Monday, November 3, 2014

No Nonsense - an update.

Folks, most of you or at least those of you who read the stuff I write will have noticed a steep decline in the amount of articles. This is by way of an explanation.

I started out writing this blog due to frustrations at what I felt were damn good letters going unpublished on F365. This provided a platform for my various vents/rants/and occasional piece of serious writing. However.......

The reality is that it is nigh on impossible for a mere amateur like myself to get my stuff across to a wider audience. Despite numerous attempts to widen the net it seems that getting a private blog out to a large number of people was beyond me.

In the meantime I had started posting some cricketing articles on a website called Backward Point based out of Australia, which subsequently closed down, ho hum.

A fellow white collar boxer Nick Burnham suggested I started submitting articles for The Roar in Australia. The Roar is a wonderful interactive platform that connects writers of all levels of experience with a wide and highly responsive audience.

From there, a very nice young chap called Ayo who runs Voomfootball asked me to write feature pieces for his website which I have since been doing on a regular basis.

Also, at the same time, my very good friend Julius Foo put me in touch with Andy Whitelaw at Red Card Sports Radio here in Singapore. Since first being introduced back in July I have been in the studio twice on the live show as well as several phone interviews again on the live show.

Andy and Ahmad Khan that front the show are two extremely talented and professional young individuals who I hope and believe will go on the be roaring successes in the sporting media world.

Their RedCardConnect website is now up and running also and I will be submitting regular articles there.

These platforms are allowing me access to a far wider audience than I could dream of with my own site and each of them allows a huge amount of freedom to write the pieces that you wish to.

The cricket writing has had to take a bit of a back seat for the time being and what I have discovered over time is that I lack the technical knowledge of cricket to really write about it effectively having never really played the game.

I will continue to write the odd piece here and there if there is something I feel well placed to write about.

So, No Nonsense isn't dead, far from it. I will however be continuing to write and post articles using the excellent platforms that I have mentioned above rather than via the No Nonsense page.

No Nonsense, where the name came from.

The guy in the picture, Brian Clough was probably the original and ultimate no nonsense footballing figure, he was a (flawed) genius but always told it how it was which is the aim of the writing.

The actual idea for the 'No Nonsense' tag came from an (he's actually Welsh) England cricket fan who I ran into a couple of times at the Gabba Ashes test, as I recall he resides in Perth, WA.

Throughout the Test and regardless of score, periodically throughout the day from his seat in the middle tier (usually above a huge contingent of Aussie fans) he would cup his hands and make an amazing type of hooter sound at huge volume which always got everyone's attention.

He would then stand up and hold two placard boards up, one said ''AVE' and the other said 'IT!' He would shout this at the top of his voice several times much to the chagrin of the home support below him.

On their becoming slightly boisterous in their animated response to his antics, he would whip the signs over and they now read 'NO' and 'NONSENSE' and he would make a large and exaggerated 'shush' motion with his index finger in front of his mouth ushering silence - which annoyed everyone even more. He would then sit down and wait for about an hour before doing it again, entirely priceless if you were there to see it.

So in the meantime, look out for RedCardConnect and Voomfootball, these guys deserve everyone's support for trying to do something really fan based and if you don't ever read the Roar website, it's definitely worth a look.

No Nonsense.