We at the Nottingham Sport would like to apologise over the lack of news during the festive period.
With only two part-time writers we rely heavily on the assistance of others to provide us with stories and reports and have simply not had the manpower over the Christmas period to deliver the level of information you might have expected.
We have grown fast in three months with a healthy twitter following and have recorded stats of well over a thousand views at peak but on average hitting just over 100 readers a day hasn’t been enough to justify bringing you our regular level of news over Christmas so we decided to take a much needed holiday instead.
With two writers and a heavy football schedule along with regular Ice Hockey we hope you understand it’s been difficult for us to cover games as we have families too that we didn’t want to neglect for what we predicted would be a low level of hits whilst others also take time off at this moment of the year.
What we will do however is continue to provide you with news in the new year and from 2020 and beyond as we look for more content from sport across Nottinghamshire and we open out to more writers who we ask to get in touch if you are willing to contribute.
Our Main Objective…
Even today if you click on the sport section of the Nottingham Post website (amidst all the adverts) we see an unhealthy bias to Nottingham Forest Football Club with the first 48 news links on the main sports page all related to NFFC before six from Notts County and five from Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club making up the ‘other sport’ section. We don’t think that is fair on our counties sports teams which is why we set up the Nottingham Sport website, to cover all sports across the county as evenly as possible and even if we are supporters of Nottingham Forest to not give such a huge media bias to them that all our other counties teams get left behind.
What We Have Learned…
Whilst we agree Forest are the main draw we have found out that our cities Ice Hockey team is also massively supported and by covering them to the best we can it has helped exposed the team more to regular sports fans in the county. Whilst through our links football was always going to be the main source of information through the site we have been thankful to all those so far contributing with good chunky reads from their opinion on Nottingham Forest at the top echelons of the Championship right through to Non League and grass roots where we are regularly supplied by the Nottinghamshire Senior League with weekly bulletins.
Whilst football has been great (and we urge clubs reporters and secretaries to keep sending match reports, news and photos to info@nottinghamsport.com) we have found other more niche sports more difficult to report on. Sports like basketball and hockey which we want to cover more of and surprisingly rugby union are especially difficult but for some of the local clubs involved who have helped us with match reports and news. Whilst cricket and ice hockey has not been a problem to report on we do find ourselves reliant on these local clubs finding us news which makes our lives easier so anyone who can regularly send news in to info@nottinghamsport.com please do so as it not only benefits your club but also the people of Nottingham who get to read about you.
What Does The Future Hold…
Whilst we want to provide you with a platform of sporting news for the county of Nottinghamshire from all levels we understand that until we have the man (or woman) power with regular assistance from freelance journalists, writers, reporters and contributors we can only provide news for those that help us.
During the early part of 2020 we’ll concentrate on Nottingham Forest, Mansfield Town, Notts County, Nottingham Panthers and Nottingham Rugby whilst anything received in that we feel suitable for our audience will also be shared.
We aim by the summer to cover Nottinghamshire Cricket Club and Trent Rockets along with grass roots cricket and by the 2020/21 season will have enough followers, viewers and writers to cover not just professional soccer but non-league, semi-pro, grass roots and all the other sports leagues in the county from rugby union to netball, badminton to basketball, boxing to UFC and even crown green bowling to pub sports like pool and darts.
Our aim is to give people a sporting website to be proud of in Nottingham, one that offers you what the old football post did back in the day and one that will be around for hopefully a similar amount of time.
Just because we’re having a bit of time off doesn’t mean we’re gone forever, we’ll be back bigger and better in 2020 and with your help will hope to provide the county of Nottinghamshire and the city of Nottingham with a sports service dedicated to it’s people on a wide a scale as possible.
So When Will We Be Back…
Next week on Monday 6th January 2020 we’ll be back in office as usual working 9-5 Mon to Fri with coverage from then concentrating on the full winter programme for our sides and looking forward to upcoming action moving forward along with a review of how our top teams did over Christmas and the New Year.
If you would like to write for us or if you know someone that would like their sports writing skills shown off to the masses, email info@nottinghamsport.com and come and join us along our adventure.
Happy New Year and here’s to a Nottingham 2020.
*Main image @trentendmalc the sunset going down on Nottingham Forest’s 2019 v Wigan at the City Ground.
