Excellent read that, cheers MDF

I ceartainly would.


Thanks for that, and well done, a very good read and very well written.

Enjoyed that, thanks

Excellent interview

Great little article. A few of those over the boring pre-season would go down nicely!!

Hint Hint.

For anyone with Sky Sports 4, Super League's Super Man tonight is Stuart Fielden, but there's also a segment with Terry O'Connor talking to James Donaldson, so worth a watch.

Show is half an hour, starting at 21:30, immediately after the Fev/Fax match.

First time poster on here. So hello everyone.

I thought the interview with James was interesting. But can I give some constructive criticism?

I found myself reading through and expecting to get to the actual interview itself. It was only when I got to the bottom of the page that I realised this [iwas[/i the interview.

It's only my opinion, but I think future interviews would read better with an intro setting the scene, followed by a Q&A style to actually "give a voice" to the interviewee rather than him appearing to be paraphrased.

Others might disagree with me though.

But well done - the off season is once again longer than I'd like, and articles like this will help to pass the time until SL2011 gets going.

Cracking interview.

Good work Mike. Well done. James comes across as a very sound bloke.

Ha ha just seen him on Sky sports and I never knew that Peter Hood is his landlord. Came across as quite articulate as well a bright kid with the world at his feet.

I mentioned it on another thread that I met his mum at half time during the England match against new Zealand at the Galpharm and she's a really nice lady. She said that they's just moved him into his new flat. You can tell they are a really tight family which makes the fact he made his first team debut around the time his brother was paralysed from a farming accident and considering his age seem like a really bitter sweet moment for him.

He really is a good lad.

I know what you mean, but I think it reads better like that and helps the article stand away from the usual "what's your favourite colour", "if you weren't a rugby player what would you be", type interviews.

The article reads much more like a professional piece for mine.

But this of course, is merely my opinion!

Oh and Mike

Indeed. Outstanding and very professional piece of work from Mike. He may well find new career opportunities opening at short order.

And echo what had already been said about Donno - a thoroughly decent, genuine and likeable young man with his feet firmly on the ground. His parents must be very proud of him, and not just as a rugby player.

Thanks for the positive feedback and the criticism.

To respond to the latter, I was unsure whether to do a transcript or the kind of piece I ended up doing, but technology took away the choice. I found that the ancient MP3 player with record facility hadn't worked, so I had to fall back on the quotes I noted down in the interview. I was glad I had taken actual quotes, because I agree that it's important for the interviewee's voice to come through. I hope it still does, to an extent.

For the record, even if I had had the whole interview recorded, I would probably still have chosen to produce the same kind of piece as I did. Even with a transcript, I would have had to intervene as an author, to remove um and ahs (far fewer, I suspect, than from the average RL interviewee), questions that prove to be duds, questions that produce repetitive answers etc. Therefore I felt that I might as well intervene the whole way, and give structure, try to pick out themes etc.

I would love to do some more interviews, but the off-season may not be great for that, as players will be dispersed and harder to contact through the club. However, we'll discuss it at BullBuilder and see if we can come up with ideas.

Who would you particularly like to see interviewed? Sugestions welcome, bearing in mind that it would be for the BullBuilder site, and the main focus is on bringing through the juniors. If the process gets established, we could also give members the chance to put forward questions for each interviewee.

Mike, did you find out his favourite colour & who is favourite X-Factor judge is?

Erm...