Sharing great sports stories: 22/05/2018

3 min readMay 22, 2018

We gave my grandfather an old computer a few years ago. He used it for not much more than watching Morecambe and Wise videos on YouTube, looking at his brother-in-law’s house in South Sydney on Google Maps and to read about football. He didn’t so much surf the net as paddle in it.

He did learn to email, however, and now sends frequent messages to my great uncle Eddie out in Australia about hospital visits (iffy knee), the Ashes, rugby league and, again, football.

Eddie left Warrington over fifty years ago and, beyond an annual birthday phone call to my grandmother, the occasional letter and a couple of visits home decades apart, he got on with life and started a family of his own 10,000 miles away. Then my granddad got the Internet and the world became smaller. Wigan beat Warrington in the rugby at the weekend — I’m sure it’ll come up in the next time they message.

These are the stories we tell and share.

One of the most important lessons I ever received when training to be a reporter was that it is the story, not the writer, which makes journalism. We are there to listen, to learn and to tell. We are custodians of information until it is given to the reader. It is then their story to tell, like everyone else.

You never own a story. You simply pass it on. Journalists may have a byline above an article, but these collections of words exist to be shared, discussed and dissected. The best make us think and talk and question what we once thought.

The best sportswriting does this as well as anything else. When an article stretches beyond the lines of a pitch or the ropes of a ring, it can touch on anything else that makes a great story; love, tragedy, triumph. Life, in other words.

As such, after spending most days trying to hunt out the best sportswriting out there every day and sharing it on Twitter or to friends on WhatsApp, I thought it would make sense to share these stories further. On here. I’ll be doing it every week. From the local press, blogs, national newspapers, digital publishers or wherever else great sports stories live and are told. Full disclosure here and now, a lot of these articles will be from writers I know and work with.

These stories are vital. They are a link. To our homes, to our past and to each other. This is hopefully a place to cherish them.

Young stars emerge and veterans retire. Clubs move homes. Coaches jump or get shoved. Rules change. Games change. Lifelong supporters pass the baton on.

But the words remain.

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