Best fans in the world (part 2)

First of all I must print a correction to my last blog. AFC Bournemouth didn't beat Burton Albion in the last game of the last season to gain promotion to the Championship. But we beat them the last game of the season the year before to gain promotion from League 2 to League 1. Apologies for that.

It would appear that I wasn't the only one talking about the fund raising by Bournemouth supporters to pay for the away fans coach travel. The story has gain interest in the media.  Our local paper covered the story. They lap stuff like this up and are always on the look out for potential stories that will interest the readers and sell more papers.  But the BBC picked up the story and was on the BBC website. I believe a few national papers also ran the story. Even the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera interviewed someone from the Bournemouth Echo about the story.

Its amazing how this story went from local to international is such a short time. In my opinion it shows how much the media loves a good story and how hungry they are for them. One time the BBC invited comments from people on train travel and I sent it a (cheeky) comment about how us train spotters had been getting hassle. The BBC queried my comments and I told them about how I got kicked off the platform at St Pancras in London for train spotting. They ran the story. That afternoon I had phone call after phone call from various newspapers and radio stations. BBC Radio Scotland wanted me for interview the next morning on their breakfast show. About five minuets before I was due to go on air they called to say that they were not going to run my story as Paul McCartney had just announced that his then wife was expecting. Apparently that was a bigger story. 

The moral of the story is that it doesn't take much for a story to go ‘viral’ as they say these days and equally quickly for it to disappear again..

And in case you are wondering, the re-arranged match has been played. At half time some of the Burton fans did a circuit of the pitch carrying a banner thanking the Bournemouth supporters for their generosity.  We applauded them. It was football supporters getting together and I’m glad I witnessed it. It’s a pity that both teams couldn't progress to the next round. Both teams would have benefited greatly from the fourth round tie against some club called Liverpool. ITV thinks this will be a good match as they are going to show the match live. Looks like all media channels want a bit of AFC Bournemouth at the moment,