The press box has landlines on the desks, left from when reporters phoned copy through, and they are on the club's switchboard, which logs every call. Every night at ten past ten one of them dials a number. The number was a newspaper's copy desk. The line opens, and a man dictates a match report, four hundred words, paragraph by paragraph, with the punctuation said aloud, and the match is tonight's, and there was no match, and the report is better than anything we get now.
I am the media manager at a football club and the press box is my room on a match day and nobody's on any other night, except one desk.
The phones.
Landlines on the press desks, put in when reporters phoned their copy to the paper, and left, because taking them out costs money, and they are on the club's switchboard, which logs every call.
Every night at ten past ten, desk seven dials out.
The call.
The number is a copy desk. I found it in an old press guide: the number reporters rang to dictate to the paper's copytakers, at a paper in the city that closed in 2011 and whose building is flats. The number does not connect to anything. The switchboard logs it as connected, and a duration, about eight minutes, and the call is recorded, because the switchboard records outgoing calls from the press box for the club's own reasons.
The recording is a man dictating. He gives his name and the paper and says, match report, and then he dictates. Four hundred words, in the old way: a paragraph, said clearly, then, full stop, new par, and the next. He spells the names. He says the score. The report is about a match at this ground, tonight, and it is a good report, tight, with a line in it that makes you see the goal, and there was no match tonight, and I have read the report of the match there was not for a year.
What has been checked.
The phone on desk seven, unplugged. It dials at ten past ten.
The press box, at ten past ten, by me, at desk six. The handset on seven lifted. I watched it. And a man's voice, beside me, not loud, in the rhythm of dictation, said, match report, and began, and I heard the whole thing, four hundred words, in a voice that was tired and quick and knew exactly what it wanted to say, and at the end he said, ends, and thanks, love, and the handset went down.
The report was of the match that was not played, and it was, I would swear to this, the match we played the previous Saturday, three days before, described by a man who had watched it from that desk, and I had sat two desks away on Saturday and the desk had been empty.
Who.
The paper's old sports desk is scattered but not gone, and one of them, a woman who was a copytaker there for thirty years, listened to the recording and said, at once, his name. He had covered this club for the paper for as long as anybody could remember. He had phoned his copy in every match night at ten past ten, to her, mostly, and she had typed it, and she said she could have typed that one from memory because he always said thanks, love, at the end and nobody else did.
He had died the year after the paper closed. She said he had not known what to do without it.
He is still filing. Every night. To a copy desk that is flats. And I have read a year of reports on matches we played, filed by a man who has been watching us from desk seven since 2012, and the reports are honest, which ours are not.
What is done about it.
The call is on the switchboard log every night as an outgoing call to a disconnected number and the finance office is charged for it by the phone company at the local rate, and the finance office has asked me to stop it, and I have said the phone is unplugged.
What I do.
I manage the media.
He is dictating to nobody. That is the only thing wrong. A copytaker takes the copy and reads it back and says, lovely, and it goes in the paper, and he never gets the lovely, because the paper is flats.
So I take it. At ten past ten I am at desk six with a notebook, and when he begins I write it down. All of it. Four hundred words, full stop, new par, in my own shorthand, which is bad, and at ends, I read it back. Out loud. The whole report, to the empty desk, the way a copytaker did, and at the end I say, lovely, thanks, and the handset goes down.
I put the reports on the club website. That is the other thing. Not as his. As match reports, unsigned, four hundred words, the night after every home match, in the space where our own reports used to go, which nobody read, and people read these. The comments say they are the best reports the club has had in years. The comments are right. And the copytaker, who I sent the link to, wrote back one line, which was, that's him, and then, tell him it went in.
I did. At ten past ten, before he started, I said, it went in, and there was a pause, and then he said, good, and started, and thanks, love, at the end, and I have decided that a man who has been filing copy to nobody for thirteen years can have a byline, and I am going to put his name on the next one, and I am going to have to explain that to somebody, and I am ready.