Hear the crowd cheer
Interview with Lorna Morton
Many of our associates spend their free time getting involved with their local communities and supporting local projects. In this article, Bosch associate and football fan Lorna Morton, Clerical Assistant, HR Department, Bosch UK, shares her experience as a match reporter for Dunfermline Athletic Football Club.
Lorna- first of all, what sparked your interest in football?
I’ve been a fan of Dunfermline since 1980 when my dad and big brother started taking me along to games. Growing up, we would always have a full house on a Saturday, my brother would have his mates round, my mum would feed everyone, and there’d be scarves flying everywhere. As I got older, I just wanted to find out where they went off to at the weekend!
From my mum’s house you can hear the noise of the crowd whenever there’s a game on- that was 10,000 people cheering. It might not sound like much when you think about the size of other teams’ stadiums, but when I was a little girl, that seemed like so many people. It’s nostalgic for me. Even now, I’m involved with a group of Pars fans (the nickname for the club) who are older than me and they have so many stories and can remember so much about the old games- it’s amazing.
That sounds like such a fantastic community. What does a typical day match reporting look like, and how does the community fit into that?
I normally start by contacting the club and asking if I can secure a seat in the press box. I can sit there for free because the club’s website pays for the seat, but since COVID and stricter press regulation, at away games I normally sit in the away end with the other fans. That can be useful as the other fans act as an extra set of eyes to pick up things I might have missed. I just have to make sure I get a good view and tell the stewards what I’m doing- at one game, a steward took a look at my laptop and asked me if I was going to throw it!
There’s a lot of variety, I’ve done post-match interviews and have sat in on the women’s team as well, but typically I do match reporting for the men’s games. I do more than just say exactly what’s going on; I talk about the atmosphere and the weather, and I like to do a bit of homework about the opposing team and know their history. I put my humour into the reporting, and people are used to that now!
I know what I’m doing is important- a lot of people can’t always access the livestreams, and even some people who are at the games read the reports just to see if something happened from another angle that they might have missed.
Has your experience as a football reporter helped you develop your skills at Bosch?
I’ve been doing this for twelve years now, and the secretarial skills I already had have built up so much in that time. Active listening, the ability to touch type and attention to detail are just a few things you need to be a successful match reporter. Many people have to transcribe the audio afterwards which can be time consuming whereas I can type away in real time!
The active listening skills you have to employ in any aspect of football are always valuable in professional life too, as well as communication skills from liaising with fans and staff at the club.
Do you feel that being a woman has hindered you and your reporting in what is a traditionally male targeted sport?
Being a woman doing the reporting has never bothered me in the slightest. Clubs are a fair bit more open these days. It’s not just as the women’s teams get more popular: there’s more women working in football, whether that be as physios, as sports journalists, or even the big community of women like me who have been getting involved on a voluntary basis for a long time. Any women that are interested shouldn’t be worried about getting stuck in and volunteering at their local club.
What advice would you give to anyone interested in getting involved?
Do it - it’s just as simple as contacting your local club. I’d really like more people to get involved with their local football teams. There’ll be volunteering opportunities no matter how big or small the team is, and it doesn’t always have to be reporting. You could go there and sticker the seats for the season ticket holders or get into fundraising. It gives you a different perspective on the game- you start watching as more than just a fan, you become involved in the community around the club, and that’s great fun for you and supports the club too.