Page 153 - Sport Culture and the Media

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Revelations, exclusives and ‘bungs’

The revelatory print sports text affords greater licence to its creator because
it trades on information that is obscured from the public gaze. It relies on
privileged access to the sports world that enables it to generate gossip, informa-
tion that would be mundane if it did not concern sports stars, and unattributed
statements and knowledge about the inner workings of sports organizations.
A story in the sports pages of a British tabloid newspaper, the Daily Mirror,
demonstrates how revelatory sports texts work. Entitled ‘I PLAY IN THE BIG
LEAGUE . . . GAZZA DISNEY! Says LES FERDINAND’, its main hook
involves a reported ‘“goofy” exchange’ between the English soccer internation-
als Les Ferdinand and Paul Gascoigne ‘as the England players gathered for last
summer’s European Championship’ (Wiechula 1997: 42). It enables readers to
eavesdrop on a conversation between two prominent sportsmen in a place
inaccessible to the sports public, although it transpires that the conversation has
already been recounted in ‘the latest issue of Total Sport magazine’ and also
involves an interview with one of the interlocutors. Thus the story is patched
together with a combination of recycled information about a publicized private
conversation and direct access to one of the personalities involved (the one who
has ‘spilled the beans’), made especially newsworthy by its impugning of the
standards of Scottish football. The revelatory, controversial tone, reinforced by
the tabloid trademark bolded type face and a ‘doctored’ photographic image
of Gascoigne complete with Mickey Mouse ears, nose and whiskers, is central
to the attention-grabbing pitch of the story:
Les Ferdinand has amazingly told Paul Gascoigne he’s ‘just playing in
Eurodisney’ in Scotland.
The Newcastle and England international responded tongue-in-cheek
after Gazza took the ‘mickey mouse’ over the Magpies’ title collapse
last year.
Strike ace Ferdy revealed that while Manchester United’s double-
winning England contingent hadn’t rubbed it in before Euro ’96, Gascoigne
took the p*** a little bit.
Medals
‘He kept on saying, “Aaarrgh, you lot blew it, you lot s*** yourselves, look
at my medals”.
‘But, as I said to him, “It’s alright for you playing up in
Eurodisney”.
‘I said I could go to Eurosdisney, score 40 a season and get myself a few
medals too’.
(Wiechula 1997: 42)