Celtic made a tentative step towards a new age of communications by inviting around a dozen websites to a Zoom call with John Kennedy and David Turnbull.
The normal Friday routine is to provide a conference for broadcasters and a separate one for newspapers with fans left to interpret things through soundbites sent out on Twitter.
Perhaps in response to Neil Lennon’s post Dubai conference the club has made a few adjustments to their media arrangements. No tweets are permitted during the conference until the club uploads it in its entirety onto You Tube. There is unlikely to be a conference as fiery as Lennon’s back in January but no opinions can be formed before the full Question and Answer session is on You Tube.
At yesterday’s broadcast conference the focus was very much on Kennedy’s thoughts and reactions to a likely Ibrox title win, the Interim Manager could see it a mile away and kept the focus on the players and issues that he has control of.
David Turnbull and John Kennedy speak to a variety of Celtic supporter websites
With the supporter based sites the focus was very much on Kennedy the coach, his ideas and influences. As part of the Lennon management team he does have an image problem although not quite as low as Gavin Strachan’s laptop. A laptop is a smart move to have in the dug-out but when things are going badly the impression created by three coaches looking at a screen isn’t the best.
Kennedy was able to provide updates on Vasilis Barkas and James Forrest as well as the demands of his job and an interesting overview of the three managers that he has worked with.
He revealed that he still speaks regularly to Brendan Rodgers as well as feeling that Conor Hazard was too harsh on himself over mistakes made during his run in the first team.
If the aim of a media conference is to get information out to Celtic supporters a trend started yesterday that won’t be reversed with the reach of fan based sites of far more relevance that the neutral audiences of old school broadcasters and publishers.