Lancaster put up an admirable performance at last weekend’s Roses. Put against the context of recent Roses tournaments, to lose away from home and still gain over 100 points is nothing to be ashamed of. York won on the Saturday the last time they played at home: to deny them the victory until the Sunday was an impressive feat by Lancaster. Lancaster’s supporters can also hold their heads up. There were matches where they outnumbered the home side’s support base, and if we can carry that support into next year then we are sure to reclaim to Carter James trophy.
An admirable performance was also put in by Lancaster’s student media who, like the sports teams, had the disadvantage of not being on home turf to contend with. Logistics meant that LUTube.tv, Bailrigg FM and SCAN all had less hands on deck at York to help cover the event, and accordingly were not able to do as much as last year’s coverage. Despite this they all managed to get the news back to Lancaster, even with technical issues and stretched resources.
For SCAN, this year’s Roses coverage was focused on giving supporters the news as quickly as possible. The reporters who went over all updated the SCAN Twitter feed throughout matches for real time match updates followed as soon as possible by short reports online to give supporters back at Lancaster a taste of what was happening. Instead of just reprinting reports already on the website, full match reports have been produced for this edition. We hope they give readers a more over arching view of what went on at Roses.
Admittedly we did not manage to cover every team, and if you are a member of one of them then we apologise. In an ideal world there would have been enough reporters at York to send someone to every match, but that was simply not the case. Priority was given to those sports on campus or close by and those worth points. Of the teams that were covered no one side was given preference over another. Supporters of one team deserve to know how their team is fairing just as much as supporters of another team. They do not deserve to be left in the dark because a reporter is too busy writing up a report on a less niche team. Similarly those participating in one sport are giving just as much of their time and effort as those participating in another, and that shouldn’t be discounted. SCAN is not about panding to egos, but providing the best service we can to our readers given the restrictions we face.
The full match reports do focus more on what are universally more popular sports, not least because they have more teams to report on. Similarly in coming issues we hope to give teams season reviews now that time and resources allow. Some teams may feel they deserve more and that is reasonable, but a balance must be struck. We cannot devote all our time and efforts to one team to the exclusion of others who are also performing well. It has been a balancing act and some plates have slipped, but there’s no point crying over the spilt milk.
