In one of my third-year Work Placements I had the opportunity to cover the Men’s Hockey World Cup qualifiers by Hockey Wales, which was held in Cardiff. I’ve never previously covered hockey, this was a completely different experience to what I was used too.
There were several obstacles that I had to overcome when reporting on the matches, firstly was dealing with players names while doing live updates and in my match report, as there was a range of European countries competing. Having never reported on a game of hockey properly I was unsure with every rule, especially with the professional level having different rules to the university standard. This was something that I had to overcome quickly in order to produce quality work. After watching the first game of the tournament and producing live updates on my Twitter, I was comfortable with how the game worked.
I also interviewed players after every match to post on my social media channels, to show the different work I was doing at the tournament. Doing these interviews taught me a lot about using the correct tone and how important clear pronunciation is, as I interviewed, French, Polish, Austrian, Scottish, Russian and Italian players. Therefore, I had to ensure that the players from different countries understood my questions properly in order to gather a good interview. This also taught me to slow down when talking and interviewing different people, naturally I talk quite quickly. However, being able to slow down and tone my accent down will help me if I decide to go into broadcasting or radio opportunities in the future.
27th October, 2021
Tobias' Sports Journalism Blog 