Welcome

Welcome to the Blogroll to Back of the Net which is a thoroughly good read. 

I lament educashon

I was just over at Super Six checking how I did (got one right, if you must know) and I seriously despair when I see this sort of crappy writing:

Late goal earns trio a share of the spoils

Liam Ridgewell's last-gasp goal for Birmingham proved a real winner for three Soccer Saturday Super 6 players as they shared this week's £5,000 prize.

Terry Stevenson from Woolwich, Andrew Mahon from Halifax and Jordan Fox from Leeds all cashed in as Ridgewell's goal earned Birmingham a point and secured all three players there fifth correct result of the afternoon.

 Tracy and Jennifer are among 19 runners-up each receive a £50 free bet.

It's just sloppy - I know people with good jobs who actually have to write to people and can't handle basic grammar either and frankly it's quite shocking - and it's written on a computer! Far too many people can't (or cannot) spell on their own, or bother to proof-read

Grammar Nazi?

Expert Advice

I have to admit that when I checked out the Football Banter inbox the other day there was an email that did surprise me.  It was from Dan at Wikio, who does email on occasion and has given Football Banter a few sneak peeks at the monthly rankings a few times.

Dan's question to me was, would I like to be listed on the Wikio site as their Sports Blog "expert", with a nice blurb and link back to the site?... Hmmm.... sure, thanks very much.

So that's it, I am hereby installed to the lofty title of Wikio Sports Blog Expert and will be helping Wikio with a few things on the Sports Blog side and in turn I hope to do my bit to help the Sports Blogs take off, and offer some feedback and opinions as well as new links that I may come across.  There are some excellent blogs out there already; a look at the ranking speaks for itself.  There are many blogs that are closer to sports clubs than this one, and there are many blogs more frequently contributed to and better supported, I read a number of them.  There is more to come from the Sports Blogging arena, and I will be a small part of that.  My opinion on Sports Blogging in the UK overall is that we have only just scratched the surface, there is massive potential for more blogs and of differing character.  Large and small, all shapes, sizes and sports - it is not just football blogging to which I am referring.

I personally started blogging because I had been following Politics for a long time and Politics Blogs.  After I had set up my own blog, the same principles seemed to transfer across to football so very easily; I was surprised both at how many Politics blogs there were, and how few sports blogs.  Politics dominate the Wikio rankings partly because they are so numerous and partly because the political media have embraced them.  They have become required reading in their own field.  The realms of Political Blogging have been widely explored to an extent that Sports Blogs have not, well at least not yet been explored.  At the heart of the rise of the political blog are two key points.  1.  A desire from the masses to take more and more of their information from uneditorialised sources, and 2.  The desire of people to also have their own say.  By using those markers, the potential for sports blogs are great. 

The next challenge for the sports bloggers, new and established is to challenge the existing main stream media sites by offering rival content, written by fans and for fans.  The Sport Blog community is our community, we can make of it whatever we wish, and we can have a lot of fun along the way.

Final point I would like to add, is to acknowledge my co-author Tarquin.  I have said before that I would have wound this blog up if he had not of come on board to keep the content flowing more regularly and insightfully.  If Wikio have looked to this site and thought of me that is in no small part at all to Tarquins contribution to this blog.  Thanks.

Admin Notice 2

All should be up and running now and hopefully nobody experienced any problems.  I hope you like the new format, it is free for us, but under licence from the generous people at Gisele Jaquenod.  I wanted to move away from the basic blogger format that had been in use and provide a skin that people would remember and associate with and as we grow our small community I wanted a slightly more professional and unique feel to our site.

To accommodate this new format, there are a few less distractions in the sidebar, but the best and most used links remain.  We have added buttons to aid subscription via a rss reader, and a quick link to our Twitter Page.  There is also a function in the sidebar to subscribe to an automated daily email, this service is provided via feedburner who will provide the T&C's, but if you do subscribe we at Football Banter will not ever pass on your email address for any reason.  For those who currently receive an email, I will be transitioning you to this service, so you will stop getting an email after every post, but the new daily email.  You will receive an email automatically to your inbox with a link, if you wish to subscribe please click on the confirmation link, if not, delete the email and your Football Banter emails will cease once the old method is switched off in a few days time.

The font is slightly smaller than before (or seems to be) I hope this causes no issues for anyone.  For now, this is not something I can change across the whole blog, though if people comment that it is an issue I will look into it further, and/or we can set individual posts to post in a larger font.  Gone too unfortunately are the reaction buttons which allowed a quick 1 button response for those not feeling the inclination to leave a comment.  This is still listed in our HTML set up, so I actually hope we can bring this back soon.  FYI Tarquin, we also lost the 'Nav Bar' at the top of the page which allowed quick access to the editing pages, but I hope to be able to get that added back in; but I need to go and look into how that can be done.

I hope that overall the changes are to peoples liking, feedback, advice and/or abuse should be sent to footballbanter@gmail.com or left in the comments field.

Admin Notice

I am playing around with the Blog set up tonight, with the hope of rolling out a new format.

Please bare with me.  If you encounter any problems, it is probably not your PC, but because I am toying with the gears.  All should be done by 9pm UK Time (probably earlier).

Daniel

Help Wanted

Hi Everyone

Since Tarquin joined Football Banter I think the site has improved greatly, and I am very grateful for his continuing contributions. I had previously considered taking the site down, as I was concerned that on my own I was unable to post frequently and consistently and the site was going to go nowhere. Tarquin has been the big reason for this site's recent improvements.

I wanted to extend an initiation again to any other bloggers who might also like to take a role on the site, as I think there is scope for more contributors and a wider remit. We are not running a news blog; it is all about opinions and commenting.

So, if you already have a blog, [it does not have to be a sports blog] and might like to post here, as frequently or occasionally as would suit you; drop me an email at footballbanter@gmail.com and I will see about getting you set up. If you are as yet unpublished, try writing a post, and see how it feels; if you want a go send us an example.

Since Tarquin joined, we have moved up to 8th in the Wikio UK sports rankings (as per Septembers rankings), and if you care to go look as some of the bigger boys we are competing against I think you will appreciate that there is real potential here. Traffic is still relatively low, but has doubled and is more consistent now. Tarquins contribution has also allowed us to post more frequently postings between us, and this has helped drive traffic in the right direction. We both have other commitments that come first and Football Banter fits around our lives as and when we are able to post.

There is room for more commentators, and if you would prefer to keep your postings on a narrower theme that is just as fine as if you wanted to write about football from all over the world. It is a beautiful game and reaches the whole world, so there is no reason why we would limit ourselves to English and European football. Sports blogs, as with blogs in general in the UK are still in the embryo phase, more and more people are looking to the internet for opinion pieces, and the trends are growing away from established news sites to newer and more independent sites. Why not get in on the get on board now?

If you are interested, do not delay... email us now!

Notice.

I have had a lot of fun with this blog in it's short life, but I am afraid that things might be about to come to a conclusion.

The crux of it is that there are a lot of things in life that must be dealt with, I have not given my new wife all the attention I should have, and though she has been understanding I am not sure that this understanding will be, nor should be forever. I also work full time, and have been very lapse in recent months at getting to the Gym. After all of this there is blogging which I really enjoy, but I have two blogs, this one and Daniel1979. I started the politics blog first, and this blog was set up because I though that, and still believe that Blogs could be a big part of football, and I think there will be more and more blogs in the next few years in this genre.

However, the Football Banter blog has not taken off as well as I had hoped and if truth be told, when I have been short of time, it is the other blog that gets my attention - because that was why I got into this. I set up Football Banter to keep the two separate, as I wanted to approach both in different ways. It is hard to cover everything that comes up in football on my own and there is a lot more that could be covered here.

I did have some good plans to take this blog forwards, I am already set up on the cover-it-live technology and felt there could be a good audience in live-blogging some of the bigger games and some internationals.

I am thinking of winding up Football Banter at the end of the season. I am a little sad, but I think it is the right thing to do given the pressures on my time. However, here are the options.

1. I am prepared to carry on if there are some volunteers to help run the site. I suspect that if we had 3 - 6 bloggers all writing maybe twice a week each on their own teams and subjects we could get some interesting posts going and grow an audience. I would be happy to carry on as administrator, with occasional posting in this capacity. If you have a blog already you will know the likely impact of a couple of posts will not be great, if you are new to the idea it would probably involve, maybe, a couple of hours a week plus initial set up, (which is simple). You can tell me in the comments or email.

2. I take down this blog at the end of the year, and incorporate some elements, occasional football postings, (and perhaps the live blogging of live games?) over to Daniel1979.

As always, your feedback welcome and will make a difference, I will keep going with the blog, a few quiz questions and results here... There will be a lot to say on the relegation battle. Also, I had the FA Cup and European Finals in mind for the live-blogging - but if those few of you who are regulars do not feel like joining in then we will call it a non-starter and leave it at that.

If you have any brilliant ideas that I have not considered then let me also know.

Thanks for following and reading.
Daniel