Is change weird and scary? Well maybe but don’t worry, it won’t be this time.
Before I introduce my
self, let me assure all readers of one thing: Os isn’t leaving. The man who has been the voice of Ballineurope.com for the past five years will still write regularly for the site just less often than he used to. That means you can still listen to him on the Taking the Charge podcast, Os will still find ways to bring the cinema of the 90s into European Basketball, and pretty much whatever else he wants to do he will. He’s the editor emeritus, he’ll stick around.
Now that’s done, hi everybody I’m Emmet Ryan and I’m the new editor here at Ballineurope.com. Right, now to explain why an Irishman is now at the helm of a site dedicated to European basketball. Considering we abandoned our national team a couple of years ago and have only a handful of players in the professional ranks, although some have great stories, Ireland isn’t exactly the place you expect to find a writer dedicated to the hardwood.
For the past 15 years I’ve been working as a journalist/blogger with a bunch of papers and websites and finally went fully committed to running my own sports blog, Action81.com, in 2010. The site is much more long-form based than most and that includes our basketball coverage. Covering European basketball on a day to day basis was always of interest to me but my existing site simply wasn’t the right fit as the balance of news and features would really look out of place there.
When Os announced he was looking to pass on ballineurope.com I was excited because it meant this I could cover the game the way I wanted ensure that one of the most important blogs covering the sport in Europe could continue to grow.
So what can you expect? Well the power rankings are here to stay and we’ll be posting our first set tomorrow to rank the Eurobasket teams from 1-24. There’s already a minor shock here, I didn’t expect to rank Great Britain above 24th, they’re all but guaranteed 16th at the absolute worst.
Starting Thursday we’ll have an about last night round-up covering Eurobasket’s closing stages through to the finish. In terms of daily updates we’ll be focussing on Europeans playing in the NBA, in our creatively name Eur-NBA slot which will be a round-up of what Europeans did the previous night in NBA action. Likewise we’ll do quick hits round-up pieces after every day of Euroleague action.
News updates are just part of the plan here. We have many plans for features to bring something meatier to your day. Os has plans to do a Monday morning column which should get you off to a good start in your week. Throughout the Euroleague season I’ll regularly chime in with features and we’re going to get more original video on the site too.
So hopefully that’s convinced you that ballineurope.com is in safe hands. Now I want to ask you to help out. Got a tip? Get in touch. Want to write for us? Get in touch. Want to highlight an article you think is cool somewhere else? Most definitely, get in touch. Ballineurope.com has been the gateway site for me to the Euroballinbloggosphere. This site is going to keep acting like that.
Our content isn’t the end point, it’s where you start. To open more eyes to the great work out there, we need tips. Even if you are plugging your own piece, get in touch. Hell, especially if you are plugging your own piece.
