HI, I’m a sports journalism student at Solent University. I’m also a twenty one-year-old guy that lives a blessed life. I quite like writing. And I quite like sports. Whether you like me or not, well that’s up to you. This blog will be sports centred, not self-centred, if I can help it. They will be published every Monday. Enjoy reading it, or don’t, but I loved writing it, regardless.
I really couldn’t have picked a busier week to start a blog. But you’ll soon learn that I attract busyness and I seem to thrive in it, or I think so at least. So, it actually isn’t a surprise at all that I started a blog page this week.
Let’s go back to last Sunday, the 10th March, or this year known as Mother’s Day.
I raced home after work, from Southampton to Salisbury, to surprise my mum for Mother’s Day. I’m a ‘Mumma’s boy’, loud and clear, so I couldn’t not see her!
I hopped in my car, a black Suzuki Swift, buckled up the bunch of flowers that I earlier picked up in the market, and floored it. Driving like prime Lewis Hamilton, my favourite driver ever by the way, I was aiming for purple sector times along the M27 and A36, but my black box hindered my chances, like how Hamilton’s rubbish 2024 F1 car hinders his chances of any success this year. Let’s hope I can move into a Ferrari for next year.
The bouquet of flowers were still intact, even after immense G-force was put through them. The purple iris’ – my mums favourite flowers – looked great and the stalks were still wet when I passed them to her at the chequered flag, home.
She was happily surprised at my appearance; she even had a tear in her eyes. My mum is very emotional by the way, I was literally at home a week ago.
My parents and I chilled in the living room and I was telling them how busy my week ahead was, you’ll find out soon don’t worry. I had a glass of white wine in my left hand, whirling it occasionally like I’m a connoisseur or something, and my right hand was gesturing all my expressions that I had bottled up. As the wine in my glass became shallower, my words slowed, not slurred, and eventually I decided to forget about Uni and instead watch Netflix.
If you are a golf fan, or even a sports documentary fan, I’ve got a recommendation for you ! ‘Full Swing’, season two, on Netflix. In short, it’s a behind the scenes docu-series of the professional golfing world. It’s very good and quite fascinating. But, I can understand people yawning at the sight of golf. As I watched the TV, I was telling my Dad how I might have a foot in the door to go to the Masters this year, a lifetime dream of mine. How good would that be to put on my CV ! Read next week’s blog to see if I get any further with that.
Tuesday was a high. For us sports journalism students it is ‘Solent Soccer Night’ – an in-house production live show with students on location reporting on football games. The alliteration of its name makes it sound like we are reporting from America, but I can tell you for sure that’s not the case. The Uni certainly don’t have the money for that, they don’t even have enough to pay for the pizza on the night either. Instead, many students were caught out in the cold, rainy Tuesday night in the south of England. Not me though. I was in the warm, yet musky studio, producing the whole show. Long story short, the show was a success, of course, and I treated those who came out to the pub afterwards with a shot each… bad idea.
This stupid purchase was funded by my success through the horse racing at Cheltenham. ‘Slade Steel’ winning opening race 7/2, and no, I’m not telling you how much I put on it, but my motto is “go hard early”. I then had three more winners come through that day, life was good. I’m not a betting man, I just like a dabble. But that dabble did not come to fruition for the rest of the week. 4 winners on the first day and probably triple the amount of losers by the end of Friday. I guess you lose some and you win some !
Thursday was a big day for me. It had weeks of preparation. I was asked by my course leader, to organise a guest talk for the University. I obviously said yes. The guest talker was called Phil Packer MBE. Yes, an MBE. In summary, Phil is the founder of The BRIT Trust – a campaign to support and impact the mental health, fitness and wellbeing of young adults, students and staff throughout the UK. This to me was something voluntary, but I really wanted to become invested in the cause and show off my organisation skills, but most importantly represent the Uni.
Oh, not only did I have to organise and direct the talk, but it was also being livestreamed on the Uni YouTube too, so I, along with my friend Millie chose to present it too. Phil was great, he was very proud to see students at the heart of this. The whole event went well. I might’ve upset some of the universities social media team by continuously pestering them to promote this event, it is still shocking to me that I even had to put a fight. Anyways, everyone was proud of all those included, even the Pro Vice-Chancellor emailed me a ‘thank you’! I patted myself on the back for that day.
I walked into the newsroom on Friday morning to get on with some work, and I was greeted by my lecturer who introduced me to a former student, Max Whittle. Apparently to him, we are very similar in the way we work at Uni and in personality too, hence why my lecturer occasionally calls me Max. After the typical handshake, the first thing I said to Max was “nice outfit”, as he donned a pale pink chord shirt and black flowing flares, something funky I would wear. Max did a small talk to us students later that day which was very intriguing. As I left the Uni that afternoon, I said goodbye and handed him a gift. Hot off the press were my business cards. Designed by me, yes. Max was the first ‘professional’ to receive my card. Just look how excited he was to receive it!
All week I had in my mind “just get to Friday”, because this was a special ‘Fun-day Friday’… it was my best mate Freddie’s 20th birthday! Amongst all the Uni work, I managed to plan a surprise party for him in our house. I was honestly more nervous waiting for Freddie’s surprise than I was stood up presenting in front of an MBE and all of the Uni’s top personnel the day before! It all paid off though when he walked into the kitchen and 20-plus of his friends and course mates shouted, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” and I gave him a big hug. I think everyone had busy weeks as sports journalist as they all ‘let their hair down’ let’s say. The karaoke was elite. Freddie told me the morning after “it was the best birthday gift ever”, bless him, I’m glad his beloved Tottenham brought him back down to life when they lost 3-0 that Saturday afternoon!
Later that day I had my cricket club award dinner. I love dressing up formally, ‘to the nines’ if you will. It was all for show though, as I didn’t win anything. I will this season though, that’s my aim.
Well, that is what a week can look like as a sports journalist, or just a chaotically busy young guy who likes to say yes to everything and likes to impress those he surrounds himself by.
Roll on next week!
