before I have followed a particular group. So for the two weeks during the group games you are definitely in a bubble trying to get all the news stories and trying to cover all the developments involving these teams. You’ll arrive in the country and the first thing you want to do is make contact with all the teams.
So you will go to the hotels. Sometimes you will be waiting in the lobbies for the players, managers and officials to come down. Then there are various press conferences you go to every day before every game, 24 hours before every game there will be press conferences at the stadium.
But also you want one-to-one interviews, so quite often you will get into the hotel to try and pick up interviews. That’s a lot easier if you know people within the camps and you can make contact with these people because for some teams there is really tight security, particularly the Ivory Coast, for example. It is very difficult to get close to them unless you know someone who can get you access.
It just really takes over your life for two weeks. You are trying to get all the stories and trying to bring everyone the interviews from all the camps. It can be terrific. It depends. Some teams are easier to deal with than others. Some teams are very, very open. I would say I have always had a great experience covering Ghana. I think they are very easy to deal with, very accessible, the players are great.
Ghana. I think they are very easy to deal with, very accessible, the players are great.
Other teams are more difficult. Algeria are quite difficult, but I can understand why they are so difficult because the journalists that cover Algeria are among the most passionate I have ever met, they are always trying to get the story.
Talk us through your routine on an AFCON matchday.
It is a very long day, but really interesting day. You have to get to the stadium very, very early because it gets packed with people and they won’t let your car in beyond a certain time. So you get to the stadium early, which I enjoy because you can talk to the other journalists, find out what the talking points are, prepare for the game. You are there very early – sometimes 4 hours before the game out. Depending on which team you are watching, fans are already there. There will be reports I have to do before the game, might do some stuff for the BBC website, there will be different radio shows that I will go into.
The manic time starts during the game. We do commentaries on some of the games in the latter stages, but in the games before that we will contribute to the live text commentary on the BBC website or we’ll report into some of our programmes on BBC World Service.
After the game is the most fun bit. If