ANYONE who knows me would tell you that opinions are not something that I am short of. Most would add that I probably have too many and am far too willing to voice them.
I am a conscious dissident against the football industry's relentless quest to package the people's game as a soulless and emotionally neutral entertainment. I spend all my professional and much of my personal life immersed in the cultural, political and economic analysis of every minute and mundane aspect of life on Planet Boro. I strive to subject the machinations of the club, the body language of individuals and the carefully crafted language of official pronouncements to the kind of forensic academic scrutiny that the serious papers give to the inner workings of government. I am pro-active and promote the activity, organisation and empowerment of fans at every opportunity. And I elevate the opinions, passions and dynamics of the crowd to the position of importance within the game they deserve but so rarely get.
So boy, does it pee me off when people say all I do is rip off the Fly Me To The Moon board.
It is a comment that is made with tedious frequency, usually on a Tuesday when my Big Picture column is printed, and frankly it is one I find insulting. Apart from anything else it suggests that all I do is sit around all day in an intellectual vacuum, possibly smoking a big Havana cigar and doing the Times crossword, waiting for someone in cyber-space to drop 2,000 words of closely argued coherent copy that is legally sound and with good grammar and syntax into my lap. Bosh bosh, cut and paste, job's a good un'. If only it were that easy.
In fact my columns in various guises have been running for 12 years and pre-date the internet and all that time there has run through every single word I have written a consistent perspective that reflects the position I have passionately taken from day one: that it is the fans' relationship to the club that is the crucial and usually ignored dynamic that drives the game. I don't believe there have been the U-turns and contradictions that would come with slavishly following the loudest voice on a message board or the shifts in tone or content that you would expect from the kind of scavenging operation the critics suggest. Please, give me some credit.
It is the nature of topical columns that they touch on the discussions among the public on the issues of the day. Would the snipers rather the Gazette did not talk about the burning issues? If my writing echoes what is being said in the pubs and clubs - and in cyber-space - then that is a positive and shows that the Gazette is not in some ivory tower existence, a prisoner of the club spin machine and isolated from the cut-and-thrust of the debates on the Boro street. If it engages fully with the tricky issues gripping terrace politics and can help set them in context or shape the agenda then so much the better.
Sometimes, I freely admit, I have surveyed the unfolding arguments on Fly Me To The Moon and to a lesser extent Come On Boro. It helps get a flavour of the public consensus and a measure of the intensity of emotion but rarely have I pillaged original ideas from there - and when I have I have given the author the credit. On more than one occasion I have intervened in the debate and sketched out ideas that are the skeleton of what is to be a column a few days later only then to be accused of 'stealing' my own idea.
Over the years there have been moments of great insight and writers who have crystalised the moment perfectly on the board, although sadly it must be said that these days they are much harder to find among the dumbed down squabbling.
Furthermore to suggest that I am a plagiarist and point to the damning evidence that I am talking about the same thing as posters on the messageboard betrays an insularity and an arrogance. Do they think discussions about Boro's tactics, strengths and weaknesses, the polemics between the half-empty and half-full camps or musings about what the pundits said on Match of the Day are the exclusive preserve of Fly Me To The Moon? They are not. Tens of thousands of ordinary Teessiders who have never touched a computer keyboard are discussing exactly the same issues with exactly the same passion and making exactly the same, if not more perceptive, observations, condemnations and quips.
And we are talking about the same things at the Gazette too. We talk football all day - we get paid for it - and it would defy all logic to believe that given the same information (and often far more information that the public is privy too) that we would not somehow fumble our way towards some of the same conclusions that some apparently better informed posters on the Fly Me To The Moon board have come to.
It is easy for keyboard critics to suggest that my relationship with Fly Me To The Moon is parasitic and that I am enaged in one long frenzied cut-and-paste stroll along the informations super highway. Easy, but wrong. In fact I have for many years willingly helped the board and the vibrant groups who organise within it in whatever way I can. That is not for cynical reasons, for cheap and easy columns. It is because I sincerely believe that supporters are the lifeblood of the game and they should be given a voice, taken seriously and empowered.
I believe on balance I have made a made a positive contribution and helped create a healthy wide-ranging fancentric debate on Teesside doing a job as a cultural and political correspondent that is unique in local newspapers. Surely I didn't get it all off Fly Me To The Moon.
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