads, would win, win.