As a Hibernian supporter of some 36 years standing, I find myself lucky enough to be in a position that most Hibernian fans would probably give their eye teeth to be in.

Every week I get to wander freely around the Hibernian FC Training Centre and can grab a hold of whichever player(s) happen to be about for a chat about all things Hibernian.  It’s also led to many other things including the chance to interview Hibernian supporter and potential Wimbledon Champion Andy Murray … but more of that later. However the best place to start the story is back at the beginning. I had a background in Life Insurance having joined one of the United Kingdom’s largest Life Insurance providers straight from school so how on earth did someone who previously had no interest whatsoever in media suddenly find themselves starting on a path which would propel them into the world of sports broadcasting/writing? 

Well it all started way back in February 2003. I had become an administrator on a website called hibs dot net. A gentleman by the name of Stuart Crowther was responsible for the creation of that site which has now gone on to become a giant in the world of football websites. Stuart was a forward thinking sort who was always looking to try out new ideas to keep hibs dot net ahead of the competition.

He put a post on the admin message-board saying that he was planning to try out an Internet radio broadcast and asked if anyone was interested in helping out.

This broadcast was set to happen on the following Saturday morning which coincided with the time at which my wife took my daughter to dancing lessons and I thought to myself “it’s either watch Soccer am or have a wee bash at that and it might be a good laugh … so why not!”

Can I just make it clear again at this stage that I had never harboured ANY ambition to be involved in media, either written, broadcast whether spoken or visual or whatever and had absolutely NO idea just what I was getting myself into at that stage! Can I also make it clear that I have no idea how the broadcast itself actually happened because it takes me all my time to switch my PC on far less send out a radio show over the web! 

Anyway, I think most everyone else must have thought Stuart was “barking” because only two “numpties” (or were we?) replied to his plea. The said two were myself and a chap called Andrew Heron. Transpires Andrew was a closet Celtic fan so no more about him!

Let’s just say that first ever “broadcast” was interesting and went as well as could be expected, particularly when allowing for Stuart’s choice of music. Let’s just say it was of the “time to brew a cuppa” variety!! As an example … Ronnie Carroll anyone? Your Grandma might just remember him if you ask her!  It should also be noted for posterity that our momentous initial broadcast was in fact made from the spare bedroom in Stuart’s house (eat your heart out Radio Caroline!) and listening back fondly to those shows now (I still have many of them on CD) shows just how far this whole Hibernian Interactive thing has come in that relatively short space of time.

Anyway the upshot of that “trial” broadcast was that we all felt we had something there and radiohibs dot net was born. However if we were going to seriously continue with it we needed something slightly different to hook people in.

So what was that to be?

I’ll tell you more about that in the next installment but for now, let’s just say that despite being complete amateurs with a set up that had only been going for around a month, the mainstream media quickly realised that we could potentially be a good source of copy.