Where the heck did this guy come from?

If you follow Australian soccer on X, or Twitter as I will call it from here on out, I’m sure you’ve heard about Nicholas Lennon by now. Whether you saw him break the Douglas Costa news, or flub the A-League Men’s schedule announcement, his #EXCLUSIVE posts have been the talk of the town lately.

Who the heck is this guy? Where did he come from? How does he have so many sources? My questions were never-ending. So when I saw Round Ball Australia had featured him in the latest edition of their podcast, I knew I had to give it a listen. They got straight into it.

“Where on earth have you come from?”

“I’ve had that asked a lot” Lennon responds with a smile “About three months ago I was studying teaching. I didn’t even have a Twitter account, so it's safe to say I’ve come out of nowhere.” He goes on to explain he’s been a soccer fan since he was a child, and he’s always had an interest in, as he calls it, “the Fabrizio Romano type of things.” After starting a sports media course, Lennon says he decided “You know what, let's have a go at starting a Twitter account and see where it goes. When I started I didn’t know what to do with it, and then I started getting a few connections and putting some stuff out, and from there, it's just grown and grown and grown over the past couple of months. I didn’t expect it to go quite this quickly.”

In July 2024, Nicholas created his Twitter account @NicholasLennon0 and sent out his first series of tweets—a passionate thread discussing the A-League's failures and youth development woes.

“A robust youth system is crucial for the future success of Australia’s national teams. When young players are given the opportunity to develop their skills in a competitive environment, it translates to better performance at international levels” read one tweet.

He goes on to post a poll, asking whether or not Optus having A-League rights would increase the popularity of the league. Typical fan stuff. He retweets some bits of news he sees and talks about his opinions on them. On July 4th, things change a bit.

He posts “Brendan Hamill is likely to return to Melbourne Victory.” News the club themselves didn’t post about until six days later on July 10th. I’m unsure if he saw this somewhere else first, or how he got the information.

When asked on the Podcast if Fabrizio was an inspiration for what he aspired to be in Australian football, Nicholas said “It wasn’t at the start, but as I’ve gone along, I keep having people call me the Aussie Fabrizio” he laughs and continues “it makes me want to keep on going and keep on building my portfolio.” He later explains “When I first started my account I don’t think, I like, the aim wasn’t to be this transfer guy. It was just to set it up to get involved in soccer on Twitter. I saw stuff going on, I put it out, I wasn’t really reporting on my own stuff I was just reporting on other stuff I saw. And then from there, I started having other people message me just talking, and then I started putting out my own stuff.”  Well if it wasn’t his intention at the start, by day 4 he seemed pretty keen on the idea. That same day he posts about Reno Piscopo’s imminent Victory signing as well, this time only managing to beat the Victory’s own press release by a few hours. The first #EXCLUSIVE wouldn’t come for a few more weeks though.

On July 22nd, Lennon broke his own “exclusive” information on Twitter.

“#EXCLUSIVE: Trent Sainsbury is not currently open to an A-league return and would like to continue playing overseas.”

The information he claims Trent Sainsbury told him. Information that, if you want to be picky, isn’t technically wrong, but certainly didn’t pan out. The 32-year-old Sainsbury would be officially announced as returning to Central Coast Mariners in August. This is where some take issue with Lennon’s style of reporting. If you break the tweet down, he says Sainsbury is not currently open to an A-League return, and that he would like to continue playing overseas. Those things could have absolutely been true at the time, but when you add a tag like #EXCLUSIVE to it, you’re inherently calling it true information. Why tweet it at all, if your intention wasn’t to confirm he would not return to the A-League? You’re being cheeky at best, and misleading at worst. It’s a slippery slope.

We should talk for a moment about the idea of a new journalist building a portfolio, mainly because I find the topic interesting. When you’re just starting out there’s a million questions to ask yourself, but I feel the most important two should always be, “Is my information accurate?” and “Am I absolutely sure my information is accurate?” Accuracy and integrity should always remain the pillars of information distribution at all costs. Let me be absolutely clear, I am not a journalist and have no experience in the field. I’m just speaking from the perspective of someone constantly searching for new sources of information and how I determine if news is legitimate.

Do you need to break everything you hear or do you need to be correct? Lennon got some answers to that question the hard way on July 29th.

“#EXCLUSIVE: The 24/25 A-League season fixture release has been pushed back until late August. This is due to uncertainty surrounding the stadium availability and clubs yet to receive fixtures for their respective AFC competitions.”

A tweet that Joseph Esposito, A PR & Media Executive at A-Leagues, deemed “False” with a thumbs-up emoji for good measure. The A-League Men's fixture was released just a few days later on August 1st. Another #EXCLUSIVE that didn’t quite pan out for Lennon. When asked about this on the podcast, Lennon was open about his mistake and explained where he got his information.

“I got a message from someone saying that’s the case. I tried to fact-check it with others, and one more person confirmed it, that had, not an involvement at a club but a foot in a door at a club. I guess, as I said, I was still new. So I guess I tried to jump the gun a bit too early on that one. Tried to put it out cuz’ I mean, it was obviously a big story. At the time I had confidence that this was true and then obviously got retweeted saying false.” After the “False” tweet, came the backlash. “A lot of flak came my way in the comments and in the DMs as well, a lot of people messaging me individually criticizing me.”

When bluntly asked, “How far do you think that put you back?” Lennon gave a nervous chuckle and explained “I think it put me back a lot, basically, I was the talk on the app for about a few days. I was the main headline on soccer Twitter about me. It definitely didn’t help me, because, at the time I was trying to build and trying to build, I guess I hadn’t had any major exclusives at the time and then I put this out and it was wrong.” I feel the need to mention that, by my count, Lennon had fourteen tweets containing EXCLUSIVE or BREAKING prior to his fixtures fumble. I won't judge how major any of those were, it just felt relevant.

He would continue on saying “There was a stage where I was kind of like, what do I do now? Am I not trusted by anyone? Do I continue with this? Am I going to be able to rebuild my reputation? I guess over the next few weeks after that, I found a few sources, I put out quite a bit of news.”

This is where I find the idea of building a portfolio so interesting. You can't create news, it has to come to you. So if there’s no real information that day, you have no means of building your portfolio. This can feel like a handcuff to anyone just starting out. Big-name journalists seem to have new stories to break daily, and it can seem like you need to do the same. Again, it's a slippery slope. Is it worth it to potentially tarnish a reputation before you’ve even really got one? How sure do you have to be in information, before you tweet it? Who the hell can you really trust in the beginning?

That’s when my favorite question of the interview gets asked.

“What do you think, at the end of that process right now, is an acceptable level of stories correct to stories incorrect?”

Lennon takes a moment to think before saying “I mean it obviously depends on how many stories you put out. At the moment I feel as if I’m putting out, sometimes I put one a day, and sometimes I put out a few a day. I mean obviously, I don’t always do exclusives, if I see news from another source I’ll put it out and source them in the tweet.”

The folks from RBA were quick to get this one back on track.

“Let's talk your exclusive stories that you’re releasing.”

“Yeah,” Lennon begins “You're always gonna get some wr- (I couldn't understand the name he said) gets em wrong. Like, everyone, you’re gonna get stuff wrong. As I said I try to double-check everything I put out. I feel as though, again, over the last couple months I haven’t really got anything wrong, as such. There’s nothing that’s confirmed as wrong. There’s stuff that hasn’t happened, like Trent Sainsbury, but again, I wasn’t really wrong there. You're always gonna get stuff wrong. You’re always gonna get criticism for it. But as long as you keep putting out news that, mostly comes true, I think people will continue to trust you.” That doesn’t really answer the question, so he’s asked an even more specific question.

“Can you give me a number? Over the course of a year, like, what percentage, what do you think?”

Lennon explains “It's hard to say, I mean, I’m three months into this. I’d say, a good 90% of my stuff has been right. Whereas a few have been wrong.” He elaborates saying he meant 90% has been confirmed as true, whereas some stuff “is just rumors, just talks, and I put that out knowing there’s a good chance it doesn’t happen, but at the end of the day, it's news. The number I'd give you is 90%.”

That’s where I'm curious, Is a 90% accuracy rate good enough? Having a 90% success rate is fantastic in a ton of fields, but is it good enough for someone to be considered credible and reliable? Is putting out rumors that you know there’s a good chance won't happen news? Where’s the line between being wrong, and putting out a rumor? I genuinely don’t know the answers to any of these questions, and the line seems quite blurry to me.

Honestly, I like Nicholas Lennon's vibe. I like what he’s trying to do for the sport and his career. Seeing people decide what they want to do in life, and just doing it, is always commendable. He seems like a good guy, with good intentions and a decent head on his shoulders. I want to see him succeed. I want there to be more people dedicated to Australian Soccer reporting, and growing the game. I don’t, however, want to see him become a TMZ-like, anything is a story, kind of reporter. Maybe that’s what he wants though, and maybe that’s the fast track to success in a landscape starved for consistent content.

He has some sources, and I believe as he continues to grow his resource base and contacts, the stories he will break in the future will be tremendous, 90% of them at least. But that's just like, my opinion man. You should watch the full podcast for yourself if you haven't already, it's excellent. They asked some great questions, and its truly enjoyable to listen to passionate people talk about their interests. Give Nicholas a follow on Twitter as well to see the next #EXCLUSIVE yourself.

Thanks for making it this far!

You can watch to the full podcast on Round Ball Australia’s YouTube.

You can follow Nicholas Lennon on Twitter @NicholasLennon0

You can follow Round Ball Australia on Twitter @RoundBallAus