On Friday the 26th of April freelance football commentator Rob Daly came into the Dartford campus to lead a workshop with our Digital Journalists. Daly, who is the regular commentator for Spurs TV, has worked on many stations and channels over the years across the world including places like Germany and China. He came into the college to talk to us about his career and offer advice on how to get into the media industry. During the visit he told us stories about his favourite footballing moments, and how he has rubbed shoulders with all kinds of sports stars and celebrities, including the likes of Will Smith at a charity football event – who he took the opportunity to grab an interview with.

For the rest of the day, Rob did a specialist workshop with a small group us from the pathway who want to have a career in sports media. Here he went into more depth and gave us specific advice for what we can do to get the experience or the do’s and don’ts of the industry. We also had a go at being sports commentators ourselves as he gave us a scenario where we had to write a 45-second match report on a recent football game for ‘TALKSPORT’ which helped us get a real taste of the profession. The students agreed that it was one of the best workshops we have done so far.

To end the day Nathan King and I did a podcast interview with Rob in our studio where we were able to ask more personal and specific questions to find out things that he didn’t talk about during the day. In the interview, Rob said, “I’m so impressed with everyone today, I loved talking to everyone and I think what the college has got is really good – you have really good facilities and you’ve got people who clearly care about the course running it.”