UK Racketball Hits BBC East Midlands

It is rare that racketball or even squash gets shown on terrestrial television but we were lucky enough that it was just one phone call that got us a slot.
When we were first thinking about how we could help to promote our big racketball push it felt like a rather long shot to go for the BBC but we thought it was worth a try. They went for the article straight away. I think there were a number of factors that helped us get the slot:

1. We had Laura Hill (who is 5 times National Champion) coming down to do interviews and play.
2. We were in Nottingham where BBC East Midlands is based.
3. Racketball is a rapidly expanding sport and people are much more interested in something on the rise.

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The interview

The day began about 10 in the morning, Laura and I did our interviews with Colin Hazelden (East Midlands Sports presenter) where we talked about the great sport of racketball. I focused on how it first came to the UK, the impact that it has had on the countries squash clubs and how the sport differs from squash and the kind of people that might be interested to play. I tried to emphasise that the sport was easy to learn and that someone who had never played sport before would very quickly be able to have rallies and get good exercise as opposed to other racket sports like tennis where it might take years before they are good enough to serve properly and get going. I even used the good old cheesy line about “racketball being easy to play but difficult to master” so that I kept the racket sport enthusiasts interested. I thought that the interview went really well and was pleased when they used almost all of it on the show.

Laura Hill vs Mark Fuller

After the interviews Laura and I were on court to show how it was done. We only played a couple of rallies which had everything, volley boasts, cross court nicks and even some good old straight drives. Unfortunately these were not used on the show; apparently it looked too good for the purpose of the show for which I completely blame Laura.

Laura Hill vs Colin Hazelden

The aim with this was to show that anyone could play racketball. Despite being the BBC’s sports presenter Colin readily admitted that he was terrible at almost all sport, “If I was playing cricket I wouldn’t bowl and would be batting number 11”. He told us that once when he said this in the BBC office someone shouted out, “batting 11, I wouldn’t trust him to carry the drinks”. Colin claims that if he can do it anyone can. Dave and I were desperately hoping that he could, otherwise we were going to get a really bad report.

Fortunately after a bit of a doggy start and after a few tips from Laura he began to get the hang of it and they ended up having quite a good game. This part of filming seemed to take a long time, to be honest I think Colin was just stringing it out so that he could play for longer (good advert for racketball!) but in the end Laura emerged triumphant and a rather tired looking Colin headed back to the BBC.
In this situation I was very conscious not to devalue squash as a sport. This would obviously never be my intention as the sport plays a huge part of my life and I really do love it. But while you continually chat about how racketball has this advantage and that advantage over squash you begin to get worried about how the interview will come across. Obviously the last thing we wanted to do in our big Nottingham Squash Rackets membership push was to drive away potential new squash members, we would just have to wait for the show and see.

On the TV

As to be expected our 3 hours of filming was condensed down into about 30 seconds, not quite as bad as the Gavin and Stacy episode, but close. Personally though I think the show came across really well, they used my interview which I hope was good and then lots of rallies. I think it showed that racketball really is a sport that anyone can play and that it can be great fun and a good work out. Apparently the viewing figures for that Friday were just over 250,000 people so hopefully some will remember the sport and a few might even go off and join a club.

Annoying however one of the best moments of the day was cut from the filming when Colin managed to hit his camera man on the head mid rally, looking back it was probably the hardest he hit the ball all day.

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