EFL writer for The Athletic Nancy Froston spoke to the second-year sport journalism students at the University of Gloucestershire, going into depth about her role and the journey she has taken to get there.
Despite not enrolling in a journalism course for her first three years of university, studying history at Birmingham, Froston attended Nottingham Trent University to complete a master’s degree in journalism.
Previously reporting of Sheffield Wednesday for the city’s newspaper and The Star, Froston covers multiple EFL clubs and actively follows women’s football alongside her role.
“I wasn’t sad when I stopped covering Wednesday full time because its got to a point where things were so toxic around the club and the fans were really angry on Twitter.”
Managing the output to fans who now have the access to interact on social media platforms such as Twitter can create quite a negative environment.
“I used to go on it quite a lot and have got in arguments on Twitter because people don’t read the article then just go for you.
“It turns our replying to them isn’t a good idea because then you lose an entire day thinking of a response, so you have the upper hand.”
First trip to Cheltenham for me – a lovely ground where fans will be praying for a goal today against Derby otherwise it’s 25% of the season without scoring for #CTFC 😅 pic.twitter.com/yxmabt59pM
— Nancy Froston (@nancyfroston) October 7, 2023
An important part of Frostons role is extracting the information straight from the source, the clubs and managers.
When it comes to media and press it can sometimes be a struggle to collate content particularly on negative stories.
“It’s a lot easier doing my job now because if it’s the club you deal with all the time then it’s a nightmare.
“Generally, across most of the EFL, there’s not many clubs that aren’t interested in engaging but if they don’t want to then I just won’t cover them.
“It’s a shame because sometimes the clubs are doing well; I can get interviews with players and stuff like that agents instead but if they’re not willing to work with me to do the easiest bit of PR then there’s not much more you can do.”
With a passion for football which begun before deciding to carry out a career in sport journalism, Froston’s home club is Southampton but claimed she would not like to work as a journalist for the team.
“Finding 35 different ways in a season about how a team loses is so hard. There are things that I don’t want to know, things that I’m happy to wilfully ignore.
“There are so many things that you find out that don’t even make it to print half the time and then I can still enjoy it.”
