A thoroughly entertaining panel staged by Mail Newspapers at Ad Week on Monday gave a full house some interesting insights – with no data or programmatic stuff for a change.
The theme was how two ex-footballers and and the most successful ex-England rugby coach were finding life on the other side of the fence as columnists for the Mail and as TV pundits.
The weekend’s sport could hardly have been kinder to the session’s sponsors, and after the amazing day of rugby had been discussed with Sir Clive Woodward – who insisted he had not fallen out with anyone in the rugby community since crossing into the media (“I always say what I think and I would have done; I have final say on my Mail column”) – it was left to former Anfield stalwart, Jamie Carragher, to make the gag of the day.
Carragher said that he had found it quite easy commenting on ex-team mates because “I’ve only got one really good friend in football.” Unfortunately, Carragher’s best mate is Steven Gerrard, dismissed for stamping on a Manchester United player at the weekend, and roundly condemned for his stupidity by everyone – including Carragher – who was analysing the match for Sky, and followed up in the Mail on Monday.
Martin Keown, the ex-Arsenal player, and Woodward both felt they could return to coaching one day (Keown coached under Arsene Wenger at Arsenal for a year) and that their media experience and the way they watch and analyse from a different perspective, would make them better coaches when and if they did.
Woodward’s media consumption as England coach was to read all the press (with cuttings prepared for him daily) and he could predict what certain journalists would say. Carragher had always been a Mail man as a player he claimed, but sneaked in the Daily Mirror and the Liverpool Echo too.
Keown said how the influence of Sir Alex Ferguson and the Manchester United contingent in the England squad was such that the players’ flight would land in Manchester rather than London on return from international trips (“Gary Neville always got on first, and sat at the front”).
Watch the session on the AWE website here.
