ONE of the giants of Scottish football reporting – The Sunday Post’s Ron Scott – has stepped down, after almost 50 years with the paper’s publishers, DC Thomson.
While Scott will be continuing to do some football writing for the paper, he officially retired the week before last, after 48 years with the company, where he began his career as an apprentice in what was then called the Process Department, which looked after all photographs and art work that went into newspapers.
Photographers would develop their pictures and pass them onto the Process Department who would then use machines to ‘scan’ them into the newspaper pages.
The first football match Scott reported for The Sunday Post was, on a trial basis, in 1968: Arbroath versus Shrewsbury Town, in a pre-season friendly match.
The following year, he was made a full-time sports journalist for The Sunday Post plus sister titles, The Courier, The Weekly News and Evening Telegraph.
While working for The Sunday Post, he wrote under a name made up by the paper, ‘Bill MacFarlane’. This only changed around ten years ago when reporters were given bylines in our newspapers. Before then, ‘Bill MacFarlane’ was used to differentiate Ron from his colleagues, who didn’t have bylines.
In a media statement issued by DC Thomson, The Sunday Post editor, Donald Martin, is quoted as saying: “Ron is hugely respected by his peers in journalism, and throughout the game, in Scottish football and beyond. He has built trust over many years by his honesty, accuracy and fairness.
“Although Ron has now officially retired, it won’t be the last we will hear from him. He’ll still be writing a weekly column and doing match reports in The Sunday Post. I am sure Ron will have a happy and long retirement. His big and warm personality will be sorely missed around the office but I look forward to still reading all about his adventures in his column every week.”
