Interview with author and head of Public Affairs, NFL Europe, David Tossell.
On the 26th February this year I made my way to London to the compact British offices of one of the world’s most influential sporting organisations, the National Football League International (NFL).
I expected the NFL’s European HQ to be a swanky US style affair, instead of which it is housed on the third floor of an unpretentious block. But when I got inside their location, I certainly knew where I was. There are Super Bowl pictures lining the walls, two full New England Patriots uniforms and various mementos such as big match footballs and all the helmets of the 32 NFL teams.
I was there to meet David Tossell who has been the NFL Head of European Public Affairs for some seventeen years. David is also a published author, having done twelve sports books, four of which have been short-listed for the British Sports Books Awards. His main themes have been Association football, American football, rugby union and cricket. In this interview we cover a variety of sporting subjects including how David got into journalism, his time with the now defunct Today newspaper; cricket, in particular Tony Greig; David’s job at the NFL; football, including his book on Bertie Mee the former Arsenal manager; and a number of other interesting sporting matters.
My first question was to find out how David got into his line of business. He told me that as a youngster he had been a fan of John Motson and Barry Davies and had thought how brilliant it would be to do that sort of job. When he was about fifteen he realised that it wasn’t an impossible thing to do because there was a pathway and it was like an electric light bulb being switched on. He could see that as a sports lover who wasn’t going to make it as a professional player in anything, the obvious way to stay involved – and get paid for it – was sports journalism. From that point on he was single minded and determined to pursue this path. Now he is lucky enough to be doing things which many would happily do as a hobby.
As a supplementary question to my first question, and because David had mentioned John Motson and Barry Davies, I asked him whether he did what I used to do when I was younger, and commentate on Match of the Day (with the sound down!)
David said “Yes (didn’t everyone?!) Even when you went to matches you had a commentary going on in your head. I never got to be Barry Davies, but I got to do the next best thing”.
How had he got his first job, I asked.
David explained he had started off on the Barnet Press (* co-incidentally the same paper where John Motson began his journalistic career.)
The Motty connection was pure coincidence, David explained, although the Barnet Press did get him covering the same sort of stories that Motson did.
I asked David whether he was trained in a similar way to the way many journalists had been trained in the past, having to do a course and tests in short hand called Pitman tests. David said that he did.
“I had to get a minimum of a hundred words a minute, shorthand. I got to a hundred and ten quite quickly, then I sort of eased off a bit after that, and failed the hundred and twenty a couple of times.”
David continued: “They got me covering the local non league sides, such as Finchley. I covered a home game, and I remember running out to buy the paper when it was published, to see my name, and on the first story I covered they got my by line (name) wrong. They put Paul Tossell, instead of David!”
I said that must have been disappointing, David replied “It was a bit”!
I then followed up by saying that I asked every journalist I interview whether their first job had given them a good grounding in the business.
“Absolutely! We get a lot of people contact us now, or contact me now, saying that they write blogs or that they know a lot about a particular sport, and that they would like to get into being a journalist or broadcaster, and I always tell them that their best route is to do the basic journalist training, because it teaches you the fundamentals that you can apply, whether you become a cricket writer, football writer, or news reporter. If you’ve gone through the basic journalistic training then it kind of stands you in good stead. And I still use my short hand occasionally!”
Connected with his journalistic career David has written twelve books. I wondered, with other work commitments, how he found the motivation to write.
“It really started because there was a subject that I was particularly interested in. I didn’t make a conscious decision ‘Right, I’m going to write books now!’ I’d always had a love of sport in the seventies, that was the era I grew up in. It was 2001, my kids were starting to grow up a bit, I had a little bit more spare time, and I’d always wanted to write a book about the Arsenal double team, of 1971. That was really the starting point. Then it became kind of addictive, and I can’t stop writing now!”
I asked did it help that, at the time, he was sports editing a national newspaper (Today) and whether it opened doors for David.
“I think it gave me skills and tools to use, I don’t think it particularly helped by giving me contacts to write the book. But the tabloid journalist background did give me a certain discipline, and enabled me to reign myself in a bit where others might have wandered off a bit with the story.”
I then decided to go off my scheduled line of questions to ask whether it was easier to write for broadsheet newspapers, or the tabloid versions.
“I think they both have a particular skill, and I am a huge admirer of many journalists who write for both. I think they are different skills, and I greatly respect people like Oliver Holt, currently at the Daily Mirror, who I think writes fantastically for a tabloid writer having previously worked for the Times. I think the good ones could probably write for anything. If you took Michael Atherton off the Times and put him on The Sun I am sure he could write fantastically for them”.
I added “Is that because he has been a professional cricketer”?
“I think that gives him a great insight into the game but I don’t think it necessarily follows that you are able to translate your thoughts, as he does, either onto a broadcast or into print. I believe he is a fantastic journalist. You could probably put him into any environment, writing on any subject, and he would still be a great journalist.”
Going back to David’s career I was interested to find out how he got to his eventual position of Executive Sports Editor of Today.
“I was Executive Sports Editor, which practically meant you were number two or three on the sports desk, so not quite at the top, but almost there. At the time the route into national newspapers was to do shift work there. So I would go in and do shifts on evenings, or Sunday afternoon, and just kind of get known by them. It’s almost like being in the T.A’s I suppose, as opposed to the army. You’re one of a pool of people they can call on, and it kind of puts you first in the queue if there’s a job going. I joined the staff in 1988 having done shift work there for a year or so, and having done shift work on other national newspapers before that.”
So you were basically a staff writer initially?
“In the end I was more on the production side. You go into with one idea you’re going to be the Chief Sports Writer, or what have you, but my way in was working more on the production side. Being a sub editor, as well as doing some writing, and I guess I progressed quickly enough on the production side such that if I’d wanted to go back on the reporting side that would have been a backwards step in my career really. I ended up being one of the guys who were responsible for making decisions about what went in the paper, on what page, what the headlines were, and how the pages looked”.
David has written two books on one of the most interesting characters to come out of English cricket in the last forty years, the ebullient and self assured Tony Greig. I wondered why he had decided to write two books on the character of Greig.
One focuses more on him as an individual, in the other he features more as a catalyst for what unfolded during the 1976 West Indies Tour. The first question was “How do you think the West Indies saw Greig in ’76?”
“ I think there was a little of the pantomime about the whole thing. Especially when he did the interview where he said he was keen, with the help of Brian Close, and a few others, to make the West Indies ‘grovel’. Some of the people in the West Indies touring party were genuinely upset by the comments. People like Viv Richards, who were more politically aware, more than some of the others, and he kind of really took it to heart. He felt that what he said was wrong on all levels. I think there was a certain element of ‘this is great, we can use this to fire our boys up’ if you like, and the West Indies used that as something to beat Greig around the head with. If you look at the way the fast bowlers seemed to get faster every time he came to the wicket. So, though I am not saying they welcomed him saying it, I think in the end they used it to their advantage. Greig said that, in the end, they understood that what he said was clumsy and thoughtless rather than being malicious and they all got on with him O.K. in the end.”
I then asked why David felt the need to re appraise Greig in the second book, called
Tony Greig:A Reappraisal of English Crickets Most Controversial Captain.
“When I grew up, in the ‘70’s, Tony Greig was one of the most dominant characters on the field, both in terms of his personality and in the way that he played the game – and so much, of what he was remembered for, in the latter years, was a) the grovel thing, which I suppose I partly helped perpetuate, by writing a book called Grovel, but also the Kerry Packer stuff. I think what had got lost, over time, was what a terrific player he was, and that Greig was really up there with Flintoff, and possibly, not quite, up there with Botham. I thought it was time for people to be reminded that he was actually a damn good player”.
With Greig being brought up in South Africa to Scottish parents I wondered whether the people in the yellow and red ties and caps of the MCC felt that it was not cricket having this South African playing for England. This was the next point I put to David.
“I think that rankled with him – when everything went wrong, when all the Packer stuff came out, people did hold his South African background against him. I think the fact that his dad had been an RAF pilot and a war hero – I think that got forgotten by the public. He considered himself, and felt he’d earned the right to be considered, at least part British, if not fully British, I think he felt he could have been cut a bit of slack. Once he was thought to have done something that wasn’t typically English, and gentlemanly, his South African background was immediately brought up. I mean take the Alvin Kallicharran incident.
Tony Greig might have been operating strictly within the rules but there wasn’t anyone else within the England team who would have done what he did. Because of Greig’s South African background, and the competitive way he was brought up, people who were critical of him saw that he had that competitiveness without the English reserve. That ability to see when you were crossing the line, and had gone too far. He was without that English reserve if you like, so he just did what he did”.
When Tony Greig was coming through the ranks of English cricket he was spotted, very early on, by the renowned if slightly snooty E W (Jim) Swanton, who recommended Greig to the England selectors. When Greig signed to play for Kerry Packer and World Series Cricket in the mid ‘70’s their relationship deteriorated to such an extent that they never spoke again. I asked David whether he ever spoke to Tony for the book, and whether Tony was regretful he never made it up with Swanton.
“Yes I did, and he said that was one of the things he regretted about the whole Packer thing: he regretted nothing that he did, nothing that came out of it, or the stance he took, but he regretted not telling his dad and he regretted falling out with Jim Swanton over it.
I mean Jim Swanton had been important to Tony when he came into English cricket, he’d recommended Tony to Sussex, and wrote to the England selectors suggesting that they take Greig on the 70/ ’71 tour of Australia, which Jim Swanson says was the only time he ever wrote a letter to the selectors.
Greig got a letter from Swanton after the Packer story broke saying how disappointed he was that Greig hadn’t seen some of the consequences of what he did, and Greig said he kept that letter til the day he died. He tried to make his peace with Swanton over the years but they never quite hooked up to have that conversation that might have repaired some of the damage, then Swanton died before they had a chance to”.
I followed that question up by asking David what he thought the reason was for Greig’s move to World Series Cricket organised by Kerry Packer, other than the promise of a job for life?
“Well, Greig said himself that the starting point was the promise of a job for life, and the financial security it would give him, both as a cricketer and in his life after cricket. He said, unashamedly, in his later years, he did it number one for himself and his family, but he said he also did it because he felt the sport needed it to happen. Someone had to take that stand, cricketers in all countries at that time were underpaid and under valued at a time when there was an increasing amount of money coming into the game. Tony Greig was one of the first cricketers to have a sense of his own value, he realised that he had a commercial value beyond cricket and that his skills as a cricketer had a certain shelf life. Cricketers in general were getting a bad deal, he saw that, even though Kerry Packer didn’t set up World Series Cricket because he had the welfare of cricketer’s world wide at heart, it was definitely something that was going to benefit cricket and cricketers. As Greig said the authorities had it coming to them, and it had to be done”.
David has also written about the game of cricket at county level in one of his books called Following on: A Year with English Cricket’s Golden Boys, which follows Graeme Swann, Owais Shah, Graham Napier and Robert Key throughout an entire county season.
I asked David if he found out what made them tick as cricketers and people.
“I really enjoyed doing that book. Whether I really got to the bottom of what really made them tick as cricketers I’ll let people who have read the book decide. To me it seemed an interesting topic, and an interesting time to do it. It was an Ashes year, there was the twent20 World Cup, and the book really stemmed from seeing an article the Cricketer magazine, about a year or so earlier. The article marked the tenth anniversary of England winning the 1998 under 19 world cup. Those guys should all have been at their peak in that 2009 season, so it seemed a nice opportunity to catch up with all of them, see what had happened to them, and why some of them had fallen by the wayside, and why some of them were on the fringes of the England team.
I got lucky, to be honest, that I wrote that book in the year that Graeme Swann made his breakthrough, and helped England win the Ashes. That gave it more of an upbeat feel than it perhaps would have had, had we not won the Ashes.”
One of the subjects of that book was Owais Shah, who, despite chances on the international scene has never really succeeded at Test Level. I wondered whether David got an insight as to why not!
“I wish I knew, and I’ve always been a big fan of Owais Shah. I was a Middlesex member for two or three years. Having been a member when I was a kid I renewed my member ship in the early 2000’s for two or three years, just as he was coming into the team. I saw a lot of him playing early on so I became quite a fan of his. It’s really difficult to put your finger on why he didn’t succeed. For one thing he wasn’t picked at the right time”.
I interjected at this point to suggest maybe it was something akin to what Graham Hick went through in the early nineties, and I asked David if Owais Shahs problem had with this.
“I think it was slightly different with Owais Shah, because I think Graham Hick had plenty of chances and opportunities but, for whatever reason, wasn’t able to translate what he was able to do in county cricket into Test cricket. Owais Shah didn’t have much of a chance, he was never picked at the right time. He made his debut in 2006, played really well in India, and then over 2006 – 08 he scored loads of runs for Middlesex but never, apart from as a one off replacement for Michael Vaughn, Owais Shah never got picked at the right time.
The one opportunity England had to throw him in was when they went to Sri Lanka in 2007. They played Ravi Bopara instead, who ended up getting about three ducks in a row, when really Shah was the next cab off the rank. I think had he been given an opportunity then his story might have been very different”.
The next subject we covered was one of the most charismatic characters in English football, the ebullient Malcolm Allison. David’s book, appropriately called Big Mal, is a study of Allison’s life, right from his early playing days at West Ham and gives a warts and all account of Allison’s life and career. I asked David whether he was an easy subject to research.
“It was a fun subject to research and write about.”
(I thought it might have been, he was a very colourful character!)
“Yes, I’ve always written about stuff that I know I am going to find enjoyable. I write in my spare time, I don’t do it as a full time job, so for me I have to find subjects that I know I am going to enjoy researching and writing about. Again, having grown up in the 70’s, he was one of those characters who was just always there, he was always in the newspapers, and, in a similar way to the Tony Greig thing, I think, because, in the end, he only became known for the big fedora hat and the cigar, and the stories about the drinking and the champagne, I think people forgot, or overlooked, what an innovative coach he had been. Also what an influential figure he’d been in English since the late fifties, when he was a player at West Ham, through to 1970 when he finished winning his trophies at Man City”.
I wondered how much of an affect contracting tuberculosis had on Malcolm Allisons character.
“ It’s very easy and glib to say it instilled a greater competitive drive in him, but, in the same way Brian Clough’s knee injury ended up, in a sense, defining him, in his later life, I think it did have a huge effect. Malcolm Allison was in the prime of life, almost, when he went down with TB and I think it took him a long while to come to terms with him. His initial response, once he’d tried to come back and realised that he couldn’t play at the highest level again, was to turn his back on football completely. He became a professional gambler for a while. It did instil a determination that he could be the best at whatever he turned his hand to”.
One of Allisons prodigy’s at the West Ham Academy was legendary former England captain, Bobby Moore. Allison and Moore played in the same position, what these days we would call a centre back. In fact Moore’s first game for West Ham only came because Allison was injured. I asked how much of an influence, as a coach, did Allison have on Moore.
“From what Moore himself said over the years – and what other people have said – a large amount. One of the things that Malcolm did, when he was at West Ham, was help coach the youth team. He was very interested in playing a larger role in the club. Bobby Moore was one of the players he mentored really, he played in the same position (left half.) Ironically Bobby Moore’s debut game for West Ham was the game where Malcolm thought he could have made a come back, after having part of his lung removed. He was back to the fringes of the team, there were chants for him to get back in the team, there were some injuries, and the manager went for Bobby Moore instead of Malcolm. That was effectively the end of Malcolm’s career. But the one thing he said was, if his place was going to go to anyone, he was glad it went to Bobby Moore. Moore’s affection and (he said it himself) his love for Malcolm Allison never diminished throughout the years. In the book I spoke to Jeff Powell, sports writer for the Daily Mail. He was very close to Bobby Moore, and one of the last people to see him alive (he’d met him for lunch a couple of days before Bobby Moore died) and Moore had gone out in a leather coat which Allison had given to him, and he’d said “this might be one of the last times I go out, I want to wear Malcolm’s coat.” Which says a lot about what he thought about him.”
At Manchester City, during the sixties and seventies Allison built up a successful working relationship with Joe Mercer. Mercer led his previous club, Aston Villa, to League Cup Final victory, in 1961, with a 3-2 victory over Rotherham United, in a two legged tie. Mercer suffered a stroke shortly after the final and, on his return, to Villa Park, was sacked by the club board.
So, when the ‘footballing grocer’ was appointed at City, in 1965, he wanted a younger man alongside him, to take care of business on the training ground. They enjoyed a sustained period of success at Main Road, winning seven trophies in seven years. I wondered how the relationship worked on a daily basis.
“I think, from what people have told me, Joe Mercer was very good at giving Malcolm Allison his head, to a certain extent, particularly on the football field, letting him do what he wanted, putting his schemes into place. He was also very good at reigning Malcolm in, when he needed to be…”
(Aside, Owen) Was that very often?
“… it was sometimes, when Malcolm might want to be a bit too radical or too experimental. What was noticeable was that, when Malcolm became manager at Manchester City, and didn’t have Joe Mercer there as a steadying influence, it kind of all started to go wrong. When Malcolm was in charge of making the transfer’s things started to go in the wrong direction, and he was never as manager as he had been as a coach, working with Joe Mercer. The chemistry between the two certainly seemed to work.”
I wondered whether Malcolm thought he was a good manager?
“I think, probably he did! Particularly having the type of personality he had – he was never going to say he wasn’t the best at anything. But, it’s very difficult to make a case for that, when you look at his record as manager, compared with his record as a coach”.
After a short period in sole charge at City Allison resigned from his position in early March 1973, but by the end of the same month, was in charge at Crystal Palace’s Selhurst Park. Here he tried to implement the same sort of regime Mercer had with him. He brought in a younger coach to work alongside him, and try out fresh new ideas. That young coach was a certain Terry Venables. I was intrigued to know how that relationship worked.
“Malcolm was an influence on a lot of people of Venables’ generation. Malcolm Allison was one of the first people, along with the likes Dave Sexton, noted for being manager at QPR, and Manchester United, and Noel Cantwell, who was one of Matt Busbies at Manchester United, during the Busby Babes era! They really wanted to start taking more responsibility for the game themselves, they spent a lot of time talking about it, and I think, if you look at the generation of players that came after them, like Terry Venables, then people like Malcolm Allison and Ron Greenwood had a huge influence on them”.
(Aside) They were similar personalities; do you think that’s why they got on? (Terry Venables and Malcolm Allison.)
“Well, people with very similar personalities can clash as well! I think certainly the way that Malcolm liked to think about the game did. Malcolm was a very deep thinker, about the game, and wasn’t afraid to try new things, as was Terry Venables, and they were very like minded in that way”.
At this point the thought struck me that it could be said that Malcolm Allison has had an over arching influence on the English game. He brought through the only England captain, Bobby Moore, to win the World Cup, and Terry Venables, one of only two managers to get England any decent tournament results since 1966. This was the next point David and I discussed.
“If you look at that generation of players they were clearly influenced by the likes of Malcolm Allison, Ron Greenwood, Bill Nicholson, Alf Ramsey, and a totally new generation of coaches came through that were much more cerebral. People at West Ham remember what a great job Malcolm did for them – even though he was only the captain Malcolm effectively ran the team. He did all the training and came up with the tactics – and some people at West Ham say that there should be a statue of Malcolm Allison outside Upton Park, as well as the three world cup heroes”.
The first book that David wrote was on the double winning Arsenal Manager, Bertie Mee. I asked David whether it was a labour of love.
“I am an Arsenal fan, of that era in particular, and I was born just down the road from Highbury, and my dad was an Arsenal fan so that became the team that I followed, and that’s why I wrote the book about the ’71 team. In the same way that writing Grovel made me want to find out more about Tony Greig the book about the Arsenal double team made me want to write, and find out more about, Bertie Mee. Unfortunately Bertie Mee died while I was writing Seventy One Guns, so I never actually got to meet him. So I approached his daughters, and they gave me a lot of help and support. But his was a unique story really, and one that just wouldn’t happen now. He was a physiotherapist, by trade, and became Arsenals team physio. When they needed a new manager, to replace Billy Wright, they looked to the team physio. That just wouldn’t happen now”.
(Aside) I did point out that Nigel Atkins had taken a similar route to the top, at Southampton.
“Clearly, instances like that, show it is possible for it to happen. I think what is not possible now is that a club like Arsenal would entrust their playing fortunes to a physiotherapist. It just would never happen. Big clubs now want a manager with a great CV of managing European clubs. Bertie was a) a physio by trade and b) someone who had never managed a team in his life c) someone who didn’t have much playing pedigree. To think that a big club now would look at someone with that background is just unthinkable.”
(Aside) But it happened to Nigel Atkins?
“Yes, it did, but I don’t think we’ll be sitting here in thirty years time talking about how it’s happened again at Arsenal”.
I then wanted to find out about Bertie Mee, the man, starting with what he was like as a manager.
“Well Dave Sexton and Don Howe did the coaching. People say Bertie Mee’s strength was getting the right people in the right position, let them do their job, and Bertie would concentrate on the organisational and man management side of things. The character people most liken him too, and, especially, Frank McLintock, is Captain Mainwairing (from Dad’s Army) He could be quite fussy, and pompous, but had a way about him that people responded to, he didn’t alienate people. When Bertie Mee showed up on the side of the training ground people wanted to work even harder for him”.
At the time I spoke to him David had just finished writing a book on Derek Dougan, who is probably best known for his time at Wolves. He was also fairly influential in furthering the cause of player’s rights, and spent most of his time, after football, championing that cause. I wondered how David had got involved in that project.
“While I was working on the book on Malcolm Allison I got in touch with Derek Dougan, to, ostensibly, ask him about Malcolm Allison, because they worked on ITV’s World Cup panel in the ‘70’s. During those conversations Derek asked me if I’d work with him on his autobiography, but then he died.
I’d got interested in doing the book, though, at that point, so I approached the family, who knew that Derek had asked me to work with him. I told them I’d like to write the book anyway, so I went ahead and did it”.
I then asked David whether he thought Dougan’s achievements had largely been forgotten, except in Wolverhampton?
“ I think they probably have, and you can see a theme emerging in my books here! They’re about people who have not been appreciated as much as they should have been. So much of Derek Dougan’s storyline ties in with how football history has gone, over the last thirty or forty years. When you look at his involvement with the players union, and getting freedom of contract, or his involvement with Kettering Town, who were the first club to have shirts sponsorship. There have been a lot of issues that Derek was involved in that have been pivotal in the history of the sport. That for me made him great to write about. Plus the fact he was a great character to write about, and a very controversial one. For example there is a story about him asking for a transfer on the day of Blackburn’s appearance in the 1960 FA Cup Final. Who would do that now-a-days?! He was a compelling character to write about”.
(Aside) I wondered whether David had managed to speak to one of Dougans strike partners at Wolves, Peter Knowles. (Who now is a Jehovah’s Witness!)
“No I didn’t but he had a big influence on Derek Dougan, as they were the Kingpins at Wolves during the 1960’s. People said of Knowles that he could have gone on many times and played for England. Had Dougan had another three or four years with him it could have had a big impact on what Wolves could have achieved, and a big impact on Derek Dougan’s footballing career”.
(Aside) Dougan was from Northern Ireland, and playing at the same time as George Best and Pat Jennings (also Northern Irish.) With those three in the vanguard I asked David why he thought Northern Ireland hadn’t gone on to bigger and better things.
“I think that was one of the things that disappointed Derek. On paper they had some good players at the time, the kind of players they don’t have in the modern era. They came closest to qualifying for a World Cup in ’68 and ’70, but they couldn’t past Russia. I think it was fustrating for him that they didn’t do better. He was a very proud Northern Irishman. He was very proud to captain Northern Ireland as well. I think that was one of the regrets of his career that they couldn’t have achieved more. His first game for Northern Ireland was in the World Cup Finals of 1958 and they won that game, then he got dropped from the rest of the tournament, and that was another frustration for him. I think his international career was probably a source of frustration for him, that it didn’t produce more results for him than it did, in the end”.
David has been NFL International’s Communications Director for the past seventeen years. The role started out relatively small, but as the sport has grown in popularity so has the role. David got offered the NFL job on the same day as he lost his job at Today. He says “I’d been a fan of American football, and had covered it for the Today newspaper anyway, so, in a way, it was perfect for me.”
David explained further:
“I first went on holiday to the States in ’82, and happened to be there when lots of games were being shown on the T.V. and fell in love with the sport. I started following it on T.V. over here, played it for two or three years, for amateur teams in Windsor and Slough, and, when I went to Today, because the sport was reaching the stage where newspapers were covering it, and no one new much about it on the paper, and I did, I got to cover it. I got to know a lot of people within the NFL, and when they were looking for someone to be head PR within Europe they asked me to do it, and I was happy to say yes. But I don’t write books on American football because of my position here.
My interest just came purely from visiting the States, and liking what I saw. I am one of these people who can be a bit of a sponge, if you like. If I spend too long looking at something I will become a fan of it. Through work here I used to spend about a month every year in the southern states of the USA, and became a big fan of country music, because I heard so much of it. As well as NASCAR racing. I am a fan of American football and baseball, but I am not as big a fan of baseball as I would like to be simply because there are not enough hours in the day. Plus, you’ve got to remember, I like all the sports over here as well, so its difficult to fit them all in”.
I asked David what he did on a daily basis for NFL International?
“Well my role here is primarily to promote and publicise the NFL’s activities in Europe. I handle all our PR and press activity, as well as our government relations. I’m responsible for developing and maintaining relations with other sports organisations. The role has evolved in the seventeen years that I’ve been here, so, even though I’ve been here a long time, the role is very different to what it was all those years ago. It’s one that continues to be challenging and enjoyable”.
There have been frequent rumours of a possible British NFL franchise in London. The NFL already have in place two games a season at Wembley, I asked David how likely the franchise idea was.
“Well if there is a franchise deal in Europe I think it’s quite likely it would be in Britain. The interesting thing is that the boss of the NFL in the states, Roger Goodell, talks a lot about if the sport here keeps developing in the way it has done we will put Britain in a strong position to have an NFL franchise over here. But we haven’t set ourselves a timeline for that to happen in. Clearly, however, moving up to two games this year, and having sold both those games out, shows that there is an appetite for the sport here that we don’t think we’ve maximised yet. We want to continue to create more fans and keep growing the sport in this country, and play more games over here.
Although we haven’t got this far in the discussions, yet, I think, from a practical point of view, it would make sense to have a franchise based in London, as it is Britain’s capital city, and I just think having it in one place would be better for the sport”.
I asked next why previous attempts to popularise the sport in this country hadn’t worked too well, particularly the London Monarchs.
“I think the London Monarchs didn’t work because they weren’t the “real thing” (a pale imitation of the real thing.) People who became fans over here did so as a result of watching the game on TV in the ‘80’s, and, when the monarchs came along, they could see it was division two. It wasn’t the real thing.
People had already developed their affinities with their NFL teams by that stage. It’s like supporting Arsenal and Cambridge United at the same time, you know one is going to be a lower standard than the other. People didn’t identify with the London Monarchs in sufficient numbers to make it work over here”.
As well as being a huge sports fan I am a devotee of the computer games market. I wondered how much of an effect on the popularity of the sport the Madden series of computer games had had, since the first one came out in 1989. Which, co incidentally, was around the time the sport was getting extremely high viewing figures on Channel 4.
“It has had a big impact. We like to ask people, in our surveys, how they got into the sport, and a lot of people still say it was through Madden. It’s always been one of the market leaders in sports gaming lots of people made a point of buying the new game annually, even if they weren’t massive NFL fans, because the game was so good. It was also better than other games in the market. Other games may have caught up now, and it may not be such a factor, but it’s still a great way to understand the sport and get into the game. Suddenly you’re seeing, on the field, those same players you’ve been picking on the console, and you will be familiar with the same defensive schemes and tactics that you’ve been creating on Madden. It is a way to break down a lot of the barriers”.
(Aside) I was 23 when I started getting into American Football, on a serious level. I wondered how David thought he could grow the fan base for the sport amongst younger people.
“We don’t target a specific age group; we just go for people who are already pre disposed to follow sport. We do an awful lot to try and speak to the student population. Its one of the reasons why, every year, we have a number of our games on free to air T.V. – we are on Channel 4 and the BBC. A younger audience, who don’t have access to Sky, because maybe they’re students, or don’t have the money, need to be able to find free NFL coverage because if you’re purely on Sky you’re eliminating a large part of the population”.
Being relatively new to the NFL I am having to get used to the nuances of the sport. So here is the Draft, explained in simple terms, for NFL novices!
“In simplest terms it’s like when you were at school and you used to pick teams in the playground and you have two team captains and they take it in turns to pick people for their team. So the way it works is that the worst team in the league gets the first pick of all the players that are coming out of college. That’s a very important corner stone of how the NFL operates and insures competitive balance. So the worst team every year gets the choice of the best new players. That’s the way it carries on through all seven rounds. The Kansas City Chiefs were the worst team this year and they will get first pick of the new crop of players. The Super Bowl Champions, the Baltimore Ravens, are 32nd in line to choose their players.”
(Aside) They have to work within a salary cap as well, don’t they?
“Yes, that’s another corner stone of keeping the League competitive. Each team has a certain amount it can spend, on players each year, and their salaries, and that maximum they can spend is well within what each team earns every year, from revenue from the league, and T.V. rights. We know every team can spend their maximum, and still have plenty to spare.
In theory it is possible for every team in the league to have a chance of winning the Super Bowl every year, so you don’t get a Man. City and United situation, where the richest teams have a strangle hold on the league every year.”
In the 2012 NFL season the Super Bowl was held in New Orleans, and two brothers, John and Jim Harbaugh, were coaching on opposite sides of the twenty five yard line. John was the coach of the Baltimore Ravens, while Jim was coach of the side that Joe Montana did so much to elevate in popularity, in the UK, during the ‘80’s and early ‘90’s – the San Francisco 49’s.
Despite a power cut early in the third quarter the Ravens won, 34 – 31. I asked David whether having two brothers in the Super Bowl was good for the sport.
“As someone who is responsible for publicising the game that sort of stuff is manna from heaven, because all the papers and broadcasters had a great story to write about. I think the game lived up to it, in the end. It looked, for a while, like the Ravens were going to run away with it, but, in the end, we got a fantastic game, as we seem to get most years in the Super Bowl”.
(Aside) I wanted to know how much active involvement the American stars of the NFL have in publicising the game in this country, such as Ray Lewis, Tim Tebow and Paton Manning, to which David said:
“Ray Lewis was over last summer. He came over really of his own accord, to mentor one of the teams in London, the London Warriors. A group who’ve all been drawn from inner city and quite deprived backgrounds. The kind of story that resonated with him. One of the things we want to do as much as we can here, at the NFL, is try and bring the big players here, and lessen the distance between the fans here and the sport in the U.S. So any time we can get a Ray Lewis or any of the other big names over here, that is a very important way for us to build the sport here”.
(Aside) If you can see your idols on the field it’s a lot easier to connect with them!
“Absolutely! The thing with American football is that the players are running around in helmets and you can’t recognise them facially, so if we can (metaphorically) take the helmets off the players for the fans that will help to elevate the popularity of the sport over here”.
Moving away from the NFL for my next question David has also written a book called Nobody Beats Us, about the Welsh Rugby team in the 1970’s, and their continued period of success throughout that decade. I wondered why, growing up, he had been so involved with that team.
“I think it was through just being a sports fan in the ‘70’s. I’d played rugby throughout the ‘70’s at school and I remember rushing home after the Saturday morning game for the five nation’s games in the afternoon. They were such spectacles – there was very little live sport on T.V. at that time – and those rugby internationals on a Saturday afternoon were just fantastic.
Even though I was an England fan that Welsh Team had an aura about them, with Gareth Edwards and Phil Bennett and JPR Williams. They were like the Brazilian football team of their time. It was such a joy to watch them, and, when I was thinking of subjects to write about, I wanted to write about something that fascinated me, and intrigued me, and meant something to me personally. That was why I decided to write a book about them”.
(Owen) You were a scrum half at school, how easy was it to perfect Gareth Edwards double hand pass.
“I never did! Well, I never managed to get the reverse pass, I could spin pass O.K. but he was able to do that kind of spin reverse pass, where he’d be running in one direction and he’d just be able to kind of flip it behind him, and still get the perfect spiral on it, and I never managed to do that. I always used to be running around trying to do that in our warm up sessions, but I never managed it! I realised, fairly early in my rugby career, I was never going to be a Gareth Edwards, so I just kind of settled for enjoying watching it. He was such a joy to interview – I must have asked him questions he’d been asked millions of times over the years, but he answered every one in a way that made you think that it was the first time that he’d ever been asked that question.
As you would know, as an interviewer, it’s very refreshing when someone treats you with that kind of respect.
I mean that team, in the 70’s, that I grew up with, is timeless. I think a lot of sport is like that, and can be handed down the generations, from one to another. I was an Arsenal fan because my dad was. And, going back to my job here at the NFL, we’re starting to see the second generation of fans engage with the game”.
(Owen) I wondered how important, to the whole Welsh set up, Carwyn James and Clive Rowlands were. David replied that:
“It’s interesting that Carwyn was never the coach of the Welsh Team, he was the coach of the Lions, the coach of Llanelli, but when you look at the players he had he was obviously very influential. Clive Rowlands, who was the Welsh coach for half of the seventies, and John Dawes, who was the coach for the second half, both would have drawn from him, particularly John Dawes, who was Carwyn James’s Lions captain, and he said he took an awful lot from him, as he became coach of the Welsh side in the second half of the decade”.
(Owen) I’ve heard lots of stories about the team, and it seems to me like they were almost like a family.
“Yes, I think that’s what a lot of successful sports teams become. There is a great camaraderie that comes out of that experience. If you’re a successful team you kind of naturally become closer, and that makes you even more successful. I mean the stories the boys used to tell me about when they would have get togethers on the beach at Port Talbot, how they’d train on the beach on a Sunday – that whole environment did make them very close, and of course in those days they were all amateurs, so there’s none of the sort of potential for jealousies that might creep into professional sport about “he’s earning more than me”, or whatever – people are kind of all in it together. They’re all doing it in their spare time, no ones making any more money that anyone else. They were, it seems, a very close group of players. You can’t be that successful over so many years unless you have a special kind of chemistry”.
(Owen) How are you able to get under the skin of your subjects, and to what do you attribute the great success of your books?
“I’m flattered that you say they are a great success!
..I think it starts with research. I read a lot of books where I kind of get frustrated that there might be some factual errors, or things have been missed out. You can never know too much about a subject, the more you know, the more you know which questions to ask about it. I try to be as thorough as I can be with the research. Then its just being interested enough, I guess, to want to find out from people what their thought process was at that time, why things worked out the way they did, and sometimes to look beyond the obvious questions.
Some books are easier to write than others, for example I’m writing a book, which is due out in a few weeks, about the Stanley Matthews FA Cup Final, of 1953. Now when you’ve got a good knowledge base on your subject, because it’s something you grew up with or know a lot about, they’re easier to research. I admire the authors that wrote factual books before the advent of the internet. That is such a short cut. You do a Google search on someone and you find they’re coach of a youth team somewhere, and here’s there e mail and phone number. Within half an hour you’ve spoken to someone and arranged an interview!”
(Owen) What do you enjoy about writing your books, and have you ever been commissioned to write a book?
“The way it works is that I will have an idea, and I will go to a publisher fairly early in the process, and they will either say ‘yes we like the idea’ or ‘no, it’s not for us.’ In most cases it’s been yes we like the idea, and at that point I will get commissioned to write it. I’ve never got to the end of a book, having written it, without knowing that there was a home for it. What I love about it is that I just love sports history. I love the opportunity to speak to people. I love sports history, I love the opportunity to speak to people who were heroes of mine growing up, I’ve been lucky, ninety nine times out of a hundred they’ve proved to be nice people, easy to talk to, and happy to help you. I enjoy the actual process of writing, I enjoy that whole part of it when you’ve got all the various pieces – you’ve got the research, you’ve got the interview that goes with it, and it becomes almost like a jigsaw puzzle putting it all together.
And I love that feeling when a box arrives, you open it up, and there’s a book inside with your name on it.
…For me that is gold dust”!!
David’s current book is called The Great English Final, published by Pitch Publishing. I would just like to thank David for his time and hope you the reader have enjoyed the interview!
Owen Oracle 