Checking your sources

One the very good sources of information I refer to when researching a piece is the Rugby League Project (RLP). Because it’s online and therefore quick as an initial check. However, it’s incomplete and not always accurate, particularly when it comes to the English game.

I used it for a previous article referring to the 2008 season, where Salford played in the second tier competition then known as National League One. RLP has the sponsors of the league for that year as LHF Healthplan. That didn’t ring true to me, I thought it was the Co-operative. After more digging, sure enough, it was the Co-operative. That sense check only kicked in because I’m old enough to remember it.

It’s a timely reminder, what with A.I. overviews in search and more people choosing remain within the confines of ChatGPT or an A.I. powered web browser, to verify your sources of information. Essentially, A.I. does this too, but it can only scrape the information it can see and in the main this is data which is published on the web – whether correct or erroneous.

Another example was earlier in the year when, with a couple of fellow reds, we we were looking at all the venues Salford have played in going back to 1896, with a view of producing map with pins marking the stadia (which is in works). While there are a few grounds we are uncertain on, the main one we haven’t been able to verify is the venue where Salford played France in a friendly at Marseille in 1975. We presume it’s the Stade Velodrome, particularly as it was a venue for the World Cup that year. However, we have no information to back that up.

I took a stab in the dark by asking ChatGPT, given that it has dredged what exists online. But it confidently replied saying that Salford never played France in Marseille in 1975, which I know is an outright lie. The evidence mustn’t be available online in a format it can scrape. A quick peruse of the British Library newspaper section shows that the match did indeed take place ‘in Marseille’.

The only way we’re going to verify this for certain is by either:

Talking to someone who was there

Talking to someone who has memorabilia, such as a photo or a match programme