View from the editor: Que Sera Sera - May 2007  

Readers, S&T is in the deepest doldrums this issue due to our beloved Exeter City FC losing the Conference Play-off Final against Morecambe at Wembley Stadium on Sunday 20 May (a day that from now on will always be known to City fans as Black Sunday), thus condemning us to a fifth cruel season in exile from the UK’s Football League…… (Apparently Manchester United fans are feeling a similar sense of disappointment from attending Wembley the previous day; we must find out why).
Not even cunningly renaming the Conference’s top division the Blue Square Premier (due to the three year sponsorship deal signed with the online betting company following Nationwide’s departure) has assuaged the pain.
Oh well, it was fantastic to be back at England’s national stadium, the sumptuous facilities of which were enjoyed only the week before at the Soccerex Forum (note the optimistically taken photograph to the right).

Event reviews - a precis

Talking of Soccerex, if S&T was in a better mood, we’d probably have told you how Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the English FA Premier League (and West Country bauy), said at the Forum that he considers the biggest threat to traditional television viewing and attendances of soccer matches to be from “supermarkets, games consoles and new media”. Which, let’s face it, is an interesting comment most days of the week.
We’d probably also have waxed lyrical this month about how fantastic the Olympic venues were in Beijing following our recent trip there for the SportAccord convention.
Darn it, we even had copy enthusiastically prepared on Lord Sebastian Coe’s speech in Beijing. According to the chairman of London 2012, the Olympic Games movement needs to embrace young people by appealing to them through new technology and that. “The task of getting young people involved in sport is harder than ever due to the digital distractions they face at home… Let’s use these [digital] channels to inspire them,” he said before S&T nipped off to swoon over the Great Wall of China.
Coe espoused about a potential London 2012 virtual world – a ‘London 2012 Second Life’ if you like, where young people can come and visit, compete against virtual athletes and [if rights permit] share footage with each other. And that was the morning after a spectacularly cheesy SportAccord Opening Ceremony complete with strobe lighting, dancing children, gymnasts with elastic limbs and Eurovision Song Contest-style multilingual hosts. Marvellous manna from S&T heaven under normal circumstances.
But these aren’t, (and we even lost our bet on the Eurovision Song Contest this month if life couldn’t get any worse), so S&T is off for a fresh supply of hankies and full service will be resumed next month in time for the triumphant return of Sport and Technology: The Conference. (Get your tickets while stocks last and ‘Up the City’/ ‘See you at Torquay’!)

Rachael Church-Sanders
Editor

This article was seen first by people who receive the monthly newsletter, join them.