One story has dominated the sporting headlines this morning: the Sunday Times story alleging that a doctor has treated 150 athletes with Performance Enhancing Drugs, athletes including Premier League players. You can find more details on the allegations here.
It's a big story and has been the lead on most sports outlets this morning. Well, everywhere aside from Sky Sports. As Kieran Cunningham pointed out on Newstalk's Paper Review this morning, Sky's Sunday Supplement had the story fourth on the show's running order this morning:
Running order for @SundaySupp from 9: pic.twitter.com/wDAVNrKn51
— neil ashton (@neilashton_) April 3, 2016
The Premier League relegation battle is undoubtedly interesting, but to have it - along with a discussion about Gary Neville's future, which we have already had ad nauseum since his sacking on Wednesday - so far ahead of a huge scandal that has the potential to rock English football seems an editorial oversight at best or willful ignorance at worst. The story was given an eight-minute discussion, and you can watch it in full here.
Sky Sports New did, in fairness, cover the story, but again it was far from the lead. Their 11am bulletin ran the Sunday Times allegations as the third headline, with two minutes dedicated to the story at 11.15am. The story got as much coverage as a rerun of a the post-match interviews that was broadcast on yesterday's Saturday Night Football programme.
While they have discussed the issue - and eight minutes on Sunday Supplement is a reasonable amount of time to dedicate to the discussion - to have the story so far down the running order is worthy of debate.
