View from Afar: In Praise of the Internet
Look the internet!!!
By Abbers
January 21 2003
Information. It makes the world go round. But how do you access news about the Saints when Radio Northampton is not on the pre-set buttons of the stereo? Read on.........
My support of the Saints dates back some 6 years to the 1996-7 season when I graduated from university and had the time and fiscal means to travel to Northampton to spend weekends with the prospective Mrs A. The rugby provided a fun pursuit on a Saturday afternoon, and so the infatuation grew.
Luckily for me, my initiation into the ranks of Saintlyhood coincided roughly with the early versions of this site, so I have always been able to access news, team updates, comings and goings, previews, match reports, etc. at the click of a button to satisfy my thirst for news about the club. It makes the whole business of supporting the Saints so much more involved than just turning up on a Saturday afternoon for a couple of hours and I for one enjoy the extra dimension that belonging to the on-line community brings.
But it struck me a couple of days ago that anyone living outside the immediate Northampton area never used to have the luxury of Saints news and banter as and when we want it. What was the long distance Saints fan to do in the pre-internet era? Where would club news come from, even as recently as the early 1990s?
1. Television? Nope. Apart from the occasional cup game on Grandstand, no in-depth coverage was available. Rugby Special provided highlights of club matches, but unless it was the national team you followed, that was the extent of any televised club rugby. I exclude the coverage Sky provide as this evolved at roughly the same time as mass access to the internet, and my thoughts are concentrated earlier than this. Anyone in the East Midlands or East Anglia would get occasional updates from Look East if an important match was approaching, but I can guarantee you that these snippets never featured on South Today!
2. Radio? Nah. As with TV, club rugby received scant coverage on national radio apart from the domestic cup final and scores being read out around 4.45 on a Saturday afternoon as a pre-cursor to the football results. Again, anyone living in the Northampton area would be able to get more specific local coverage, but this wasn't an option if you could only pick up West Country FM.
3. The press? Think again. Match reports in the broadsheets on Sundays and Mondays aside, very little club news received column inches pre-professionalism, so midweek events and team announcements went unnoticed. The same principle applies as to local TV and radio in as much as the local press, specifically the Chron, provided detailed club news and interviews, but I don't believe this venerable publication made the news stands of Manchester, Truro or Leeds on a regular basis.
4. Teletext/Ceefax? Better. Brief pre-match team news and any major signings and events made it to the rugby pages of Teletext, but limited to about 100 words per page and very much a headline service. Invariably, this only whetted the appetite for more information rather than satisfying the requirement for news.
So none of the available media were able to bridge the distance between the long distance Saints fan and the club on a daily basis.
And then came the emergence of mass access to the internet. Enthusiasts and followers of a myriad of sports, hobbies and interests could suddenly and instantly claim a world-wide presence, sharing their passions with a global audience. And people living near Southampton. Information and gossip emerging from the Gardens could now be shared with anyone who cared to read about it, and I for one am eternally grateful for the service it provides, enabling me to get my fix from the South Coast without having to resort to daily round trips to Weedon or Towcester to pick up the Chron. Not that I'm that desperate, you understand.
So for me and many like-minded souls who support from afar, I'd like to raise a glass to both the boffins who created the web and to Chris, RJD and many others like them who keep their audiences happy, sometimes in very trying circumstances! (Not that we ever mention it of course......Ed!)
Three cheers for the techies and Come on You Saints!
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