Sky Sports’ Jeff Stelling, three times the winner 
of the SJA’s Sports Broadcaster of the Year award, is among the latest batch of award-winning recruits to the Sports Journalists’ Association.
Also joining the SJA is Matt Slater, of the BBC sports website and the first winner of the SJA’s Internet Sports Writer award, and Duncan Hamilton, a senior executive at the Yorkshire Post but more widely known for his prize-winning Brian Clough memoir, Provided You Don’t Kiss Me.
Stelling is widely acclaimed for his coolness under pressure each Saturday during the football season, when for the six hours of live broadcasting in Soccer Saturday, he handles incoming reports from every match in England, Wales and Scotland, with live feeds from reporters at some grounds, and the often outlandish behavious in the studio of a panel of four ex-players, including the likes of Phil Thompson, Matt Le Tissier, Paul Merson and, in the past, Rodney Marsh.
Hamilton’s award-winning book is as much about the sport reporter’s life in the 1970s and 1980s as Clough, as it recounts his nervous first approaches when a cub reporter in Nottingham assigned to cover the often eccentric day-to-day goings ons when Forest managed to beat Manchester United and Liverpool to the league title. Last November, Hamilton’s work won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award.
In the same batches of applicants as Stelling, Slater and Hamilton also accepted as members were Nigel Brown, of start-up web business sport.co.uk, photographer Ella Ling, Sean Ramsdale of Peterborough-based Today’s Golfer magazine, and John Mullineaux, from londoncyclesport.com, one of a growing number of specialist sports websites that cater for participants.
Also accepted as members:
Mike Frey, photojournalist
Mark Hayball
Steve Line, photographer
Vaughn Ridley, photographer
James Timoney, photographer
Ian Cleverly, Cycling News
Linda Gore, British Gymnastics
Steve Monk, photographer
Verite Reily Collins
Chris Rivett, football-league.co.uk
Stephen White, photographer
David Sinclair, photographer
April Tod, freelance writer with Daily Mail and Sunday Telegraph
Steve Trotter, photographer
David Klein, photographer with SportImage
The SJA’s 60th anniversary year membership drive continues: we are asking every member to go out and recruit at least one colleague – a reporter, broadcaster, photographer, cartoonist, columnist or editor – with the goal of achieving record membership numbers by 2009. Membership forms are readily available online by clicking here and printing off and completing a bank mandate form for future subscriptions is straightforward by clicking here.
Obtain an internationally recognised press card – by joining the SJA and AIPS, serving professional sports journalists: click here for details