A regional daily beat a deadline by just minutes to run a front page dedicated to a record football success.
The Leicester Mercury faced making a late change to its splash for Saturday after Leicester City recorded a historic 9-0 victory over Southampton FC on Friday night.
The win was the biggest ever by an away team in English football’s top division since the league system was founded in 1888.
But the record posed a challenge to the Mercury, with staff turning around a front page redesign with just minutes to spare before deadline.
Editor George Oliver told HTFP: “Our chief sub Matt Sulley did what any experienced journalist would do when presented with a big breaking news story – he looked to give it the best show possible.
“Matt put together several pages of match coverage then redesigned the front as well.
“He delivered the whole lot to the press with a couple of minutes to spare.
“He would say that he was just doing his job. I would agree – and add that he was doing it very well.”
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I suppose we should say well done to the Leicester Mercury for still having staff who can do this – as opposed to a number of regional papers which have ditched experience subs and would be hard pressed now to make such late changes because the right templates weren’t available.
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Remember achieving this every Saturday with results and pictures available in our Pink a few minutes after the final whistle and in depth match coverage and more pictures in the following Monday paper! Still congrats at a time when many papers couldn’t achieve this!
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A good turn round and a good souvenir LM nice one!
In today’s digital news age most football fans follow the match reporting and news as it happens minute by minute on the many broadcast media sites, fan posts and via the official club postings which usually includes match action, goals and video interviews.
The local paper can’t compete on line with it’s one dimensional coverage so I wonder how long local rag match reports will still continue to be a thing and how much longer dailies will continue with a costly team of dedicated football reporters when costs are rising but revenues falling.
Where they can succeed though is with pos match printed souvenirs such as this one, something you’ll not get online.
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