BOXING CLEVER

Provincial newspapers have always had to struggle by on minimal editorial resources. It shows in the quality of their writing staff and it shows in the breadth of their coverage.
A glance at the rugby pages in today's Scotland on Sunday is a microcosm (and the SoS microcosm is getting even more micro by the week) of the problems sports editors in the sticks face under the strictures of the bean counters upstairs..
As with every other native (and that includes players, fans and coaches) charged with following the fortunes of Scotland, "chief rugby writer" Iain Morrison can't let an intro go by without a mention of the brave boys in blue and the number of "positives" to take from another thumping defeat. Morrison is an abysmal chronicler of events and despite having played for his country, and presumably having a few contacts, still can't produce a half-decent news story. He is as much a journalist as, say, the newpapers' statutory columnist Nathan Hines, whose ghosted piece also concentrated on the "positives" of the Dublin drubbing.
Morrison shared the stage with former SoS sports editor Richard "Freebie" Bath who maintains some sort of droit de seigneur there and provided the match report of the France v England match from Paris.
I say provided, because it goes without saying that Bath wasn't in Paris; he was 1,000 miles away in Edinburgh alongside a TV box and thus, with the benefit of the BBC's prolonged action replays, able to inform us that Jamie Noon knocked on in the build-up to England's first try.
I was in the Stade de France and this was impossible to spot with the naked eye in live action.
So my newspaper (and several others) spent around £1,000 (and I haven't done my exes yet) on a weekend in Paris only to be "scooped" by a hack who wasn't even there.
Let's pray the bean counters don't spot this, or we'll all be covering major live sport from our living rooms.