We got in touch with Ipswich Town Football Club, and were lucky enough to get the chance to interview Jacob Henderson, who is part of Ipswich Town’s media department. We asked him a range of questions, from what his job was to qualifications to football!
1) What does your job involve?
All sorts really, everything to do with football to be honest, and although we work for a football club, it also involves things which aren’t related to the sport; we do a lot of stuff with the community, schools, charities, local businesses - that sort of thing - but the main day to day job is coverage of the first team. This could be things like interviews, writing articles for the website, producing content for our social media channels - you guys will have all of them: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, everything like that - so that’s the sort of week to week. Then you come into a match day and that is mainly focused around the game. Depending on how we get on decides our content-load, we have more content when we win than when we lose for example, and that’s pretty much it to be honest - everything about the first team we cover.
2) Media is a very broad term , so how is this distributed and worked at Ipswich Town? Do you have certain sections within the media department for different topics and jobs or do you split it?
So we have a media team of mainly two - that’s me and then my colleague Michael - and then we also have our boss who is called Steve - but he is sort of semi-retired now so he is basically there on an advice basis if we need him - and lastly we have Dan Palfrey who is the PR manager (he does a lot of work with charities and businesses (things like if we are supporting Black Lives Matter)) so we split things up quite a lot. I do a lot of work on the editorial side - so things like the match day programme, writing articles for the website and then Michael will do a fair bit on videos - so he might cut and edit interviews, goals, highlights, etc - but we all do have to help each other out in plenty of areas as well. We have a small team, and the lower league you are as a football club, the more work you have to do in different areas (so if you were at a Premier League club, you might have just one area that you can work on, but we tend to have all sorts of areas).
3) What has been your favourite part of your job?
I can’t think of a specific day or anything, we unfortunately haven't had much success since I started and our form hasn’t been the best, but match days are definitely the best day. In a week you are often building up to the match day, work can be tough for lots of people at times but then when you kick off on a match day and realise that your job is to sit and watch football, that’s quite a nice feeling. So yeah, match days are the best part. On a match day - if we are at home for example - we have a press box at Portman Road, so we are all socially distanced in it at the moment, but we would usually be sat together working on things; during a game I will often be live tweeting what’s going on in the match - and then one of my colleagues (either Dan or Michael) will be writing the match report, and another one would be sorting the graphics and pictures for things like Instagram and Facebook. It’s all quite fast-paced on a match day, you have to be keeping up with things.
4) How hard was it to get to where you are today?
You get lucky in life sometimes, that isn’t a good message to promote working hard, but some people get lucky when looking for jobs. Coming out of university can be really difficult, but fortunately I did some work experience at Ipswich and it went well - timings worked in my favour (one of the guys who was working at Ipswich moved onto Chelsea, so they needed a new person to step in - so I did - and now I have been there for three years). Things are difficult, but you have to work hard at school, then work hard at university and then hopefully, everyone gets their break.
5) What was the process of applying for ITFC and what was the first thing that you did when you found out that you got the job?
Oh gosh, I can’t remember! I didn’t really apply because I did a weeks work experience there in my third year of university, and I had also been covering match days so I had spoken to the club and they had arranged for me to work as an apprentice or trainee journalist so I was fortunate enough to go maybe 20 or so games, which was a really good experience. Then I did the weeks work experience there, I got on well with the team and my superiors and when the other guy left to go to Chelsea, the club contacted me and said ‘we’ve got a position, we do have to advertise it for legal reasons but would you like to come in and see how you get on?’ so I went for it straight away, it’s quite nice to have left university and have a job to go to. I was only without a job - well I did have a job, just Milsoms if you know it, waiting and serving tables - for a month or so and that was what I wanted to do.
6) How has the Coronavirus and this current situation with social distancing affected your job?
Oh massively, it’s affected everyone. I can’t be all doom and gloom about the club because there are some people who have really struggled with their businesses (like charities, education, hospitality) and I don’t think we will see anything like this in our lifetime again. It has been absolutely huge for the football club, it has limited our access with content in particular, for example the fans like to see what we call behind the scenes content - so we tend to film in the tunnel, or get close to the players when they are warming up or training - so we have been very limited in what we get to do. Particularly with something like the training ground, they have had to be extra careful with the amount of people they let in there and for everyone to stay socially distanced to protect the staff and players, and to ensure that we can still play games as if there was to be an outbreak in the squad, it would impact fixtures and everything.
7) How do you think that the players have dealt with the fact that fans aren’t allowed to attend matches?
I can imagine that it’s tough for them, obviously it’s hard for me to say exactly how they feel but I know them quite well and we all know sports people, part of what we all love about football is the atmosphere and it can make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. You do lose that - the adrenaline - without the fans, it’s hard, if not impossible, to replicate. The only sort of silver-lining to there not being fans - we all want fans in the stadium, it’s just got to be when it’s safe and healthy to do so - is that communication wise, the players find it a lot easier to speak to each other on the pitch. Saying that, naturally the stadium is very quiet, so I think it would be very tough for them, because it makes it feel like it is a training game, whereas you need to then realise that it’s a league or cup match, and that they need to motivate themselves to find that passion that you do on the usual match day.
8) What advice would you give to people who want to work in your industry?
Read, a lot really! I didn’t read enough when I was at school and at university, but particularly if you want to be a good writer - I am certainly not blowing my own trumpet saying that I am - but the best ones out there read what other people write: that’s the best way to learn. Then I would say, just pass the wide net in what you would like to do, but have a passion as well - don’t just let your passion go; if your passion is football, hockey, netball or whatever sport it is, focus on that area and develop your knowledge as much as you can, but also appreciate other sports (they are all important). If you want to work in sport journalism or football journalism, you may not get your first job in that area for example at a football club, but a hockey club may say ‘we really like what you do, would you like to come and work for us instead’ so always be open to what an opportunity might present, and other job opportunities could lead on from this.
9) Do you think work experience helps with university and job applications?
Definitely, yeah. The work experience at university with Ipswich told me what I wanted to do. I also did a week at a newspaper near Eastbourne called The Hastings Observer, and no disrespect to the people who work in the newspaper industry as it’s very important, it told me that that’s not what I wanted to do - I didn’t want to work for a local newspaper and be (as they say) sat at a desk the whole time. In our job we do have to sit at the desk a lot, but we have days where we might go and film training or a player visit to schools. So, work experience really gives you that taste of what a job can offer and makes you appreciate how hard working life could be.
10) What responsibilities do you have for your job in the media department?
Well, we have responsibilities working in the press and media, we’re not customer facing as in football, fans are supporters so we are supporter facing. It is important that we promote the club in the image that we want to - both to our fan base and nationally. There are incidents in football and in life that can impact the reputation that a football club has, and many stories can come out so it is important that while being fair, we always try and protect the image that people have of Ipswich Town (so that is quite a big responsibility). More day to day we just have the responsibility of getting things right really. When you are working in media and journalism, you don’t want to make mistakes. Mistakes do happen but you have to - particularly in this industry - double check and triple check things, and make sure that you are giving the right information to the audience (supporters, readers and viewers).
11) What university did you go to and what course(s) did you study?
I went to the University of Brighton, but I was based at Eastbourne Campus, which is their secondary campus and is about 30 miles away. It’s very much a sport orientated university, so a lot of the degrees were to do with sports science and sports studies; I did sports journalism, so three years studying and two weeks work experience in my final year which was the most valuable experience of my time there.
12) What was your favourite and least favourite subject at school?
PE would be up there, I loved PE. My least favourite would probably be maths, I’m not amazing at it - and then there would be a few up there for favourites. I would say PE, everyone wants to get out there and enjoy themselves, but then I also liked psychology which I did at sixth form, I had never studied this at high school but it was very interesting; learning about how peoples’ brains work and why we behave like we do, so I found that very interesting.
13) What is the best advice that you have been given?
I was thinking that this might be a question! I can’t think of anything in particular, no one has ever said anything to me - I have learnt from hopefully good people - that has made me think ‘what a great piece of advice that is’, but that is no disrespect to people who have taught me in the past, they just haven’t had a catchphrase for a saying.
14) What did you want to be when you were younger and why?
A footballer, before I realised that I wasn’t good enough unfortunately. Then I wanted to be a vet, as well as sports one of my areas of passion is animals and wildlife, so I really wanted to be a vet and a zookeeper. Again, unfortunately I wasn’t quite scientific enough to go down that route; then I realised that I enjoyed writing, english language and media so that was when I identified that sport media was a good area to go down.
15) What football player would you most want to sing a duet with?
Well, he’s not a current player but I’ve heard that Jimmy Walker - our goalkeeping coach - has a very good voice, so I would hope he would be a good duet partner because he could drown out my awful singing voice. I would let him be at the front of the stage and I would be at the back supporting I guess.
16) What, in your opinion, is the best football goal ever?
I wouldn’t say it was the best, but one that always sticks out in my mind was Robin van Persie’s in the World Cup. I don’t know if you remember his header, it was in 2014, but it was from outside of the box. I wouldn’t say it was the best goal ever, there’s been amazing goals: van Basten scored an incredible goal for Holland, Rooney scored some amazing goals, Ronaldo etc - they've all scored amazing goals but my favourite would be van Persie’s as it was very different, I had never seen any goals scored like that before.
17) What was the last film that you watched and would you recommend it?
It was ‘Ready Player One’. I can’t remember too much about it, it popped up on Netflix so I downloaded it to watch on the way to Doncaster - we played them a couple of weeks ago. Would I recommend it? Yes, I’m not sure what the age rating is - I think it’s a 12 - but it was different, it was set in the future and explored the idea of if we went down the virtual reality route and how you can explore a new world. It was daunting but interesting!
18) Have you met anyone famous and if you have, who has been your favourite person to meet?
I have met a few from football to be fair. I don’t think I’ve met many of them just in life - apart from getting lucky and bumping into someone - but I’ve met Ed Sheeran outside Portman Road because he comes to watch games, so that was quite funny as I froze on the spot and basically just waved at him - I maybe didn’t quite meet him but he said hello so I will take that. The most famous person I’ve ever met was probably Sir Alex Ferguson, he was at one of the first games I went to; it was 2001 - Newcastle against Man Utd. I was fortunate enough to have corporate hospitality tickets, so I met Sir Bobby Robson and Sir Alex Ferguson before the game. I was only six years old and was playing lego on the floor, then Sir Alex Ferguson came over and started playing with me - so I asked my dad who it was and he said that it was the Manchester United manager, so ever since that day I have been a Man Utd fan.
19) If you could swap lives with anyone for the day, who would it be and why?
I would love to do something that David Attenborough has done in the past, I know he is getting old now but he’s doing very well for a man in his nineties. He’s worked with animals for so long and has probably travelled to some amazing places in the world, so yeah he would be right up there.
20) What is your favourite football match that you’ve ever been to?
I would say the Newcastle vs Man Utd one, but I was only six so I would be lying if I said I remembered it well. What’s my favourite one? I wasn’t actually at the game so I might have to cheat here but England vs Columbia in the World Cup. I can’t think of a real stand out game that I was at live, but I was in Budapest on holiday with my friends when England beat Columbia in the World Cup, so it was the best feeling. We obviously don’t have the best record at penalty shootouts, so to come through that and seeing everyone so happy was such a good day and feeling; my friend was there so I was very jealous.
Thank you so much to Jacob for this incredible opportunity and for his time. We feel so inspired and motivated from his responses.
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