Glasgow may have won its bid to stage the 2014 Commonwealth Games, but the city’s Sunday newspaper is about to lose its chief sports correspondent.
Natasha Woods is leaving the Sunday Herald, where she has been chief sports correspondent since 2001, the latest leading journalist to take voluntary redundancy from the Newsquest-owned newspaper.
Woods’ departure is part of the second round of job cuts at the newspaper group this year.
Her decision to leave was announced upon her return from Sri Lanka for the 2014 bid vote, the latest assignment in Woods’s varied and successful career which has seen her covering Glasgow’s two major football clubs, Commonwealth and Olympic Games, the cricket and rugby World Cups, world championships in a variety of sports, and this week’s crunch international football showdown between Scotland and Italy.
Woods, pictured left, a member of the SJA, as yet has no plans for future work commitments.
After starting her career as a teenaged trainee on the Lynn News in Norfolk, she subsequently joined The Journal, in Newcastle, worked on The Scotsman in Edinburgh, initially on the business desk before joining sport, and then the Sunday Times at its Glasgow office.
In a SJA website questionnaire last year, Woods said that her finest working moment had been the day in Athens in 2004 when Kelly Holmes won her second Olympic gold medal and the British men’s relay squad also took gold.
The assignment which saw her interviewing Ally McCoist outside the dressing room at a Scottish football ground, when the player lost the towel covering his modesty, does not figure among her highlights, however.
Read the Natasha Woods Questionnaire by clicking here
Natasha Woods’ report on how Glasgow won the 2014 Commonwealth Games bid
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