The Derby Telegraph reports Burton Albion because the town is 10 miles down the road from Derby and, while a limited number of the papers are sold in Burton itself, the Telegraph covers a fairly large chunk of what the club would consider to be its catchment area.
For me, and for as long as it lasts, covering the club professionally is a great privilege. Not all sports reporters actually get out to cover live sport, believe it or not, and it's also true that probably 90% of my job as deputy sports editor on the paper is office-based.
Let's get it out of the way early on - I'm a fan. When I was a very junior reporter in Burton in 1978 I got taken to an Albion game and I was hooked. It's as simple as that. I didn't report on the team then. Getting to matches home and away was my recreation and I did it solidly through to 1987, when I launched a business with a partner for a while and money was too tight for luxuries. Right at the end of that time, I managed to miss the FA Trophy final at Wembley with chicken pox after seeing every other round. Great timing. Within that spell, of course, was also the brilliant FA Cup run to play Leicester City in the third round at the Baseball Ground in 1985.
The way my working life panned out, I began covering the Brewers halfway through Nigel Clough's decade in charge, so I've just hit the nine-year mark in doing it. That hasn't worked out badly... a move to a new stadium, a third round FA Cup tie against Manchester United, promotion to the Football League and consolidation of the Brewers' position in League Two. It's been a historic and fascinating time.
I mention that I'm a fan because I do have to be careful to separate that from work. You can't go jumping around a press box celebrating when a goal goes in; you've got to make sure you're typing how it happened. That day at Torquay when the Brewers reached the Football League was tough. Writing up what had just happened kept me going til 9.30pm. I do believe I caught up my friends in the Hole in the Wall pub in Torquay in terms of beer consumption in the two hours that followed. Odd how a pub in a Devon seaside town could find itself such an integral part of Burton Albion's history but, for quite a few supporters, the Hole in the Wall will always have a special place in our hearts.However, I digress. I hope I keep separate the fan and the reporter successfully. I think my bosses might have mentioned it by now if I didn't.
If you're still reading, the purpose of this blog will be to share a few of the hopefully interesting things that come out of following Burton up and down the country. There's usually too much material to get it all in the paper, an aside here, a joke there from management or players. I won't be betraying any confidences or, hopefully, embarrassing anyone.
In years gone by, the Telegraph, like most papers, had a Saturday evening sports special edition with all of the football of the day in it and feature articles about the local clubs inside, prepared earlier in the week. Those papers became uneconomic first because so many football matches, especially Derby County's in . our case, stopped happening at 3pm on a Saturday. They'd be moved to 5.20, or to Sunday or Monday to appease the TV people. On those occasions, the main reason for the paper had gone; plus, of course, the internet was allowing people to access information faster than we could print it.
In that paper, I had a weekly column about the Brewers and that was where the snippets of information got placed. The idea now is to use this blog (rather belatedly!) to replace that column.
So that's my statement of intent. I'm acutely conscious that, having started a blog, it has no credibility at all if it isn't continued on a regular basis. I've seen that happen to too many.
* The picture, by the way, shows Burton winger Jacques Maghoma looking distinctly cornered as I question him after the game. The radio had finished with him; I hadn't. I find Jacques very patient with us and increasingly good at giving an interesting interview.
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