Drew Swainston
I have always been a sports-nut. As soon as I was old enough to kick a ball I was on the patch of grass over the road from my house playing football with the local kids until it either got to dark to see the ball or my mother came and called me in for dinner. This preceded throughout my younger years, where football held far more importance in my life that any educational topics.
It was around this stage that I picked up my lifelong obsession for Darlington Football Club. Heading down to their home ground Feethams on a Saturday afternoon was the perfect way to spend my time - this grew until I was also taking the supporter's club buses to away games at such glamorous locations as Mansfield and Doncaster.
As a teenager it became painfully obvious I was never good enough to make a professional career out of playing, so the idea of sports journalism was rooted in my head. After a few barren years career-wise, I bit the bullet and went to study journalism in London after which I got a role with a news agency and writing about debt and finance really made me realise where my heart truly lay.
What other job means you can call watching the darts or snooker on the TV as research? How else can I justify watching Sky Sports News all day? Everything just fitted together perfectly and I began working as a freelance sports writer. Covering a huge range of sports I spend hours watching, catching up on, and writing about sport - it's a cracking way to make a living.
Football has always taken the majority of my love, from the upper ranking of the Premier League and Champions League down to my beloved Darlington in the Blue Square Premier.
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