The media in Dubai with the Adelaide Crows faced their own challenges this week.
For Channel 9’s sports reporter Corey Norris and cameraman Caleb Sutherland, this trip has been far from a holiday.
The effort required to produce up to two minutes of footage for the sports news from foreign soil in a different time zone has tested their patience and skill since they joined the Crows on the Malaysia Airlines flight last Sunday.
“It’s been a really demanding week for a lot of reasons,” Norris said. “Dubai is six-and-a-half hours behind Adelaide so we have to be pretty organised. When it’s early morning here it’s already lunchtime back home and they need to know what we are doing and what’s going in our story.
“So we have been editing late at night and filing first thing in the morning – not getting much sleep - and then heading out to training and to do other stories. It’s been a rat race. And we’re using a hire car to get around so that has been tough. We worked out that we have spent a good seven or eight hours all-up lost on the Dubai roads. Like the players, we haven’t had much time to do any sightseeing or shopping.”
The drama behind filing Friday’s report for the news was typical of the week.
Norris and Sutherland edited a story package in the morning and then about 40 minutes out of Dubai to the Ghantoot Polo Club for Crows training. Here, Sutherland shot some footage of the players and then recorded a Norris “live to camera” to introduce the package edited earlier in the day.
Sutherland then edited the tape on a laptop in the back seat of the hire car, plugged into their mobile satellite and feed out the story to Adelaide. But just when they thought they were going to comfortably beat deadline, the laptop went flat and they had to use the cigarette lighter of a nearby car to provide some power.
The Advertiser was the only major commercial Adelaide media outlet not to travel with the Crows to Dubai. Channel Seven and Channel Ten also sent crews with the team and radio station FIVEaa has produced its daily sports show from the city and will call Saturday’s game. And Adelaide’s official website afc.com.au has also regularly filed stories, photos and video. All have had technical and logistical issues at some stage this week but have contributed to keeping Adelaide fans informed.
There has also been strong coverage in the Dubai media, particularly through the daily newspapers and weekly magazines. One reporter from the Gulf News interviewed coach Neil Craig twice this week and his efforts to learn about the game and the club earned him an invite to be in the Adelaide rooms before the NAB Cup match.
