In the last At The Town Voices Panel meeting there was a discussion between fans and club officials about the conduct of the Huddersfield Examiner. I wasn’t at the meeting, but the minutes released this week suggest fans highlighted perceived bad behaviour from the local paper and asked some pointed questions about whether the club would continue to work with them.
Here’s the most relevant bit of the minutes:
[The Voices Panel] Understand [The Examiner] are a business and need to sell papers but feel they are abusing their position at the Club and not upholding the code of conduct that the Club abide by and their behaviour doesn’t fit the Club ethos.
The response from the club about these comments was fairly non-committal. They praised the support they’ve received over the years from The Examiner, said they’d got involved in a lot of Town’s charity fundraising, but also pointed out that journalism has changed a lot in recent years.
Huddersfield Examiner’s coverage of Town can be a divisive issue among fans, with some fans choosing to turn their back on the paper for a perceived lack of support for the club.
The fans that spoke up at the At The Town Voices Panel meeting cited four specific incidents where they felt the paper crossed the line. Here they are:
Telling Mark Hudson to hang up his boots
In Town’s promotion season our automatic promotion hopes received a severe knock when we lost 4-0 away to Bristol City. Tammy Abraham tore Town to shreds that night and Mark Hudson was singled out for the most stinging criticism from The Examiner.
I personally think it’s OK to say when a player has had a poor game, but it was felt the paper went too far when it suggested Hudson retire from football. If the food I ordered in a restaurant was poor quality then I might complain to the chef, but I wouldn’t tell him to quit his job.
Mark Hudson was a key figure in the dressing room in the initial stages of David Wagner’s time at Town, helping to embed the new philosophy the German coach wanted to bring in. He deserved more respect than he received in this article.
Asking Tommy Smith about a training ground fight with Steve Mounié in a press conference
A rumour emerged on the Down At The Mac message board that Tommy Smith and Steve Mounié had a fight in training. This was put forward as a potential explanation for why Mounié was out of the first team for longer than expected with a heel injury last autumn.
It was the kind of baseless rumour that regularly does the rounds, so it was a surprise when Tommy Smith was asked if he had any comments about it by the Examiner’s reporter during a pre-match press conference. His response was measured and firm, but it was pretty clear from the video that he wasn’t impressed about being asked about this.
Mocking Martin Cranie after being released by Middlesbrough
The tweet that accompanied the article about Martin Cranie’s contract ending at Middlesbrough read: “Well the move away from @htafcdotcom worked out well didn’t it….”. Like with Hudson mentioned above, Martin Cranie has been a good servant to Huddersfield Town and deserved more sympathetic treatment after not having his contract extended at Middlesborough.
(The good news is that Cranie is currently training with West Brom, and I hope he’ll get a contract to play with them. It would be a smart move from the Baggies, as they’ll be getting a versatile defender and a good character in the dressing room.)
Calling van La Parra “an embarrassment”
I’m not going to defend Rajiv van La Parra’s dive at Burnley away last season, it was a blatant attempt to con the ref. But The Examiner might have gone too far to describe him as “an embarrassment” and that “surely another natural left-winger has to be a priority for David Wagner”.
How far it’s acceptable to go when criticising Town’s players is something fans constantly debate. Whether this particular article is too far is a matter of personal opinion. Some fans will have said far worse on the terraces that day, but others demand a fierce loyalty towards Town players that limits the amount of criticism they deem acceptable.
I’m not sure this last example is as bad as the other three, but it was cited in the At The Town Voices Panel meeting notes, so I wanted to include it for completeness.
UPDATE: Thanks to Twitter user @RowanChris who pointed out that is was most likely the VLP article about him wanting to move to a bigger club that the ATT Voices Panel were referring to, rather than the “embarassment” article mentioned above.
TerrierSpirit.com opinion
I have mixed opinions about The Examiner’s coverage of Town. I think it’s mostly pretty good, but occasional lapses in judgement mean they’ve alienated some of their audience. If you look at the bulk of the articles they publish (and they publish a lot) it’s mostly fair, balanced, and informative. But occasionally they get it wrong and these articles are the ones that get remembered.
It’s also worth pointing out that local journalism isn’t a particularly easy environment to work in these days. The use of clickbait titles, breaking one press conference into four separate articles, writing about baseless rumours to get clicks, and trying to provoke a reaction from fans to get interactions are all symptoms of the negative impact the internet has had on journalism.
Although I live in Spain I manage to see quite a lot of Town through internet TV. Any team with realatively limited finances will struggle in the Premier league . Just like RVP, his natural attacking flair has to be held back to some extent because of the ethos that everyone must defend and yes it is very annoying when anyone dives, but you can thank the idiot, smug ex-player pundits for that . Take it out on them when they say “ he was too honest there, he should have gone down and got the penalty “, they encourage cheating. If we didn’t have pundits I for one would be really happy. So perhaps The Examiner is also influenced by these idiots.
The Examiner provides no useful service to Huddersfield Town supporters. Their analysis of games is banal. Their inside information is negligible. They fuel harmful speculation about recruitment and departures without any authority. As pointed out above they show no respect to players who have given their all for the Team and the Club. You can get all of the above on-line while some of the blogs have a deserved reputation for thoughtful coverage and comment. Terrier Spirit is among the best of these. Keep up the good work. I agree with Keith Sykes about most pundits. There are very few who are worth listening to and many who are downright embarrassing.