Writing for subject matter experts –lessons from the world of football
According to Martin (right) and his Dad, Alan (left), you’re only legit football supporters if you have your name and date of birth carved into the brick wall of your team’s home stadium. Just sayin’.
As anyone who has ever met me before will know, I’m a little bit obsessed with Sunderland AFC, my football team in the UK.
From the age of seven or eight, until I moved to Australia in 2010, me and my Dad went to watch them play week in, week out.
Over the past 10 years, my obsession hasn’t waned – far from it. While being so far away from home means getting up at 1 am to watch games live, I’ve also learned it’s considerably easier to avoid opposition supporters who might be inclined to remind me of the latest defeat so, you know, peaks and troughs.
Over the past year or so, however, I’ve been fortunate to get involved with Roker Report – a website that’s created for supporters, by supporters – and includes some exceptionally talented writers.
Not only has it given me an opportunity to write about football, I also – on occasions –podcast about it, usually with a few other supporters, and occasionally interviewing a former player, which is a lot of fun.
Recently I interviewed the club historian, Rob Mason, about a new book he’s written –Sunderland AFC: The Absolute Record – in collaboration with a couple of other equally-knowledgeable chaps.
And, while he’s the fountain of knowledge of all things Sunderland, he also writes for other clubs, too. He’s written a number of books on West Ham United, Ipswich and Burnley, as well as working on the football programmes for clubs including Coventry and Bolton.
He’s also just published a book on Jordan Henderson, the captain of the 2020 Premier League champions, Liverpool.
The thing to understand about football supporters is they’re deeply passionate about their club. They understand it fully, and are a stickler for detail – and rightly so.
Each and every day in our work here at By Wanless, we create content for audiences who are incredibly knowledgeable about their job, their industry and the issues affecting it. And it’s our job to bring that content to life – while ensuring it’s as accurate as it possibly can be.
So, during the interview, I asked Rob about his tips for creating content for knowledgeable audiences, and also about collaborating with other authors. Here’s what he said.
1. Collaborate with people you can trust, and know their stuff
“My co-authors, Barry Jackson and Mike Gibson, are both tremendous to work with. I’ve worked with them over many years, and they’re great guys, extremely knowledgeable and very, very meticulous in terms of checking, double-checking and triple-checking.
“The designer we’ve used on the book is also someone who knows his stuff – he is a Sunderland supporter too, so he knows what will work, and he also acts as an extra set of eyes.”
2. Do your homework
“When you’re writing for any club, you’re writing for one of the most knowledgeable audiences, so you’ve got to make sure everything you write is as correct as it can be. That means doing your research – you need to check sources and references, as just because something’s recorded in one way in one place doesn’t mean it’s correct. For example, Sunderland at one point had Michael Gray, Martin Gray and Phil Gray all playing at the same time, and the number of occasions the wrong player was pictured in the paper was incredible.
“All you can do is try your absolute level best to get everything right – and it comes back to having the people in your world who you can check things with.
3. Find the experts
“Some clubs have an official historian and I can check stuff with them.
“I write Coventry City’s programme, and I have a chap called Jim Brown there who’s the official historian, and everything I write about Coventry I email to Jim before it gets published. And if I ever make a mistake, Jim puts me right!
“With other clubs, I’m not as fortunate, so I have to do a lot more research in the first place! And, if I’ve got something wrong, I’ll sharp find out!”
4. Always get a final set of fresh eyes
“Even with the three of us on board for the project, we’ve enlisted the help of a couple of others to provide a final check through – a meticulous couple of people, one a crossword compiler and the other a former member of the Association of Football Statisticians to provide a thorough check. They look at it with fresh eyes, and sometimes there’s something that we think we have made really clear and they’ll say ‘hang on, I’m not quite sure what you mean by that’.”
If you happen to be a Sunderland supporter, do yourself a favour and order this new book. The lads behind it have put an awful lot of hard work into it, and it’ll be a cracker.
I’ve preordered two – one for me and one, of course, for my Dad.
