We all start out in our working lives hoping that we get to work in an environment that challenges us to some degree, amongst people who help the day or night pass by in a pleasurable manner. Naturally there are jobs too where one or none of the above occurs and I think we can all put our hands up to being exposed to it.

When the sports desks at the now defunct Sports.com and Teletext companies got to know each other at the start of the new millennium, we discovered a mutual love of all sport and friendly banter. No matter our age or background, we formed a strong bond over time borne out of a desire to raise the sporting bar.

Sadly financial and marketing ineptitude from the powers that be saw both enterprises bite the dust, stalling our ambitious plans. Thankfully, almost to a person, everyone has since gone on to forge respected careers at the likes of the BBC, ITV, The Guardian, The Times, Reuters, Arsenal, Metro and the like.

Unfortunately, the rise of SEO-dictated journalism and budget cutting has meant that we are often forced to write shorter pieces in a compressed time frame that do not do justice to us or the events we cover.

The Sport Collective is our riposte. We want to write long-form articles that peek into the nooks and crannies of sport, while delivering a podcast that hopefully gets under the skin of worldwide sport every fortnight or so.

You deserve better. Without you we are nothing, so please join us as we look to raise the bar once again.

Spurn the churn, The Sport Collective team

Read Matt Ogborn’s call to arms to find out more about the thinking behind this new journalistic adventure

The Sport Collective Mentor Scheme

Now that we have created a great platform to express our views since launch, it was a natural progression to try and help the new generation of sports journalists make their way in a tough and, often, unforgiving industry.

Read Matt Ogborn’s Sports Journalists’ Association article about reaching out to talented young writers