Jay Harris
My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me on.
Stuart Hatcher
Jay, I guess a lot of people, a lot of Brentford fans in particular, have been reading your materials, sort of following your coverage, following your stories [in the Athletic: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/football/team/brentford/ – PAYWALL]. What I want to do is maybe get a little bit behind the man, if that’s OK.
And maybe really just get, you know, a sense of how did you get the gig [covering Brentford for The Athletic] really., I mean for Brentford fans, you know it’s the prized job. Tell me about how you came to here.
Jay Harris
Yeah. So I was working at Sky Sports News.
I got a job there pretty much straight out of university. I’d been there for four years and I just kind of wanted to make the step up. I wanted to report on a club week in, week out, something I’d wanted to do, probably from the age of about 16/17.
And I saw that there was a talent ID day at the Athletic and I applied for it. I thought I’m potentially being a bit cheeky applying for a talent ID day at another company when I’m employed by Sky.
But I was a big fan of the Athletic’s work. I knew a couple of people that worked there as well, so I just did it, went to the talent ID day. It was over Zoom because this was March 2021. So still sort of locked down. They liked what they saw and heard and then a couple of months later they basically just got back in touch and said “look, we’re going to be interviewing for somebody to cover Brentford. Would you be interested?” And I said “yeah sure thing”. And yeah, the rest is the rest is pretty much history.
Stuart Hatcher
OK, now I’m going to ask you a question. You need to be honest. What was it like when you heard them say the word “Brentford”? What was your real reaction?
Jay Harris
To be honest, I think most people know that I don’t support Brentford, so it was a little bit of a blank canvas for me, which I actually really, really liked. It was an opportunity to get to know everything about a club with no prejudice. I hate to rub it in but obviously during my childhood Brentford were in League One, League Two, so there weren’t many stories or many instances where I kind of come across them. I knew of a couple of players like Josh da Silva, Ollie Watkins and Mbeumo and things like that, so I knew literally the very tip of the iceberg and so I quite like the challenge of just jumping in and kind of trying to learn everything from scratch. So that’s the honest truth.
Stuart Hatcher
I mean, I think a couple of my questions will say, what did you actually know of Brentford and it sounds like probably like most of the rest of the population before we got promoted to the Premier League: not a great deal other than perhaps 4 pubs on each corner of the ground.
Jay Harris
Yeah, I knew I knew about the 4 pubs in the corner because I worked at Sky. I remember thinking, I need to try and go to see Griffin Park before it closes. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the opportunity to do that. Obviously I never knew that a few months later I’d end up covering Brentford. But that’s one thing that if I could go back in time and change, I’d make sure that I went, went to Griffin Park.
I had obviously heard whispers about Moneyball, but didn’t fully know how it all worked until I started covering the club and starting to speak to people. And then obviously I did the documentary last year, which we can touch on later.
Stuart Hatcher 3:24
You talk about covering the club and you know we see the pieces that you write. Can you give us maybe a sense of what actually is your day-to-day, what does “covering Brentford” actually mean?
Jay Harris 3:36
I think let’s say you know it’s a Monday morning and there’s just been a game at the weekend. The first thing that I’ll talk to my editors about is, is there anything from the game that we should follow up on?
Was there a controversial VAR decision? Did somebody have an amazing game? Is there a serious injury that needs to be checked up on and then that will kind of determine what’s going to happen for the next day or two. You know, making phone calls, trying to find out what’s happened or you know, let’s say Yarmo has just made his debut. Is there anything more that I can tell people about this? You know, Ukraine, youth team player who’s kind of well not come out of the blue, but will still be quite an unknown quantity to a lot of people. Can I, you know, dig into his background a little bit and explain it?
And then obviously you’ll have a press conference on a Friday. Sometimes I’ll ask Thomas Frank questions for pieces further down the line, whether that’s a tactical piece or something about behind the scenes at the club. And then obviously news just happens.
I remember in that first season I covered the club. I think it was like a Tuesday night at 8p or 8.30pm when the David Raya news broke that he was going to be out for a few months requiring surgery. Obviously you then go into, OK, what does this mean for Brentford? What’s our bar, Fernandez’s background. So you have a loose plan and then one bit of news normally just destroys that plan. And then you just got to be very flexible and think on defeat.
Stuart Hatcher
And just picking up on that, as you’ve mentioned, the restoration of others. I guess, what actually makes a good interesting story for Brentford? What is it that you can really sell to your editor? I imagine it’s very different to sort of the clickbait news that you get with the Big Six. So is it harder or is it easier or how do you really frame the, the tales you want to tell?
Jay Harris
I think a good story is a good story, and there’s been so many good ones at Brentford over the years and I think sometimes when you cover the club or when you’re a supporter of the club, sometimes you must miss the obvious stories.
So I don’t know if you would remember, but that first game [in the Premier League] after the Arsenal game, I wrote two pieces, so one was I spoke to a few people who were from the club, so Natalie Sawyer is a good example. “Natalie, tell me what that game meant to you – winning 2-0!”. I spoke to Derek – who’s the fan who cried on TV, I, spoke to Woody’s mum, people like that. And that was very much for Brentford fans.
[insert shot from the Jay bees fans v arsenal]
But my bosses were like “there are gonna be loads of people around the world, especially in the US, who’ve don’t really know who Brentford are. They’ve just beaten Arsenal and you just need to explain who Brentford are” and in my head I’m thinking that’s just an obvious thing, but actually it does really well. It’s really well read!, And so sometimes you need to take a step back and actually look at obvious ones like that.
I think what’s more interesting sometimes is trying to work out or seeing which stories get read not just by Brentford readers. Sometimes that’s harder.
[Insert the Jay bees v arsenal cover]
To predict, sometimes that’s really obvious. So Eriksen’s a great example. Eriksen was not just a football fan story, it was a human interest story because it’s, you know, the horrible experience he and his family had gone through. So, so many people were interested in that. I was getting a lot of people who I’d meet on the street or out socialising and I’d say “oh, I cover Brentford” and during that period, the first thing they asked was what’s going on with Eriksen. Then you had Romeo Beckham. And again, that was far more human interest than I appreciated at the time I knew it was an intriguing story, but again, there are friends of mine who don’t pay much attention to football. Who are asking me about “Is Romeo actually any good?”
Stuart Hatcher
So I remember the Beckham story breaking and I thought it was really interesting because I think Schade signed as a club record transfer I think same day and it had about 30 seconds on Sky and then Romeo Beckham signing on loan from into Miami for the B team had like 3 hours of rolling news just like that! It was a really interesting perspective for me.
Jay Harris
Yeah, exactly. And they’re the types of things that are a little bit harder to predict. I also remember there was one summer, I think it was summer 2022.
When there was a supply issue with a lot of Premier League kits and obviously Bradford didn’t have that issue because they have a two year kit cycle and so I literally just explained Brent would have it to your kit cycle. This is why sustainability etcetera, affordability, all that kind of stuff. And it was really well read. And when that decision was first made it obviously picked up a few headlines, but I think when it was then put in the context of other Premier League clubs, it did really well and you had loads of fans from Chelsea, Arsenal, Crystal Palace, whoever saying this is such a good scheme, I wish my club did it so there’s things sometimes that you just don’t know when they’re going to become bigger than Brentford, I guess.
Stuart Hatcher
Just picking up on that thing but bigger than Brentford, what happens when you get one of those actual breakout stories? You mention Ericksen, but I guess Ivan’s ban has been the most recent one. I guess you’re sitting there going: “this is my turf”, but then everyone nationally is presumably jumping on it. How does that work in that context of those really big stories?
Jay Harris
Yeah. The Ivan Toney story, I can actually remember where I found out that happened. So it was right after the 2 all draw with Nottingham Forest when Zanka scored like a really weird own goal where it like, bounces off his heel or whatever. And because of train strikes, actually I got the National Express coach back that game with a lot of other Brentford fans
Stuart Hatcher
You really are showing us the glamour of your job though there, Jay.
Jay Harris
Yes. And I remember a notification just popped up on my phone or, you know, an editor sent me a message to say I think it was the Daily Mail who broke the story. It said “Daily Mail running with this.”
And then I can remember hearing a few Brentford fans saying, “oh, let’s go and ask Jay” or “Jay, have you seen this?” I said: “guys give me a couple of minutes to process this”. I think with stories where other people come on your turf, firstly, you’ve got to hold your hands up and say I’m not going to know every single thing about Brentford. I’d, I’d love to. I’d like to. It’s just not possible.
There are going to be stories that other people get, but I think when you have loads of people writing about the club at the same time, you just have to remember that I’m the one who’s there week in, week out. So there’s just very basic context that I’m going to be privy to that maybe maybe others aren’t privy to. And I think you also have to kind of ignore the outside noise to a degree. You can’t become too fixated on what everybody else is writing or what somebody else is saying, because that might dictate your own opinion. And then with a situation like Ivan Toney’s, where because of the nature of the situation, there was just so much attention to it.
There was just a lot of rumour, a lot of conjecture, a lot of talk and just can’t drag yourself into it. And I think you’ve just gotta remain professional in those instances – and the Ivan Toney one is a good example because there was a legal element to that. So you can’t speculate. So there’s very clear guidelines that I’ve kind of got to follow, whereas with something like Eriksen that just became a whole different beast just because like I said, because of the human interest element of it. And I remember when he signed, you know, he was doing interviews with Sky Sports, ITV,BBC. Remember, he did a press conference – and it’s the only time Brentford has done a press conference for a player, certainly since I covered the club and I think somebody said at the time potentially in his recent history, and there were ITV News reporters there, not football reporters, news reporters and you just have to say they’re here to do their angle. I’m here for my angle and you just have to kind of stick to that.
Stuart Hatcher 11:26
And just pick up on that, that press piece. I mean, I remember hearing, I think the club had said that they took a sort of determined view that they were really going to be open with the press. And you know, Chris Wickham and the press team said we’re going to give everyone access to Thomas and the club generally – has that been your sense? Is that that really been a sort of marked strategy and difference to how other clubs approach things.
Jay Harris
Yeah, I mean, I can’t speak too much. What other clubs do, but certainly. You know, I’m really grateful for the way that the team at Brentford have treated me and looked after me. Of course, there’s always going to be times where what I do conflicts with what they do. That’s just how journalists and press teams work. But yeah, I do agree. They were very much “ask as many questions to Thomas in a press conference as you please”, you know, in other places you might get limited to two or maybe even only one question.
So I think straight away that gives me and others the freedom to ask slightly different questions. We don’t just have to focus on the news element of it. We can dig into tactics or I can ask about a very specific player, a little bit more.
Yeah, the team’s been really helpful in mix zones after games, bringing players for me, you know, it was only a couple of weeks ago after Keane Lewis Potter scored against Luton. I asked somebody: “Oh, please, can you you grab KLP for me?” And it was basically as he was running out the building, he was just about to leave the building and they grabbed KLP and KLP, spoke to me and we had a good five minutes. So instances like that have definitely really helped my job. So I can only be grateful.
Stuart Hatcher 13:05
[insert Jay press conference pic]
And then just jumping on the press conferences, I guess you know as a fan, we probably don’t get to see what happens in the press conferences and we see the stylised view, you know the Ted Lasso’s type where a reporter stands up asks a question, but what’s a Brentford press conference actually like, how do you get noticed? How do you get your time?
Jay Harris
Well, well, they first they were on zoom when I first started, so they were their own. Yeah. Unique, random. Whatever you want to call it, just because you had a lot of people dialling in from the US, you had a lot of people dialling in from different countries and obviously anybody who doesn’t really cover the club can just jump on multiple zoom calls in a day and do loads of different press conferences, whereas the actual physical act of going in person to the training ground requires just a little bit more effort. So when you do that, I don’t want to disrespect my colleagues, but I think when you’re going to a press conference in person, you’re probably just a little bit more well equipped on the club. You’re probably going to be a bit more of a regular in terms of how they work. Everybody kind of ends up having their defined roles if it’s broadcast. Sky Sports or BBC – those guys normally go first, and so they often ask the heavy hitting questions, whether that’s about a player’s future, a manager’s future, you know, VAR or a Premier League vote that’s taken place on a particular rule. So it’s kind of up to the rest of us to ask slightly different things.
The quirk of Thomas Frank’s press conferences is that he will always get asked quite generically about Team News, and he’ll say “I think everybody who was fit last week is available for this week” and then it almost became like my function to then ask and list six players and say, “OK, can you tell me what’s happening with Shandon Baptiste? Charlie Goode. Aaron Hickey, Christopher Ajer”. And then he’d kind of rattle off in detail where everybody was. So I very much took took upon that role, that was my kind of main role and press conferences were really good fun. I think Thomas is very, very friendly. I think how you see him come across on YouTube or TV is exactly how he is in real life, and I think this is something that many people won’t know. But Brentford actually let in a lot of journalists from St Mary’s University. They’ve got like a bit of a partnership going on there. And Thomas was always very understanding with people who are going to a press conference for the first time, are understandably quite nervous. It might take them a couple of attempts to get their questions out, but he’s always really, really understanding. I think that’s the measure of a person who is and also he will get asked the same questions over and over again. You know, Ivan Toney didn’t play for the first six months of the season, and you’re still probably asked about him twice a week, and it must, it must get draining at times, but he will always tend to do it with smile on his face. He’ll sometimes joke. So they’ve been really good fun over the last three years.
Stuart Hatcher 16:11
OK, look, that’s great insight. Just want to finish up maybe on your actual role in terms of questions and actually we’ll just get a sense of what’s a match day like? You know turning up to the stadium, what are the facilities like? And we’ve got a brand spanking new stadium. Would be just interesting to get a sense of what is your space like? What’s the facilities like, and how they compare?
Jay Harris
Facilities are really nice, all my colleagues told me how lucky I was that I never experienced the Giffin Park because apparently I know the seats all around that stadium were tight, but from what I’m told the press section was extremely tight and very small. Rreally modern facilities, really good. Food’s great, always end up getting a white chocolate and raspberry cookie which helps, but no, I normally rock up to games about 2 hours before andbecause Brentford was my first time being a reporter, I needed to work out what my exact routine was. And so I think firstly, getting there 2 hours before a game gives me enough time. If anything goes wrong with travel that I shouldn’t hopefully miss kick off, but also what I’ll then do is normally just watch the warm ups. Talk to people here. If there’s any whispers about anything. And so a really good example of that is Kevin Schade, because I watched him when he injured his thigh. Right before the Everton game. So if I was too busy chowing down a more white chocolate cookies in the actual press section, then I might have missed that. And you know, it’s important to just have that extra tiny bit of detail. And then who knows what is going to happen in the game? Sometimes they’re fairly straightforward. Sometimes you get like the drone incident against Wolves, which is just absolutely bizarre.
[can we add in a shot of this or a screen grab of the story from web?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/60005893 or
Stuart Hatcher
Yep, I remember that. Yeah.
Jay Harris
Again, you have to be quite flexible with what’s going to happen. I remember that Man City game at the Etihad – just after the defeat to Gillingham in the Carabao Cup, – and I’m pretty certain that I, along with most people, was thinking this is going to be a very, very tricky game and Ivan Toney ends up scoring the 91st minute winner and could have got a hat trick afterwards as well. So games like that are just really, really fun to cover. You go into the “mix zone” and all the players want to talk and that was the final game before the World Cup break. So Brian Mbeumo, Matias Jenson and a couple of others were flying from Manchester straight to their team camps. So I basically had to grab Mathias Jensen while he had his suitcase with him and say please talk to me about that game – he’s “I haven’t got long”, but you just won at the Etihad. You got to talk to him. He’s like, “Oh, of course.” And then you’ll, you know, you’ll go into the press conference section with the manager and it’s the same with every manager. If they’ve won, they’re happy. If they’ve lost, they’re a bit more sulky. About 9 times out of 10, they’re still going to be respectful. Then I’ll go home or I’ll jump on the train or jump on the bus and I’ll just write up what I’ve seen and that’s it.
Stuart Hatcher
OK, great. Well, thanks for sharing that. I was going to turn to some sort of maybe some faves and some sort of “moment” questions if that’s OK? So I guess the first one’s obviously: do you have a favourite story that you’ve covered for The Athletic on Brentford?
Jay Harris
Yeah, I was thinking about this. I’ve got two. And for two very different reasons. So I’ll start off by saying that when I got my heart scanned as part of the Heart of West London scheme that the club do (https://www.brentfordfc.com/en/the-heart-of-west-london) and spoke to Suzanne Rowan about Rob Rowan’s story, that just felt to me like a piece of journalism I hadn’t done before, because it’s not about what happened on the football pitch. It was about, you know, the impact this has on people’s lives and trying to educate people about that. So I always felt quite proud of that piece of work and then you know, a couple of months ago, unfortunately, a friend of mine passed away. He was playing football. And just collapsed on the pitch. So then it became OK., I now have an even stronger connection to this story. And I remember telling my parents and then my girlfriend and everybody said “well, it’s a very good thing that you did that story with the heart of West London and with Suzanne and got your heart screened and have a little bit of knowledge about what to do in that situation”. So the fact that it came full circle for me – it was important to me anyway – and it’s only been taken on an extra layer of importance and then we’ve spoken about it a lot, but Eriksen was truly something I could never have imagined because I I broke that story as well, so that’s basically the first story I ever broke as a journalist, and there was huge nerves.
Stuart Hatcher 20:50
Wow. So it’s quite a high point for breaking a story there.
[add in IMG_0671 picture of Eriksen story]
Jay Harris 20:54
Yeah, yeah, that was my my career peak. Six months in and then I won’t lie. The nerves I had when I kind of hit send on Twitter and Instagram because I’m like, what if I’ve just got this completely wrong and I get absolutely shot down in, in flames and people are laughing at me. And then obviously my phone just started exploding with notifications. I can’t remember who it was. I don’t know if it was a friend or a family member said: “oh, the BBC are reporting that Brentford might sign Eriksen”. I was like “hey, I did that first! Can I claim my credit please?” But it’s just an absolute whirlwind of then seeing it progress and then when he actually joined and then when he actually played, I was like, OK, that actually did happen. I was correct. That didn’t go horribly wrong. And then also obviously he is now playing football for Man United. He’s playing at the Euro and we kind of just take it for granted and we’ve forgotten about it. But at the time there was so much concern about whether he should play football again and people were worried about what was going to happen, so actually to see him return, to see him play at a way better level than anybody expected and kick on, I think was really, really, really special.
Stuart Hatcher 21:53
Yeah, of course. I mean, that was just a ridiculous story. I mean, in the Brentford history, it blew my mind as well. So we’ve got one of the best players in the world who’s playing, playing for Brentford. This is madness!
Jay Harris
Yeah, and it was only 13 games, but there were thirteen really, really special games. And you know, the team went to another level and you know, you heard people like Ivan Toney saying how good it was to work with him, etcetera. And it just really was….that first season was very special and that just added the cherry on top to it. So those are the two stories I think are my favourites.
Stuart Hatcher 22:23
Understandably as well! I’m going to ask you about how do you – as you mention the nervousness about pressing send on Eriksen- how do you cover rumours? and probably maybe the more interesting: what’s the worst rumour that you’ve heard about Brentford or generally?
Jay Harris 23:00
How do you cover? How do you cover stories?
I sort of mentioned it earlier, but on a Monday morning after a game, you’re kind of just sussing out what’s happened. So, for example, Rico Henry injuries his knee against Newcastle United. It’s a very obvious situation where you need to try and find out and speak to people about what’s happened there. So sometimes it’s quite easy and it’s obvious where to look for. Sometimes you just see whispers about things and you see like a little trail of bread crumbs for want of a better way of phrasing it, and you just kind of tentatively ask people questions. That takes time to build up relationships with people at clubs. You got to put a lot of effort into to meeting up with people to do that. And then when it comes more specifically to transfers, that’s a really hard situation because the way the transfer rumours have been covered in the journalism industry over the last few years has changed completely, like it’s almost become its own separate sub franchise of sports journalism. There are people who are just simply obsessed with it, and so there’s so many rumours from so many different places. It becomes very hard to drown out all of that noise, but I think when you cover a club like Brentford, who have a very clear and defined policy on who they sign it becomes much easier to say “I think this rumour is nonsense. I think this rumour might be true.” and so the best example I can give you is I remember I think it was only my first month or two on the job at Brentford and they were linked to a signing, Andreas Cornelius, who I think was playing in the Turkish top flight at the time. So firstly he’s Danish. OK, so straight off that alone, OK, this could this could be a potential story, but then he was 29 at the time and I think the fee that Turkish media were running with was £15 million. So I said to myself, OK, I don’t know too much about Brentford at this point – I’m still early days into my job – but Brentford tend to sign players under the age of 24. Their club record signing was £13.5 million for Kristoffer Ajer, and I don’t think Ajer had even joined at that point (maybe he had – I can’t fully remember) so this feels like a bit of a stretch. This feels like maybe it was true and the deal never happened, but in my eyes that was kind of a story where I thought OK, on two out of three things here it’s it’s failing. (1) He’s way older. (2) the price is not quite right. Is it just because he’s Danish and it’s an easy link and so I just kind of ignored it and yeah, he never joined Brentford so I feel like, OK, that must have been right then. Yeah, there’s other stories where you think, OK, that makes a little bit more sense. But I think also the truth is Brentford and other teams probably look at so many players, they’re probably interested in so many players. The actual real skill is finding out when they’ve actively stepped up that interest and submitted a bid. Or maybe they’ve met with the players reps – that’s more difficult because we know that Brentford monitor, you know, thousands of players around the globe, so they probably are interested in some random Belgian player in the German Bundesliga or something like that. But is it genuine interest? Are they? is it going to materialise into a deal? It’s a little bit tricky, so I think over time, you know I’ve been doing this for three years now. You just kind of learn and become a little bit wiser as to what you should dig into and what you can probably put in the box, which says, I don’t think this is too serious.
Stuart Hatcher 27:01
Now makes sense. Makes sense. You mentioned. OK, three year – so I guess I’ve got to ask you, although you’ve admitted you’re not actually a Brentfordfan, do you actually have a favourite moment or a favourite game as a fan or do you have one as a journo? or both?
Jay Harris 27:14
Yeah, I mean, I’m not a fan, but obviously I’m massively connected to the club.
Like I said, it was my dream from about the age of 16 to become a football reporter and cover a club week in, week out, and have done that for three years on Brentford. So for that alone the Club is always going to be a little bit special to me. You know, that opening game against Arsenal? I just remember thinking like wow, like I’ve done it. I’ve kind of like, achieved my dream and I’m here for a really historic period in Brentford history. This is our first game in the top flight in 74 years. It’s the first game in the Premier League. I always tell people as well because I think people forget that was the first Premier League game I think in 18 months with a full crowd post COVID. So actually from a social aspect it was a huge moment as well. It was a Friday night. Everybody was watching. I went on TV for the first time.I can’t help but not have special memories.
[can we add in the arsenal 1, arsenal 2 and arsenal 3 clips here? – 28 mins]
So of course the Arsenal game will always be up there for that – you know the applause for Rob Rowan, Thomas Frank hugging Woody at the end. I don’t know why, but I just have funny memories of the FA Cup game against the Port Vale. I think just because it was the other end of the country, I’d never been there before didn’t really know what to expect and it was just one of those games where the best way I can describe it was it was just good vibes. You know, I think Marcus Forss scored that game, Mads Bidstrup played amazingly and I thought maybe this is going to be the time where Bidstrup breaks into the first team and then I don’t think he ever played the club ever again! The Man United 4-0 game that was just unbelievable, but also even the week before that where Josh da Silva scored that late equaliser against Leicester City because like I told you before, Josh da Silva was a player I was aware of before I started covering the club. I did the first interview with him after his injury where he spoke about how debilitating it was, it was a very complicated rehab process and, he comes back, he suffers a hamstring injury and to then begin the next season by scoring a last minute equaliser. That was a really cool moment as well.
You know, Ivan Toney’s hat trick against Leeds – I remembered so much, so many good moments. Even Ivan Toney, you know, playing for England for the first time, you know, on my first day on the job I think at 1 PM in the afternoon, I interviewed Ivan Toney over Zoom so seeing him go from championship record-breaking goal scorer to an England international hass been really been really cool to cover as well. So there’s so many different highlights that I could probably end up talking to you for another 10 hours about.
Stuart Hatcher 29:44
Careful, Jay, you’re starting to sound like you might be becoming a fan.
Jay Harris 29:49
Like I said, it will always be a special place. I actually live really close to the stadium as well, so I felt very ensconced in the Brentford world.
Stuart Hatcher 29:53
Well, I guess that leads me to the next question. So why are you leaving us now and what do you think you’re going to miss most?
[add in IMG_0670 here]
Jay Harris 30:08
I always knew that I wanted to cover a top 6 side and go to Europa League games and Champions League games. So when that opportunity came up, it just felt like it was the right time. You know, I’ve been to the World Cup, and to Afcon and had a little bit of a taste of going on trips abroad. Maybe if Brentford had qualified for the Europa League last season, who knows? Things might be different. So yeah, just felt like it was the right time to kind of make that step up. And what am I going to miss the most? I think just lots of people think that their clubs are community clubs and I generally think that is the case with Brentford, I think because, you know you can only fit 17,000 people inside the stadium. I think that kind of helps everybody sort of knows everybody. It’s really tight knit as you mentioned earlier, the club made a real effort to be open and inclusive and give journalists like myself access to Thomas Frank and the players. So I think had the opportunity to become really invested and involved in the Brentford story.
And I think when you cover teams like Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham, Manchester United, where they’ve just got a huge profile that I don’t think you kind of get that same level of access – or maybe intimacy for want of a better word.
Jay Harris 31:26
And of course, you know, I’ll miss going to the press conferences. I think I had a really good rapport with Thomas Frank. You know, sometimes he’d joke with me in press conferences. So I think those little things that I’ll miss. I’ll miss when people came up to me on Sheffield train station or Liverpool train station and started talking to me about at Brentford and some of the articles I’ve done that they’ve really enjoyed and I should say I’m still going to cover the club from time to time. I only live over the road so if there’s a good game going on I’m definitely going to try and sneak my way in! So I’ll miss lots of different things about it.
Stuart Hatcher 31:57
I appreciate you sharing that. The warmth of the club really comes across there so, yes, so I’m sure we’ll miss your coverage as well. So it’s nice to hear it’s reciprocated.
Just a few closers actually if you’ve got a couple more minutes.
You came new to the club, Brentford, obviously, for many of us old lags it’s been, you know, the thin and the thinner and we’ve been there through, you know, many, many years – you say back in League 1 and League 2 – but obviously there’s been a huge wave of interest and new fans.
Are there any sources that you’d recommend for new fans coming to Brentford to read or listen to or follow to really just get a sense of – I mean obviously other than all the Jay Harris Athletic articles – but is there anything that really helped you to get up to speed, just maybe that you could share with those people who are coming to Brentford as new fans?
Jay Harris 32:45
Yeah, definitely. Jonathan Burchill (https://www.brentfordfc.com/en/news/article/my-brentford-story-jonathan-burchill-484811) really, really helpful, got in contact with me pretty much the second – probably the very day I started covering Brentford – and there’s routinely and regularly sent me through stats (https://twitter.com/Jonathan77777) and he sits quite near the press box so he’d normally come up to me at half time and and chat and tell me a little nugget of information, so massive shout outs Jonathan Burchill. Greville Waterman definitely read his book – Bus Stop in Hounslow (https://hawksmoorbookstore.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=63) – Greville’s been really helpful and supportive as well.
[could we have screengrabs of these websites pop up as he is talking about JB and Greville?]
Obviously some of the Beesotted boys (https://beesotted.com/) have written some books (https://www.legendspublishing.net/?s=brentford) which I’ve which I’ve bought and read, so people should definitely check out that, but I think those books are a little bit more in 70s, 80s, 90s [note: Jay is referring to the “The Big Brentford Book of the 70s; and 80’s and 90’s series – you might need to hunt online for a copy these days if not in stock at Legends Publishing] , but it definitely gives you a good idea of what the club’s been through to the promised land of the Premier League and then obviously Bees United (https://www.beesunited.org.uk/) has been a really good resource as well, with some of the interviews you do with people. So there’s lots of different things out there really. And of course Access All Areas, the Brentford audio documentary I did last summer (https://open.spotify.com/episode/5ou98SSvXGVxLxNuPCDqsF)
[could we have some shots from the websites he mentions pop up as he is talking?]
Stuart Hatcher 33:45
Of course, of course. You’ve got to plug that one again.
Other than football, which sounds like you have got a real passion for in terms of you having you play it, you know, sort of yourself, you know, you’re really into it, you’ve covered Afcon, etcetera. any other sports that you you watch or follow other than football?
Jay Harris 34:01
So when I was at Sky Sports News, I had to have a pretty good knowledge across all sports, which was a challenge for me at times. I must confess. Golf is definitely not my strongest point. My family is originally from the Caribbean, so I’ve got a very loose interest in the West Indies cricket team, but they’ve had a few mixed fortunes and also on a complete tangent, the two times I’ve tried to watch cricket games – the three times in fact! – I’ve tried to watch cricket games in the UK, they’ve all been rained off. Which almost felt like a sign to me that maybe this sports was not for me.
Otherwise I don’t watch it a lot, but I do really like the NBA big fan of LeBron James is – one of my favourite athletes – really like Kevin Durant as well. It’s just impossible to watch because of the timings. But, I do remember the moment I let Sky Sports News and started covering Brentford, I basically purged all non football info from my brain. So yeah, it was very much football, always football obsessed, tiny bit of basketball.
Jay Harris 35:06
And then because of the job had to round out my knowledge, and then the second, it was no longer my responsibility it’s kind of dumped at the side.
Stuart Hatcher 35:08
OK, another couple of just quick questions. Then Bees badge or the Castle badge, what’s your preference?
Jay Harris 35:20
Bees badge. I think I like it. So I should add my Gran is now officially a Brentford fan. She never supported a football team her whole life, but she’s been converted to a Brentford fan and confirmed she will still follow Brentford and over the last couple of years she’s bought me a lot of Bees related merchandise – for want of a better with a word – so I’m currently actually sat on a cushion that has like, “Bee Happy” on it. For example, she’s bought me like Bee pins, so let’s let’s go with the Bees.
Stuart Hatcher 35:50
Definitely. OK: “Enter Sandman” or “Hey Jude”.
Jay Harris 35:56
“Hey Jude” is really special, so I’ll go. “Hey, Jude”
Stuart Hatcher 35:58
OK. And final question, Jay, before I say thanks for giving up your time and sharing some of your thoughts. Prediction for what holds for Brentford for the future next season or maybe in the next few years?
Jay Harris 36:11
Woo, big final question to end on. I’ll try and tackle it bit by bit.
I’ll start with Thomas Frank. Because he’s been a hot topic in the last couple of weeks.
He’s obviously had interest from Chelsea and Manchester United, I think the club’s been really lucky to keep hold of Thomas Frank. I think he’s a really, really good manager. He’s proven that to get the club promoted into the Premier League, to keep the club in the Premier League. There’ss obviously been a few sticky patches but he’s managed to guide them through it, and I do just wonder if we’re getting closer and closer to that date where unfortunately, he leaves the club. A couple of years ago it was interest from Leicester City, Aston Villa, Southampton, but when he’s getting linked with Man United and Chelsea, that is another level above and you wouldn’t blame him for being interested in that. So I think that’s something we need to keep an eye on. But for now, it looks like he’s staying. And you know, if he ended up staying for his whole or the rest of his coaching career at Brentford, I think that’d be a wonderful story as well.
Jay Harris 37:21
I think obviously we kind of expect Ivan Toney to leave. So it’ll be interesting to see how the team adjusts. I’m looking forward to seeing Igor Thiago though, and I think with everybody fit next season, Thiago, Schade, Mbeumo Keane Lewis-Potter, Wissa, I think that’s a really exciting line up and again, that’s another reason why I want to keep going to games at the GTech so I can I can check that out. And I think lessons would have been learned from from last season. It was really tricky.
Jay Harris 37:49
You know, Thomas Frank has already spoken about the club doing a review into the
medical department and the injury situation, and not just the medical department, but other things that the coaches could have done better to maybe tailor a player’s return from injury and, you know, get them back quicker.
So I think a lot of lessons have been learned. I think it was a bit of a reality check. The first two seasons went so well in the Premier League, you know, basically in season two it was a draw with Aston Villa away from qualifying for the Europa Conference League, way ahead of – way ahead of – schedule. And I think that maybe changed expectations slightly and so this was a little bit of a reality check. And so I think lessons will be learned from next season. People will settle down more. You know, Mark Flekken won’t have to deal with a different four defenders in front of him every, every, every week.
Jay Harris 38:40
Nathan Collins will settle in more. So I think the club, one of the club’s biggest strengths is they’ve always just got such a young squad that can always just grow. You’re not looking at it every season, you’re never looking at it thinking it needs massive regeneration here, you’re just thinking there’s only one or two pieces that need to be added to have a really successful season. So I think Brentford will continue to go from strength to strength. They’ll probably be more flirtations of relegation in the future, but that’s kind of just unfortunately inevitable in the relentless world of the Premier League, but I think you’ve got really good people at the top of the club in, you know, obviously Matthew Benham, Phil Giles, Lee Dykes, John Varney. I think with those guys leading the charge have obviously been there for a long time too, which helps I think the club will continue to go in the right direction.
Stuart Hatcher 39:23
That’s a great positive note. I was going to say if you had some big predictions, whether we’d have to come back and revisit them in a year and call you out on them, but that’s all, that’s all great. It’s a great positive note to end on. So Jay, look, I can only say thanks for sharing that. I found it really interesting just to get a sense of what the job is because we obviously only see the output. So you know, thanks for sharing some of that insight into what you do and how the club is. So I really, really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.
Stuart Hatcher 40:17
No, it’s a pleasure. Thanks very m
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