Career
2013-2016: The YouTube Years
On the 31st January 2014, a new idea for the direction of my existing, videogame-themed YouTube channel would eventually alter the course of my life forever. Long before the Mark Goldbridges and Thogdans of the world, there I was making low quality video essays to camera reacting to Stockport County news and matches every Saturday night. This would continue throughout the rest of 2014 as I covered the remainder of the Hatters’ 2013/14 season, notably the worst league performance in the club’s history where they finished 11th in England’s sixth tier.
Fast forward to the start of the new season, and my channel had grown from a measly 11 subscribers (of which 3 were my own alternate accounts) to an also-measly 65. However, it was in this new season where it appeared that my opinion pieces were again starting to get on the nerves of the higher-ups at Edgeley Park who eventually decided that the best way to ‘silence’ me was to give me a single page piece in the weekly matchday programme.
With this newfound volunteer role came a bit more access to the stadium on matchdays. I would arrive early each week and eventually managed to wangle my way onto the matchday media team.
As the 2014/15 season began to draw to close, I was quietly asked to stop creating YouTube videos about the club as apparently it would confuse supporters who would think that my video work was on behalf of the club when it was really opinion pieces.
2014-2019: Stockport County
My Matchday Programme article was a weekly Q&A segment on matchdays where I would wander around the stadium and surrounding areas and get fan answers to one question a week. None of the questions were particularly thought provoking but it gave me a purpose at a time in my life where I definitely needed that and also helped me get my foot in the door at the club I loved.
Across the next five years, I tried everything at County. I wrote for the programme, I sometimes ran the Twitter account on matchdays, I’d help film bits for the YouTube channel, I wrote match reports, I made weekly match graphics for social media and even, on occasion would help with radio commentary - all on top of my role working on the Players and Officials door every week.
In 2018, I was gifted a DSLR and started shooting Stockport County home matches as a second photographer for the club, assisting club photographer Mike Petch. In 2019, County won the National League North in what was my final proper game shooting as part of the club.
2016-2017: Cheshire Football League
In 2016, I became the Press and Media Officer of the Cheshire Association Football League - a league made up of divisions in the 11-14th tiers of English football. Whilst in the role, I wrote the weekly ‘League Roundup’ which was eventually converted into video format on the league’s YouTube channel - which I launched a few months after starting in the role. I also helped revamp the league’s social media channels, with new Instagram and Facebook pages.
My work for the league resulted in me winning the FA Young Volunteer of the Year award at the end of my first full-season. I then continued into the start of the next season before leaving to focus on my next volunteer role.
2017-2019: Stockport County Women
It was suggested by Mike Petch, club photographer of Stockport County, that I should apply for the vacant volunteer role as Press Officer for Stockport County Ladies. After a brief interview, I joined the management committee at the club and quickly sought to improve the club’s photographic and social media output.
In my first season with the team, they won a league and county cup double. In that time, I once again launched a new Facebook and Instagram page, as well as organised new player sponsorship initiatives, mascot packages, wrote match reports, provided the club with images and video. In the latter months of my time with the club, I also developed their new website as I had recently begun a full-time apprenticeship at digital marketing firm Marketing Signals.
2018-2019: PRIME Media Images
In the summer of 2018, I started working for my first sports photography agency PRiME Media Images, based in the South of England.
Across my time with them, I covered mostly League One and Two football - mainly focused on Grimsby Town and Scunthorpe United due to the agency’s Grimsby Telegraph client. My first game for them was at Macclesfield Town for their fixture against Grimsby.
I would travel up and down the country every week, doing my best to cover any of the work that none of the other freelancers working for the agency wanted to cover. I traveled to Carlisle, Swindon, Crawley and Stevenage to name just a few, as well as shooting matches for their club clients Fleetwood Town and Wycombe Wanderers.
It was with PRiME that I shot my first Premier League match too, Burnley’s final game of the 2018/19 season against Arsenal.
2019-2022: Danehouse (Pt.1)
In September of 2019, I was approached by Alex Livesey of Danehouse Photography with the idea of taking me on as a young freelancer who would be trained to shoot football to a competent standard. I began shooting for Danehouse in October 2019 with my first game being an FA Cup match at Macclesfield Town, the Silkmen taking on Kingstonians.
Across the next three years, I would continue to get in-person training from Alex and first-hand experience shooting more Premier League, UEFA Champions League and International football. Although admittedly I didn’t see a lot of that football in my first year and a half due to the small matter of a global pandemic.
