By Kevin Nicholson, former Torquay United manager
Social media can be a huge force for good. Whether you’re engaging with the community, being open with your fan base or raising money for charity, it can be a powerful medium.
But you’re always going to get a certain group of, as I believe the kids say, ‘haters’.
You just can’t pay attention to that section. Whether you’re a player, manager or coach you’ve got to listen to the people you most respect.
It used to be that the only time you’d come across fans saying how great you are or slating you, were on forums and message boards.
And you’d be a sucker for punishment because you’d have to go and seek them out! Most footballers probably have a look in their earlier years before they soon learn better.
I came across one early in my time at Torquay. Someone had put up a poll which was: Who is the biggest pie eater? I’d come second. It was the last time I ever looked on a forum.
In management I’ve always said to the players, ‘Don’t listen to the noise,’ because in football there is a lot of it from the outside, whether it’s from the fans or the press. Opinions that are important to listen to at times, but not important for your job. You cannot allow the opinions of other people to shape how you go about it.
On social media, now, or forums, as it was back then, you’re going to have thousands of voices telling you you’re either great or you’re awful. More often than not it’s a warped sense of reality because everyone has favourites.
You can’t go down that line. You only have to read one thing about not being fit to wear the shirt and that’s what sticks with you.
I say that from experience. When I was younger I looked at those things and it bothered me. Having now been on social media for a while, of course, I’ve had comments that have been cruel and out of order.
Vulnerable
The fact is, when you open up that twitter account and look at the notifications, you only have to read the first couple of words and you’ve got the gist.
The easiest way to ignore what gets said is not have an account in the first place. But it’s a massive part of our culture now so players have to make sure they don’t read the comments.
Players 20 years ago could just go home and, unless they bumped into an irate fan in the supermarket, they’d probably be OK for the rest of the week. And I guarantee I’ve never been told in the street that I was rubbish on Saturday. People might quietly seethe as you walk past but put them in front of a computer and some people will happily rip you to shreds.
It’s not so much in Non-League, but in the Football League you get an annual talk. It’s been the same lady who comes around to explain how vulnerable you can be and how easily you can get stitched up on social media.
She came to us at Torquay in 2014 and had gone back through a few of our twitter accounts. One was a daft post I’d personally put on twitter saying: I’m having my body weight in pancakes today #treatday
That was from two years earlier and she just wanted to show how easy it is for people to dig something up on you, should they want to.
Once you’ve put it out there, even if you delete it, someone could have already taken a screenshot. It can easily come back to hurt you.
There is a flip side. Through social media, supporters can see you’re human, that you care and you’re not a faceless footballer.
When I was manager at Torquay, I used to write my own match report and post it on Facebook. I wanted the fans to know my thoughts – how it went, what I’d tried to do, how the players were feeling.
Balance
They didn’t have to agree with it, but I knew for a fact they respected that I did it whether we won, lost or drew. The fans feel a part of what you’re doing.
Now, the problem comes when you lose a game – and in my first year we lost some quite heavily. It’s then you are opening yourself up to all types of abuse. Some will respect it but others want to vent their frustration. They’ve spent their money to watch you play, they are effectively your boss – because you want to be successful for the fans so they are happy going to work and the feelgood factor in the community is better – and winning games is important.
So my opinion is social media has to be embraced. Something I rated really highly from Gareth Southgate at the World Cup was the way he understood it’s a way for players to have a closer and more open relationship with their fans so he didn’t stop them from using it.
A lot were generic messages – it’s hard for players to be really honest at times – but you could see the country getting behind the team.
When you are coaching millennials now, it’s their time. This is their generation. They understand social media, they enjoy getting likes, retweets and all the rest of it and they are comfortable with it. If you ban it outright, you’re risking upsetting your team.
Getting the balance is the key.
Blues are no flash in the pan
Billericay Town have generated plenty of talk in Non-League circles over the past 18 months and on the first day of the season I saw them in the flesh.
When you’re a club who have openly spent a lot more money than other teams at your level and brought players in who could clearly play higher, there’s a tendency to attract the wrong types of players. Those who go just for the money and swan about a bit.
What I saw against Truro was a group who work exceptionally hard. Jake Robinson scored four goals but that wasn’t the most impressive part.
His movement, his tenacity, his desperation to chase down everything that went over the top, he was driving everyone else to do the same.
For the first 30 minutes they were like a runaway train – full-backs overlapping, wingers going past people, crosses into the box, shots on goal – the Truro keeper was fantastic and they still lost 4-0.
What they showed me in that first half-an-hour was that, if they can continue near that level, they are going to be the team to beat in the National League South.
*This article originally featured in The @NonLeaguePaper which is available every Sunday and Monday
