The story so far...

In December 2007, football journalist Paul Watson and filmmaker Matthew Conrad started to research the most remote footballing nations hoping to make a documentary on a land free from the increasingly materialistic world of the Premier League, a land where the love of the game still ruled.
Looking past the FIFA rankings to the list of non-federated teams, they found Pohnpei - the only side never to have won an international match.
Upon approaching the Pohnpei Soccer Association, Paul and Matt discovered that the former figurehead Charles Musana had just moved to London.
Mr Musana informed them that there was no coach in place and that the Pohnpei team had become more or less inactive.
Paul and Matt decided to give up everything to travel the length of the globe and take on the challenge.
20 months later, the football-crazed duo arrived on Pohnpei to take over the reigns. They had become the Soccermen.

Sunday, 16 August 2009

Breakfast TV: Questionable publicity, miserable ordeal

Breakfast TV is, at best, a way to ease the senses into the day and reconcile yourself with the fact that you are up too early. At 6.57am, the whole grim business plays out to a bleary-eyed audience of insomniacs, milkmen and people who are getting flights.

So, you could say that a Sunday morning interview with BBC Breakfast was a bit of a baptism of fire in the TV game. Sharing a 30cm-circumference green room with our fellow guests, who were without exception lovely people, we mentally prepared for the biggest chance to pitch for sponsors at a time when nobody rich or influential enough to sponsor us would be conscious.

The actual interview was fine. Not bad, not great, fine. The silky smooth Charles Musana saw us through the opening jitters, Matt ran a pacy second leg and I brought us home. It probably won't be featured in many 'TV Highlights of the Year' guides come December, but I was delighted to have avoided any of the beginner pitfalls - I was clothed, I didn't fall off my seat and I didn't wet myself.

Three hours later, we would stagger out of Broadcasting House with our seven minutes of fame already fading fast in the memory. From my first TV interview I took away several useful lessons - try not to sign up for anything before 11am, don't expect any glimmer of human emotion from early-morning newsreaders and, most importantly, don't put your BBC visitor pass in your pocket because the pin will stab you in excess of 1,000 times.
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January 2008-May 2009

Once the vague idea had been formulated, it very rapidly became a definite plan. The only problem was that I had a job, a flat and an overdraft. Added to that I was in, at best, respectable physical condition and had no real idea how to coach a football team. In short, there was a lot of work to do before I could set off for Pohnpei.
So, I joined East Fulham, a decent amateur football club with regular training and an excellent coach. I doubled my gym visits and, most painfully, I started to watch what I ate and drank. Trips to the supermarket were miserable and agonisingly long, as for the first time in my life I read all the nutritional information labels.
Fairly unsurprisingly, the lifestyle of a serious athlete is quite different to that of a journalist. Working 15-hour shifts at home perched in front of my computer in a £700-per-month cell on Acton High Street, I struggled with the intensity of my new regime. I would run to the gym during shifts, do a session, run back and pray nobody had noticed my absence. It was a risky strategy and I'm sure the stress cost me years of my life.
I pretty much stopped drinking. I lost track of friends. I slept poorly and had regular nightmares that everything would fall through - what if someone else stole the idea and got there first? If I couldn't contact Charles Musana for a day I'd panic. Phone calls to Matt, who was in LA, had to be conducted at 8am while I was half-asleep and typing news stories for Football Italia with one hand. I turned up to football (four times a week) still exhausted from a 15k run the night before or a hurried afternoon assault on my biceps.
I was doing all this because of my love for football a tiny island I'd never been to, a speck in the Pacific Ocean, Pohnpei.
Posted by Paul Watson