Forensic analysis

Yesterday, the Irish team were afforded a day off. Most of the media, however, weren’t.

Boohoo, you might say – not unreasonably.

But, while the lesser press activities do mean a longer lie-in, the players’ days off also create something of a vacuum. The operation of simply framing and relaying quotes from a 15-minute press conference, after all, is increasingly the bread and butter of sports journalism. (There is also, incidentally, an argument that it is killing true sports journalism but that’s for another day.)