Childhood blues to national award winner: the story of Jonathan Northcroft

It’s the start of the football season in 1979 and an over excited eight year old boy called Jonathan Northcroft follows his dad to the local newsagents. He doesn’t nag his dad for sweets or Panini cards - he wants to read the back page of his local newspaper, the Press and Journal.

His father had picked up the newspaper and they rushed home to read it. However, when they got home and read the back page, they found that there was nothing about Aberdeen inside. 

It was full of headlines dominated by Celtic and Rangers, with the only mention of Jonathan's favourite team being a small print in the bottom corner. 

It infuriated the young boy. How could his favourite team just be thrown to the side like that. It wasn’t fair, and Jordan wanted that to change. He wanted to be the one to make that change. 

Jonathan got his chance to do sports journalism at the university of Edinburgh when applied for a journalism course in 1995. He worked hard and managed to graduate the course with a 2:1.

It gave him his way into his first job at the Glasgow Herald “I got my first job, I needed the course to get through the interview” says Jonathan. 

He noticed that there wasn’t much content in the paper about Scottish football and spoke with his editor to ask if he could write an article about it. His editor agreed, and Jonathan would get his work published for the very first time. 

It was thrilling. He knew that he was making not only his family and friends proud, but also his younger self. The young Aberdeen fan who begged to read about his team.

The doors would keep opening for Jonathan as more and more of his work was getting published and more people were taking notice. He joined the Sunday Times in 1998 when he still lived in Scotland. 

He wrote about different types of sport but he was best known for his football writing and earned himself a move to England in 2001.

One of his first jobs he was tasked with was to report on a match between Manchester United and Liverpool. It was a start with a club and a place that he would end up growing a love for. Another team in red. 

Soon after that he would move to one of England’s biggest footballing cities, Liverpool. It would be a quick transition for Jonathan as he became integrated with the city’s culture almost instantly. 

“I’m not a Liverpool fan but through living in the city I kind of became a fan” says Northcroft, who was keeping true to his Aberdeen roots as well as embracing the new culture.

It wasn’t too long before Liverpool football club gave Jonathan one of his greatest memories just a year after he had moved to the city in 2004. The night known to football fans as the miracle of Istanbul.

The reds came back from three goals down in the Champions League final against AC Milan to win the game on penalties. Jonathan Northcroft was in Istanbul, covering the match for the English press. A place that he never thought he would ever be in.

That was just one of many highlights in his career as a sports journalist. He was covering the biggest teams from across the globe for the Times and was one of the most recognised and liked sports journalists in the UK. 

In 2016, Jonathan would become an author after releasing a book about Leicester City’s Premier League title win. It was named ‘Fearless: The Amazing Underdog Story of Leicester City, the Greatest Miracle in Sports History.’

“I’m most proud of the Leicester one” says Northcroft, a book that he was able to write in only three weeks. 

It wouldn’t be the only book that he would write, He went on to write two more about the English national team and be a writer in another. 

Even though he was now working as an author as well, his responsibilities with the Sunday Times didn’t stop, and as Chief Football Writer his workload was immense. 

Even though he had been shortlisted for awards numerous times in his professional career, Jonathan had never gone on to win it. That was until 2025, where he was awarded the Football Journalist of the Year award by the Sports Journalists’ Association. 

It was a monumental victory for him, and in the back of his mind he saw a younger version of himself with an Aberdeen shirt on and his father. Both of them were smiling. Both of them gleaming with pride. 

30 years of work in sports journalism has made Jonathan Northcroft a nationally recognised name. His contributions on TV and in newspapers have allowed Scottish football to get into newspapers across the UK. 

He made sure that no Scottish child would ever be deprived of seeing their favourite team in the local newspaper, something that Jonathan Northcroft never had as a child.