Subverting the inverted pyramid: Kevin McCarra and the revolution in British football journalism 1988-2020

Abstract

Football sports writing in Britain’s quality broadsheet newspapers has undergone a stylistic revolution since the 1990s. Despite being pioneered by colourful individuals in the inter-war period, football writing has usually been relegated to minor partner in the editorial mix of papers like The Guardian, The Times, and the Sunday Times. Writers such as Don Davies, Brian Glanville, and Hugh McIlvanney set a template upon which writing about sport, and football in particular, became recognised as having the same high cultural status as political or arts journalism. Reporting about football moved away from the functional telling of the narrative of a match through the five W’s of the inverted pyramid (Who, What, Where, When, and Why), towards a deeper more intellectual analysis of the cultural and social importance of the game. Kevin McCarra, who wrote for The Guardian from 2002 until his death in 2020, exemplified the new literary approach to football and helped to inspire its development online. This paper analyses where he sits in the pantheon of modern British football writing and identifies how those he has inspired to carry on the tradition have brought football writing full circle back to the pioneers of the inter-war period.