Dodds: Life in the Media and Pitfalls

Billy Dodds is discovering that life in the media isn’t what it once was, if he needs a second opinion he only needs to contact Kris Boyd to discuss the pit falls. Not just those brown envelopes from HMRC.

Since walking away from Inverness Caley Thistle last year Dodds has slipped back into the comforting world of the Scottish media, familiar terrain with Neil McCann, Steven Thompson and others on the circuit.

BBC Scotland and Go Radio regularly call on Dodds for predictable soundbites, on Sunday the call came from Sportscene where they had recreated ‘Rangers TV’ with Jonathan Sutherland hosting and Dick Foster also on duty.

It should have been a nice easy payday, watch Hamza Igamane knock in a few goals, drool over Chelsea target Jefte and tip Bailey Rice as a future balon D’or contender or at least the successor to Barry Ferguson.

Dish out all the usual lines then look forward to the quarter final draw and the prospect of an O** F*** tie at Ibrox to complete the coronation of Phil Clement, surely the Spiders couldn’t upset the best laid plans?

Led by James Tavernier the serial losers returned to their usual form, stringing more than half a dozen wins together is asking for way too much, even after a clear week of training it is clear that the tank is empty.

Queens Park settled into the game, they realised that their opponents were feeling the pressure when they were booed off the park at half-time with 20,000 fans opting to stay away.

In the 69th minute Seb Drozd opened the scoring with a brilliant strike from a corner, it wasn’t until the 85th minute that the visitors goal was put under sustained pressure.

Goalkeeper Callum Ferrie responded brilliantly, he stopped everything, even a penalty awarded in the 95th minute.

The final scoreline was everything that a broadcaster could wish for after a weekend of predictable results, unfortunately for BBC viewers Dodds just couldn’t muster the slightest bit of enthusiasm for the historic shock that he had witnessed.

Asked about Clement’s future Dodds couldn’t avoid the obvious:

Back into doubt. He seems pretty confident in his post-match interviews that he’s going to keep his job.

It’s not going to help him though. You can’t be knocked out the cup, you can’t be 13 points behind Celtic in the league. You lost the League Cup to your biggest rivals as well. It’s going to throw huge pressure on him.

Foster added:

You don’t ever want to see managers losing their job and I think he holds on to his job for now. But I think there will be serious questions asked in terms of the direction.

Just when it looks like they’re sowing the seeds of a revival, of a new dawn, something like this happens. Nothing as severe as this today has happened as of yet.

To say that the day didn’t go as planned would be an understatement- suddenly thousands of gloating Celtic fans were counting down to watch Sportscene to soak up the pain of the BBC experts.

There is no dressing this up, it was a disastrous result for all at Ibrox, as well as ending the season in February and carrying a lame duck manager the pundits are starting at a very likely Celtic treble. Their sixth in nine season, how is that even possible.

Over the next few months BBC Scotland could well be covering #title55 for Celtic alongside raising the trophy count to 121.

That carries very little appeal for Dodds, McCann and Foster- perhaps that cosy media gig just isn’t worth all of the pain and suffering that comes with it.

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