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Covering soccer from the Big AppleSick As A Parrot is back at ACP Magazines, sort o!

By James Manning

During our week in New York we had to lookup Matthew Hall. The pop journo-turnedsoccer blogger has a CV that goes romAussie pop mag Star! via the BBC to Fairaxand The New York Times. Hall has calledBrooklyn home or the past ve years andhe keeps an oce on Manhattan where heis partner in a production company calledSoda Presents.Watching the ootball world rom New York

presents no problems, even though ootballis a word he knows will never be used in theUS to describe the round ball game.“I was at Fairax when the sports depart-ment in Sydney made the decision to callsoccer ootball,” Hall recalled. “The Sun-

 Herald sports editor,   James Carey (whodied sadly aged just 41 last year), and RodAllen rom The Sydney Morning Herald tookthat big leap.”Beore reaching a wider audience with hisgreat Sick As A Parrot Sun-Herald column(now sadly discontinued), Hall said, “Ilearnt my chops writing or pop culturemagazines. I worked or the BBC in

London or our years as a sub where Ilearnt how to write. While people got toknow me or Sick As A Parrot, I was alsosimultaneously writing about many dier-ent things.“I like people and I like people’s storiesand that to me is the most interestingthing in journalism whichever medium you practise in.”Some o that other work included newsstories or the paper when Hall came acrossthem. “The Sun-Herald was instrumental

in bringing in the government inquiry thatsaw Frank Lowy’s people come into powerin 2004. It was good to be part o that andto see what we wrote and see our infuenceon events and regime change.“I also wrote a book called The Away 

Game which let me develop relation-ships and trust with Australian players. Sometimes or their benet…other timesnot. One story that got a lot o coverage waswhen Socceroo Mark Viduka said he hadn’tspoken to his Leeds and Socceroo teammateHarry Kewell or two or three years. Thatwas a bigger deal or ans than the players.At that level o proessional sports it’s notnecessarily unusual or players not to talkto each other. Since then they have becomeriends and have a better relationship.”A documentary lm o the same name wasadapted rom The Away Game, two editions

published in 2000 and 2006. The lm wasbroadcast by National Geographic, SBSTV, and ARD in Germany and won “BestScreenplay” at the 2006 Palermo Interna-tional Sports Film Festival.Hall built a good relationship with Kewelland seemed to succeed with interviewswhere others tried and ailed. How didhe do that? “Kewell had always been veryguarded to the media. That was part o theculture he grew up with as a young playerat Leeds. He is a shy, reserved character. Iwent out o my way to visit him persis-tently and get in his ace. I told the truth

rather than just writing stories that

were based on my belie or thoughts. Heand his manager liked my approach – theact that I tried to nd the truth and that Ichecked acts.”At the 2010 World Cup, where Hall wasworking as a blogger or SBS Online, therelationship between Australian reportersand the Socceroos was oten prickly. Hallound himsel in the middle o that.“It was interesting to watch how the mediawas dealing with things. Being able to speakwith the players directly, although notalways on the record, was helpul. Whenthere is a lot o media control the media

has to speculate about what’s going onand that is exactly what happened withHarry Kewell at the World Cup. Whatsome ended up writing was mis-inormedopinion rather than what was actu-ally going on. The players subsequently

got upset. However some o theplayers need to ‘man up’ a bit andnot be so sensitive to criticism.”

Sick AS A PArrot“Then Sun-Herald sports editorTony Harper, who now edits Foot-

ball+ or ACP Magazines, came upwith the name. We wanted some-

thing irreverent and almostnonsensical to demonstrate it wasn’tjust a soccer column. A lot o ootball anshad a wider interest in the sport. We wouldoten run quirky, personality tales…there’s lots o crazy people doing crazy

things that are unny to read. A lot o sports reporting can be tedious – particu-larly in the US. They can be laden with statsand you get no idea o what when on. Tellme the story o what happened in the gameand make it entertaining to read.”

Football+ “The idea had been kicked around or acouple o years between Tony Harper and

ACP’s Michael Koslowski [publisher,men’s liestyle] but or various reasons thetime wasn’t right. 2010 seemed the righttime to launch a new ootball/soccer titleand the frst edition launched beore the

World Cup and it was very well receivedby advertisers and readers. [Launchedition sold over 50,000 copies with editionthree out on December 8.]“What we are trying to do is tell inter-esting long-orm stories about the sportrom all around the world. From SouthAmerica, to Australia and to Europe –with some o the best writers in the world.To get these writers is a massive coup.We are not just publishing lots o mate-rial rom another magazine, Football+ is

built rom the ground up with each storyjudged on its merits – not just i it canfll space.”

Inside Magazines

Matthew Hall on a cold New York morning

Mediaweek does New York

The cover of ACP’s next edition of it s newishsports title, the tri-annual Football+ which goeson sale December 8