North Tonight, UNFECKINBELIEVABLE

[Guest Sandy Cromarty]

Tonights Sports section fronted by Tyrone the Neep led with a real non story on Dundee United's loss to Celtic ( who the feck would have bet against it?? did Rose Kennedy have a black dress?) and an interview with Brewster.

We, The mighty ICT were the second story and were allotted 25 seconds, what a snub to what was a historic win for our wee club, if it had been Aberdeen who had won at Ibrox virtually the whole sports section would have been DEVOTED to it, I quickly checked my stats and I may be wrong but the senior clubs covered by Grampian TV last won at IBROX on the following years;

Aberdeen - 1991

Dundee - 2001

Dundee Utd - 2001

St Johnstone - 1971

So credit where credit is due Grampian.

[Feyenoord]

What do you expect in all honesty, it's an Aberdeen station.

[Guest MIDGE55]

I guess the Ryder Cup Team have been pushed into second place now for the BBC Sports Personality Team of The Year..... :015: :015: :006:

[Kingsmills]

No great surprise there.

[Charles Bannerman]

I'm going to offer an alternative view in support of my colleagues in Aberdeen... which may not be altogether popular on this site!

You have to remember that in broadcasting, news moves on very quickly indeed and North Tonight was on air all of 50 hours after the ICT match took place. There can be absolutely no doubt that ICT's result on Saturday was an exceptional achievement which was well documented over the weekend. So in terms of broadcast news, by Monday evening it had become decidedly dated. Things move on irrespective of how much ICT fans might want to savour the moment.

By the time "Grampian" (STV) got to it after 6pm on the Monday, so many other people had done it and STV really needed to look for something else to lead their sport with. The fact that Dundee United had hit the bottom is of major interest to another very large slice of their audience and, although resulting from another Saturday match, is something which is ongoing for at least another week. This is not, as Sandy suggests, "a real non story"... not to the very large number of people interested in DUFC at any rate. There must have therefore been a strong editorial case to jump in that direction, especially with the one to one interview with Brewster on going bottom available.

At least they showed the ICT goal. I sometimes feel that running SPL goal clips on Reporting Scotland is right on its last legs in terms of still being newsworthy. Newspapers tend to have a longer shelf life but if you look at the Highland News, published Wednesday teatime, you will not generally see football match reports. Appearing when it does, the HN is nowadays very much styling itself a "preview paper".

It would be very easy to respond to all of this by pointing out that Scotsport shows extended highlights of the SPL on a Monday night, but that is a sports programme not a news one where things tend to move on rather more quickly.

Now Sandy (HYPOTHETICALLY!) if Ross County did something wonderful on the Saturday such as, say, beat Gretna 6-0 while ICT went to the bottom of the SPL, would you be complaining if the County result had, by the Monday eveing, been ousted from the top of STV's sports bulletin by the ongoing relegation crisis in Inverness?

Come to think of it, I suppose you might well.....

[Johnboy]

C'mon Charlie... Sandy does have a point here.... What Caley achieved on Saturday was as important as their cup success against Celtic. I didn't see North Tonight, but I have to agree with Sandy in that their coverage of Caley's momentous & historical event was bordering on the downright scandalous.....

[CaleyD]

CB, I may be missing something, but your justifying the treatment (or non-treatment) of ICT's result by North Tonight on the basis that more people were/would be interested in the Dundee Untied result.  Exactly when did they move Dundee to the North???

It's a hard enough battle recruiting new fans to ICT as it is, and this kind of media blackout by a programme which is supposed to carry news from this area does very little to help the cause.  I have no problem turning on to watch the national news and it being biased towards the better supported teams, but when I tune in to watch a local news programme I expect local news.

[Guest Sandy Cromarty]

I welcome your views Charles, biased though they are and I find it maybe a wee bit surprising that you have 'colleagues' at a rival station to the BBC, however you have completely missed the point, your references to our win being 'well documented' and 'so many other people had done it' was not the case at all in the print or TV media, ICT were hardly handed any attaboys over the weekend as the media hung up on a Rangers loss and not an ICT win, so I and I'm sure many other fans should have expected our achievement to have the lead slot on our regions TV station, again I will say that if it had been Aberdeen who had won it would have taken up the whole sports section.

The Brewster story was nothing new, not at all as you well know considering their poor performances in recent weeks, to lead with a failure for a story instead of a fine win is disrespect, no more and no less and shows how Grampian consider ICT.

As all regular posters here know I do hold the print media in some disdain as I see them as taking and not giving back to the game, they enjoy free entry, free teas and pies, complimentary tickets, free parking etc, in short they cost clubs a lot of money over a season and in return they feel free to write as they please without regard to the clubs, I would make them pay for their tickets etc as they can't complain in their papers, imagine the public reaction. You may remember I commented on the fact that at the Clach pre-season game there was a 104 attendance and I counted 6 reporters, that was £30.00 worth of tickets, and if you read 2 or 3 papers on a Sunday you get the same report word for word in them, and then again the same on the monday.

Now I'll get all sorts of stuff about free advertising etc from them.

Anyway Charles I don't include you in the rant being radio and Tv plus I remember you gave money to the club from your book but it does get my goat to think that the club gives free entry to a guy who then gives a whole page of his paper to a Rangers team profile two days before a game.

[Charles Bannerman]

Sandy, I'm not going to become involved in a debate over this and will therefore have to restrict myself to the hope that your apparently insatiable need to vent your anger will have moved on to some other subject by next week.

[Guest Sandy Cromarty]

Not anger Charles just stating the facts as I see them, some may see them as distorted but I'm not far off the mark, I welcome any discussion or criticism as this is after all a forum open to debate and not a newspaper sports section confined to the views of two or three people, and I don't have a weekly axe to grind as I've stated my thoughts on the freeloading media many times in the past.

You'll have noticed I have fairly and rightly congratulated the Courier on this morning's issue, this is what we want to see.

And Richard Gordon, you're OK mate.

[CaleyCanary]

Whilst being in complete agreement with you Sandy, I would have thought there would be no complaint from CaleyJags fans at seizing every opportunity to view the pain, suffering and humiliation that our ex manager is currently going through at the foot of the table  :003:

[Scotty]

Whilst being in complete agreement with you Sandy, I would have thought there would be no complaint from CaleyJags fans at seizing every opportunity to view the pain, suffering and humiliation that our ex manager is currently going through at the foot of the table  :003:

:015: :015: :clapping04: :clapping04:

At the end of the day, ICT may be hugely important to us - and rightly so - but Grampian TV, Scotsport, Setanta, and most of the media will never give us the column inches or broadcast minutes we feel we deserve as they are geared up to get the most viewers or sell the most papers and ICT just doesnt do it for them (any more).

Grampian TV is a local station based in Aberdeen that covers 3 cities (maybe 4 or even 5 if you include Perth and Elgin :017:). Of the 3 cities with SPL teams, Inverness is by far the smallest and therefore of least interest to the TV execs. It gets even worse when you apply this to the Glasgow or Edinburgh based media, and worse still when you apply it to the national or indeed international media. I might be taking it to extremes, but even the Sunday edition of the Toronto Star which normally has a paragraph about how Celtic and Rangers got on the day before (and about 6 paragraphs in total about the English premiership - 'soccer' gets about 1/4 of a page if we are lucky) failed to mention either team this weekend.

We do get huge media coverage when we pull off a big shock - witness all the coverage in Feb 2000 - but as a decent mid table side in the SPL, the beating of a struggling Rangers team doesnt have the same 'shock factor' or hold the same interest no matter how important that WE know the result is. It is - in a way - a back-handed compliment to the progress and reputation of ICT as an SPL side.

I would exclude a few people/publications from the media bashing .... The Courier has (almost) always given us great coverage, and the P&J has improved a lot in recent seasons. Even the HN which once behaved very badly towards ICT is half decent now (albeit with a bad article that was more about Rangers than ICT last week). There are also decent articles most weeks from at least one of the broadsheets. I also cannot fault either Charles Bannerman, or Richard Gordon. With Charles it is understandable - being local and all - but RG, as we have said on here before seems to treat us with a fair bit of respect and journalistic integrity which is refreshing given that he's a Dons fan.

[Guest Sandy Cromarty]

I would like to leave this subject now with one last thought and that is that we all know how the Dons fans have this ongoing thing with the Rangers fans ever since the Simpson/Durant incident so I'm sure than the majority of them would have viewed our result with some glee and welcomed it as the lead article on North Tonight on monday, I got two e-mails from red colleagues congratulating us over the weekend.

And as I said, I may be wrong, but we were the first team from The Grampian TV area since 2001 to beat the teddies at hame.

And I've said many times before that that Simpson clash made Durants career, I watched him break into the rangers first team at Ibrox and thought him average and out of his depth, all elbows etc, but with that horrible leg break came the adoration from Teddies and the rest is Ibrox and Rugby Park history, a lucky break in every sense.

[Libero]

I would like to leave this subject now with one last thought and that is that we all know how the Dons fans have this ongoing thing with the Rangers fans ever since the Simpson/Durant incident so I'm sure than the majority of them would have viewed our result with some glee and welcomed it as the lead article on North Tonight on monday, I got two e-mails from red colleagues congratulating us over the weekend.

And as I said, I may be wrong, but we were the first team from The Grampian TV area since 2001 to beat the teddies at hame.

And I've said many times before that that Simpson clash made Durants career, I watched him break into the rangers first team at Ibrox and thought him average and out of his depth, all elbows etc, but with that horrible leg break came the adoration from Teddies and the rest is Ibrox and Rugby Park history, a lucky break in every sense.

Whats Ian Durrant got to do with North tonight or ICT beating rangers?

the comment about 'that tackle' making ian durrants career is ludicrous and in rather poor tatse if you ask me.

[Johnboy]

Sandy : I agreed with your initial comments on this thread re North Tonight's coverage of Saturday's win for ICT....

I don't know how the feck you got from there to Ian Durrant... After that "tackle" by Simpson, Durrant was out of action for nearly two years... When he did come back he was a shadow of what he had been... How the feck can you say that tackle made his career?? It virtually destroyed it.......

Time you went back on the waggon again....

[Guest Sandy Cromarty]

I mentioned the Durant tackle as this was the unfortunate clash which led to the present ill feeling between the Aberdeen and Rangers fans, I used it to highlight the fact that many Dons fans would have been delighted by our result.

As for Durant, this is not the the first time I have mentioned this on here as many of you know, but as I mentioned I did see Durant AT Ibrox when he broke into the first team and he was very much an average player in a very average team, very very immature in the box and left floundering by experienced defenders, the tackle by Simpson was unnecessary and over the top but Durant was always over enthusiatic himself in the tackle. After the tackle and subsequent lay off he was elevated to hero status by rangers fans which, having seen him play, would never have happened ordinarily.

Apologies if you find my observations in bad taste as my comments were never meant to be, I only commented on what I saw of the player prior to the leg break, if you like me watched him play live and you thought that he was a superstar in the making then you are entitled to your opinion of course but thats not what I saw.

[Guest Sandy Cromarty]

To be fair it was very remiss of me not to mention that the North Tonight sports desk did give us more coverage last night, albeit the second spot but we did get more air time and another review of the game and goal plus an excellent interview with Charlie Christie  regarding the possibility of an increased gate this saturday due to last weekends result.

The extra coverage given by them flies in the face of an earlier posters assumption that, ' in terms of broadcast news, by Monday evening it had become decidedly dated. Things move on irrespective of how much ICT fans might want to savour the moment.' ( Never trust colleagues? )

Hmmm, wonder why they had a change of heart and ran the story again on Tuesday??

Anyway all credit to them or giving us the respect we deserve as one of the leading teams covered by Grampian TV.

[Guest Bonzo]

Over the years "North Tonight" have been very generous in their coverage of ICT, through the lower divisions as well. I would say we tend to get substantially more coverage than the other teams in the Grampian area (Aberdeen, County, the Dundee's etc).

Giving priority to a story surrounding Brewsters problems as a Manager is fine by me. It was pleasing to see the man showing the pressure 2 wins out of 26 merits.

[Guest sophia]

Sandy,

I too saw Ian Durant and for that matter Derek Ferguson and witnessed the tackle at Pittodrie that blighted ID's career.

Both the above players were exceptional but neither would scale the heights that their early promise predicted.

Would you please explain where you mined the parallel logic that brought you to your conclusion on ID? Prior to his knee injury (not leg break) he glided past defenders with a degree of elegance that is not often witnessed. By common consent his magic disappeared into the sand at the beach end that day.

Not without guilt was one Neale Cooper who, making his Rangers debut (memory?), charged about the park proving what a hardman he was.

Its very interesting, there seems to be those that think that there should be a public holiday nominated every time we defeat a longer established team in our own division. We should accept that we have every right to be in the Premier League and pull off results like the one on Saturday.

Onwards to the next game.

The Dundee United situation is different. This story has legs because it involves a young and struggling team, an inexperienced manager and a trigger happy chairman.

To listen to the Dundee Utd - Celtic game and hear that large numbers of DU supporters were walking out before an hour of the game had gone is bad news.

On one level, why should DU's supporters not expect some sort of explanation via their local channel? On another, I get the impression that the media weigh up the odds and decide to play a game with individuals until its time for them to exit stage left. Its good copy for them and a glorious waste of time for us.

[Johnboy]

To listen to the Dundee Utd - Celtic game and hear that large numbers of DU supporters were walking out before an hour of the game had gone is bad news.

Bad News..? For who..?

[kaiser]

I would like to leave this subject now with one last thought and that is that we all know how the Dons fans have this ongoing thing with the Rangers fans ever since the Simpson/Durant incident so I'm sure than the majority of them would have viewed our result with some glee and welcomed it as the lead article on North Tonight on monday, I got two e-mails from red colleagues congratulating us over the weekend.

And as I said, I may be wrong, but we were the first team from The Grampian TV area since 2001 to beat the teddies at hame.

And I've said many times before that that Simpson clash made Durants career, I watched him break into the rangers first team at Ibrox and thought him average and out of his depth, all elbows etc, but with that horrible leg break came the adoration from Teddies and the rest is Ibrox and Rugby Park history, a lucky break in every sense.

So, cutting to the chase Sandy...you think that because Dons fans and Huns don't get along that we should have been leading the sports news  on STV - just to give the Dandies something to gloat about!

The words straws and clutching at spring to mind there... :002:

...and I think the animosity between the reds and the blues was 'exascerbated' by the Durrant incident, but it began before that I'm sure.

[Guest Sandy Cromarty]

The first I saw Durrant was a midweek game against Dundee United and I saw him at a few games after that and he never impressed me as being a Rangers 'Great' but just another say youngster breaking through at the time, McCoist was a level above easily.

If you go to the Official Gers site and look up Durrant's bio you will see they make much of his injury in 1989 but go on to say that the Great Durrant Years were the early 90's, thats after the injury n'est pas? so who has got it wrong, I say he was an ordinary over enthusiastic professional, fans here say his career was ruined by the injury yet his club say his 'great' years were after the injury, we can all take out of the game what we want but if you want a Rangers 'GREAT' look no further than Eric Caldow, a truly great Captain of Rangers and Scotland who by the way broke his leg and yet went on to play at the same level.

[Johnboy]

Caldow's leg break, as far as I recall, was a straightforward shin fracture.... Durrant suffered cruciate ligament damage, which can be (and was) a far more serious injury.

Jim Baxter also broke his leg in 1965 and made an excellent recovery

[reefinweedallday]

Durrant was a ned with promise put on a pedestal by the Huns because he was one of their own

Never went on to be anything other than a player who showed brief glimpses of magic,but then again so did Charlie Miller when he was younger and look what happened to him

[Guest sophia]

JB,

Bad news for DU and their supporters.

A Premier club like them should not be losing the goals they are.

Short term schandenfreude apart I bear the club no ill will.

Sandy,

As far as the blue website is concerned, they would say that wouldn't they!