London Irish

It can only have been one of our other players encroached? There are no other reasons? This guy is fussy, it was never a pen in the first place although I know that's not much consolation right now

Penno!

A bit late, but we're back with pics

Sure, sorry I mistook you earlier for a hack too, grave insult Oh and well said Scott, glad you are taking this hulabaloo in your stride.

Hmm, learnt a lot from the Llanelli goal then

Booking for free kick before ref whistle, very technical stuff

Bloody stupid rule that, yellow card for early free kick

Fairly even, we seem happy to be patient on the ball whereas they are breaking slightly better and maybe looking a bit more dangerous because of that

This looks the best quality picture here

An empty football pitch and europop - looking good

You mean the first paragraph as there is no mention of Well in the headline? I think mentioning the club is fairly relevant in this case because readers of the Scottish Sun will want to know what area those involved are from and it's also highly relevant of course to the Europa cup angle of the story which is mentioned in the intro.

Interesting - how would you have wrote it differently, given that you want to be a journalist and you might be confronted with a similar situation? Remember, you're thinking as a journalist about what would be of most interest to tabloid newspaper readers, not what Well fans would be interested in reading. I've never worked for a tabloid in my life and have no real great regard for what they do, but I'm struggling to see what is wrong with Scott's story in terms of structure, how he (or the Sun sub) has arranged the facts, its use of quotes, or its conformity with typical tabloid news style. The one thing missing would be a quote from the club, but we don't know whether that was lost in the editing or simply that the club were not keen on speaking about it.

But that's nobody's fault other than the two yobs. There was a strong "good news" element to this story, which is how the club rallied round one of their own when they suffered a misfortune - and this element came through clearly in the Sun story. Possibly the club have been too defensive on this aspect of the story, and rather than trying the untenable approach of trying to bury the entire thing, they should have, with the victim's co-operation, approached the media and tried to get this angle on the story front and centre in all coverage. There would have been an important purpose behind doing so - underlining Motherwell's emphasis on creating a safe environment for all fans and having zero tolerance for anyone in our support who crosses the line on this.

Flaks versus hacks - the eternal struggle! Seriously though, it is true the victim here has had plenty of support up to now, but it's conceivable that his story being more widely publicised in the press will mean he will get a lot more from his fellow fans and the wider community. Perhaps he deserves that? Just as the people responsible for his attack do not deserve to have their wrongdoing brushed under the carpet by some no-publicity blackout.

Fine, let me try and put it another way It's actually a test of the credentials of a good journalist that they report bad news about something they are engaged with. If they can't do that, they are not cut out for journalism.

I'm struggling to see a problem here, it is an interesting story, is in the public domain (largely because loads of people using this forum put it there, some of the same people criticising Scott?) and it highlights how sympathetically the club responded and its zero tolerance attitude to thuggery. Wise words from WishyWell too, as a matter of course stuff appearing in the Sun gets re-written top to bottom. Despite that, the reporter appears to have done a good job, all factually accurate. No one has the right to expect anything more than that so less of the moralising please.

Thirded - my bloody DVD player conked out 3 minutes into the game

You're welcome. Think he was confident of his ability to do the job but he knew short-termist so-called fans would get on his back here while he did it. Those people will find it harder to undermine Gannon, because there is a majority sentiment among fans to give a new guy a chance.

In the first interview that Graeme Smith gave with the local newspaper in Brighton, he says Motherwell tried hard to get him to sign a new contract. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory?

It was an interesting decision by Gannon to do this, but he didn't come here to be mates with the players but to set standards for them. Craigan must respond the right way - it's not as if defending set-pieces have been one of our strengths for a fair while now.

Of course! I'm one of McGhee's biggest fans but of course he knew he had next to no chance of repeating what he did the past two seasons with all his players shifting on. And enough of the lame stuff about him not bothering to re-sign players or getting them on longer contracts, he tried it with them all. It will be different for Gannon - his reputation will not suffer if he endures a difficult season carrying out a rebuilding job, instead he will be properly judged after that rebuilding job is finished.

Welcome Buzz, we can at least keep the folks here informed how well he does. Kuipers is finished - thanks god we have a decent keeper at last to replace him! And I bet McGhee is delighted that a Motherwell player is doing it too given the grief that overrated Brighton "legend" caused him!

Wayne Henderson got his first cap in goal for Ireland while a Brighton player not so long ago. The local papers down here say Smith is just one of a number of keepers being looked at by Mark McGhee's home town club

Williams sounds a promising target - certainly looked good in the couple of times I saw him last season.

Ha ha tell me about it, you get grief from both the Irish and the English! Certainly Jim is miles ahead of his fellow "Irishmen" Staunton (I still have nightmares recalling some of his international games) and Sanchez (quite average lower league manager). No one should be shedding any tears for those two. Adie Boothroyd would have been a close call though, acheived very good things in his first stint as manager. Watford were not an attractive side to watch though and he appeared to struggle when trying to change their style of play at the end. I just happen to feel our current squad of players are perhaps more suited to playing the Gannon way than the Boothroyd way.