Following football on Twitter

Not familiar with Twitter? Watch this 2:23 minute Commoncraft video for a quick introduction: Twitter in Plain English.

Twitter asks people to answer the question “what are you doing?” in 140 characters or less – and surprisingly people do just that. It's a bit like sending a text message to anyone and everyone who's paying attention. “I am eating toast.” “I am going somewhere or other.” To some, this shared minutiae is fascinating.

While being told in 140 characters or less that someone is “eating toast” can seem a bit like social media overkill, Twitter also acts as a sort of news and links portal. This makes Twitter really useful from a different perspective; it makes it an ideal tool for following football.

Anyway, some months ago I set up a Twitter account for our local soccer club and quickly discovered that it was incredibly easy to embed the resultant Tweets (yes, that is what those little micro posts are called) onto the club's home page. This seemed like an easy way to add fresh content to the page on a regular basis and a great way to instantly publish our teams' latest results. Or so I thought. Unfortunately the idea didn't really pan out as expected; without willing volunteers to keep me informed of the match results, it was often a couple of days before the results could be found online, and in the case of junior teams not even then. Not so instant afterall...

The real value in using Twitter though has been the ability to “Follow” and share (ie “Retweet”) the posts of others - and in the Twitterverse there are a lot of people tweeting (yes, that's what it's called) about the World Game.

Once I had the club's account up and running I ran a couple of searches on the terms, “soccer” and “football” which returned enough results to start following the football tweets of several other twitter users. I started by following: FOXSoccerNews, goal_intl, Soccernet, Socceroos and TheWorldGame because these were the first football Tweeters I found. Each of these in turn followed a whole bunch of other football enthused tweeters, and these were duly followed too, providing new fodder for our club's Twitter-mill (okay, I made that one up).

Want to know more about Twitter?

Check out Rafe Needleman's Newbie's guide to Twitter or Arun Basil Lal's Twitter Quick Start Guide

Over the past few months the list of people our club “follows” has grown to 318, meaning that whenever I log in there are oodles and oodles of new posts: match results for games all around the world, comments from players, links to match reports, transfer rumours, match commentary and other football related news.

The “Retweet” function makes it simple to share any of these posts with people who are following us on Twitter, and because of the Twitterfeed embedded in our home page, these new and retweeted posts are visible there, for a short time too.

So Twitter is a pretty useful tool for staying up-to-date with what's going on in the footballing world, I have found it useful for quickly and easily sharing results, links and brief messages. I love that it can be embedded into the club's home page and I am impressed by the fact that Google's RSS Reader can send interesting links to Twitter too, but that's another story...

Something for the juniors...

Uni SC are at it again; in addition to conducting the Twilight Cup competition for interested youth and senior players, they have added a spring/summer program for junior players aged 8 to 11 (under 9 to under 12 players). The sessions are scheduled to take place at Olinda Grove, Mount Nelson on Thursday afternoons from 5:00 to 6:30 pm and will run from 28th October through to 9th December.

While the focus will be on skill development, the sessions will also include small-sided games, where participants will divided into teams based on age, ability and gender in order to play mini games that consist of two twenty minutes halves.

From a developmental perspective, the opportunity for our junior players to participate in post season training sessions is valuable one. Not only is their season effectively extended, allowing them more time to hone their skills, it also provides the opportunity for them to learn from highly qualified coaches whilst playing the game they enjoy.

The cost for the program is set at $55 per player, which works out at just under $8.00 per session, or around $5.00 per hour. It sounds like good value for junior players who are already missing their soccer. It is also a great opportunity for them to meet players from other clubs, and since each training session finishes just before the Mixed Social Twilight games start, there is also the option to stick around and watch the game being played by senior mixed teams.

Even better, Olinda Grove is only around 25 minutes from Woodbridge, there are three well-maintained ovals plus change rooms and clubrooms – it’s a great venue for football and it’s not too far away.


As there are limited places available due to space restrictions and coach availability, those interested in taking part in the program are urged to enrol online
Anyone wanting more information should contact John Parry on: 0412 07 05 39 or email him at: J.S.Parry@tassie.net.au

What's she rabbiting on about?

I have just vicariously lived through the excitement of the National Schools Futsal Titles, where several local youth players, including Mr Y, competed. Even though that competition is over and the prodigal son returned, only slightly damaged, to the nest, the football excitement doesn't look like stopping any time soon. Around this joint Mr O (O for oldest) is looking forward to the Twilight Cup; and all three lads are gearing up to play their first futsal game of the summer roster.

So even though our local club has handed the clubrooms back to the Cricket Club, football is not really over. There's plenty of action awaiting those who don't want to stop playing. The aforementioned Twilight Cup and futsal games will take us all the way through to December – a break for Christmas, and then before you know it there's all the exhilaration of the Summer Cup which ends smack-bang before the 2011 football season starts.

Even those football fans who are having a well-earned break from playing have plenty to keep them occupied. There's the A-League, the W-League, the National Youth League, the Socceroos, the Matildas and the Fusalroos and that's just in Australia! In Europe the major competitions are under-way: English Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A and the Champions League just to name a few of the more prominent ones.

For organisers of the sport there's analysis, planning and preparation; off-season is the ideal time for the new committee to look back to see what worked and what went wrong during the 2010 season. They'll be making decisions and trying to make sure that they are well prepared for the season ahead.

Anyway, back to the point, my personal mission with this blog is to provide football related, and possibly even interesting, content during the off-season – aimed at, but not exclusive to, WSC members. I also plan to share some of my experiences with the various web tools that I have been trialling throughout the 2010 season. Beyond the World Game itself, I'm hoping to include some sources of useful information for those volunteers who may find themselves in unfamiliar territory and in need of a road map.

If it all sounds like a rather confusing excuse to inflict my self-indulgent ramblings on an unsuspecting cyberspace, well there is that too..........