Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Press coverage
If you are looking for accuracy in your football match reports, then you might want to look elsewhere than in the English-language Phnom Penh Post. Their review of yesterday's game in today's paper included not only the incorrect spelling of Phnom Penh Crown's opponents, Abahani, no less than five times but they used the wrong surname for striker Kingsley Njoku as well as the mistiming of the winning goal and its circumstances. The report described the spectators as a 'motley crowd' (I would've called them vociferous and excitable maybe, not motley) and then went onto quote the Abahani coach at length, rather than giving the winning Crown coach column inches. It beggars belief really. I was equally perplexed at the report for Crown's game against Don Bosco. Apparently Chan Chaya showed 'playmaking brilliance' and scored a 'charming goal' - neither of which makes sense to anyone who watched the match. At least they quoted the Crown coach for that game, but repeatedly gave the wrong name of the Neftchi coach. In addition, two press conferences were staged before the AFC President's Cup began and the Post managed to send a reporter to one of them, without a photographer, and the resulting coverage of the press conferences in the paper was zero. The whole point of staging them is to provide information to the local press and an opportunity to interview the important people connected to the competition. The Post obviously don't agree; probably too busy with their tennis coverage, which receives an extraordinary amount of column inches for the number of people interested in the sport. Disappointing is the word I'd use. And don't even get me started on the non-existent coverage in The Cambodia Daily.
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It just gets worse over at the Phnom Penh Post. In today's edition - 30 May 2011 - the match report for the Kirivong v Phnom Penh Crown is worse than useless. It mistakenly names Ken Nwafor as the Crown player who missed the last-minute penalty even though Nwafor had been substituted fifteen minutes earlier. It was Odion Obadin who had his penalty saved.
It also quotes Kirivong's Sunday Ayodele as getting a red card when it was his teammate Berejo Muhammeda.
There is also a distinct lack of timings of the goals, something that is a common thread through the match reports. Methinks the reporter doesn't both with such trivia - when rough estimates will suffice!
In addition there is no indication of the level of Crown dominance despite the 4-1 scoreline in Kirivong's favour before the hour mark, whereupon Crown came alive and should've rightly won the game. An example is the corner count, with 14 for Crown and 1 for Kirivong. There is no context given in that it was Crown's 4th match in 9 days hence their sluggishness for the 1st hour. All these are basic pointers which the match report fails to address.
Can it get any worse I ask myself?
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