IT SEEMED like a good idea at the time. And it was.

A team of dedicated reporters, out and about covering footy news and matches as they happened, for a website solely devoted to covering the depth and breadth of the AFL.

That was the editorial model for the revamped AFL.com.au as we launched it at the start of 2002.

When I say 'we', I mean a team of us at Sportal, a fledgling digital start-up operating out of a small office in South Yarra, which had been engaged by Telstra to build 17 new websites – one for the AFL, official sites for 15 clubs and an 'unofficial' site for Essendon, which had opted not to sign up for the AFL-Telstra Network as it would be known.

The AFL has had an online presence since 1995, however between 1998 and 2001 AFL.com.au was run as a joint venture between News Limited, Channel Seven and the AFL.

Because Seven was the AFL's broadcast rights partner, the site had access to game highlights, but the main written focus of the site was to republish News Limited's AFL stories and there was only a limited capacity to publish breaking news as it happened.

The bread and butter stories that footy fans can never get enough of, such as contract extensions, injury news and coaches and player news conferences, had to wait until the website was republished overnight.

Telstra purchased the AFL rights at a time it was dipping its toes into content creation. The telco giant paid every club, except the standalone Bombers, a sum of money in exchange for their online rights. The clubs were happy to pocket the cash, but in late 2001, with internet penetration in Australia barely more than 50 per cent of all households, it is fair to say that even at chief executive level, there wasn't a great deal of understanding of what exactly they had handed over.

For the first couple of years, there were clubs, particularly those that were sponsored by rival telcos, who were non-committal towards and in some cases hostile to, the new network even though they had happily taken the money from Telstra. They were interesting times and our team was often the punching bag for battles between Telstra and the clubs.

Even within the AFL, there were levels of discomfort about a website offering real-time reporting of its own affairs.

The content side of the new network was handled by a managing editor, two deputy editors, three full-time writers, some producers who also wrote and part-time casual writers from outside Victoria, who would cover matches and attend the occasional training session.

I was the managing editor and I had budget to hire one experienced journalist. Given that online journalism required quick, clean and accurate copy I went for Paul Gough, then a senior reporter for Australian Associated Press. I caught him at a moment of weakness – while he was covering a Sheffield Shield game in front of about 150 people – and he agreed to come on board.

The rest were relatively in experienced. Among them was Sam Lane, at the time a mad Carlton supporter who worked in a music shop in Brighton, who just happened to be the daughter of leading broadcaster Tim Lane.

All 17 sites were built in a matter of months and it required several all-nighters in the South Yarra offices to meet the deadline, which was the day before the opening game of the 2002 Wizard Cup, a Friday night game between St Kilda and Melbourne at what was then still Colonial Stadium.

A look at the old AFL.com.au site in 2002



It was a nerve-wracking night, but not just for us. A few boxes away, Eddie McGuire and the Channel Nine commentary team were broadcasting their first game, having snatched the TV rights from Seven after 15 years.

We got there. Just. The Match Centre worked and the match report appeared within a few minutes of the final siren. But that didn't appease the punters, who complained loudly and widely to the AFL and to Telstra, on talkback radio and the rudimentary social media of the day. There was even an online petition demanding that the old AFL.com.au be reinstated.

But that ship had sailed. We had to establish the new AFL.com.au as a respected and reliable source of football news and information. We assembled a reasonable team of opinion writers – recently retired Carlton champion Stephen Silvagni, Richmond coach Danny Frawley and Collingwood’s Josh Fraser (then a rising star of the competition) wrote weekly columns.

But the buy in from the football community – who were more used to dealing with the 'old' media – took considerably longer. Goughy rang one veteran official one day to follow a news lead. After he introduced himself and said he was from the AFL website, the official barked back at him, "I have nothing to say to you and I’m sure as hell not talking to a computer!" and then slammed down the phone.

The turning point in terms of our credibility came a couple of weeks before the season. There were whispers that a big story was going to break out of North Melbourne and the club then called a snap media conference. It was Goughy’s day off so Sam Lane, three weeks into her journalistic career, was dispatched to Arden Street to cover the story.

Her report of the Wayne Carey bombshell, in which he admitted to his affair with Kelli Stevens, wife of teammate Anthony Stevens and that he was leaving the club, was accurate and concise – and was the first to appear online. Traffic to the website spiked that afternoon and the new AFL.com.au had passed its first big test as the point of reference for big, breaking footy news.

An interesting twist to that story was that Telstra had set aside a pool of bonus money to be divided up to the clubs at the end of the year depending on how much traffic they drove to their websites. The Kangaroos, despite their lowly support, received the highest dividend that year, all because of the Carey story.

Also notable in that first year was the difficulty we had in speaking to anybody from Essendon or even publishing interesting and informed content about the club. In the end I turned to a 15-year-old Caulfield Grammar student who had been pestering for the opportunity to write about the Bombers and who clearly knew his stuff. His name? Cal Twomey.

There were all sorts of lessons that were learned on the spot. When it became clear after just one round in 2002 that the selected teams were too hard to find on the website, we created a prominent news story every Thursday night that listed the weekend’s teams, in position. It was a group effort at our end to type in 16 sets of names so quickly and we would have the story published online within a few minutes of the teams being released. Then as now, the teams story is one of the most-read on the AFL website every week.

AFL.com.au and I went our separate ways in 2007 once Sportal lost the management contract but when AFL Media was formed in late 2011, I was back as a senior writer.

The threadbare group that produced the website for five years had been replaced by a super-sized team. Loads more writers, a proper sub-editors desk, social media editors and audience engagements specialists. Videos and podcasts, which we had barely dabbled in back in the day, were a staple part of the content offering. Fantasy footy and specialist statistical content had exploded in the few years I was away.

The fundamentals of online footy coverage haven’t changed in 2018. Breaking news, informed analysis and features and a bit of fun as well as we celebrate a game we all cherish. Just more of it and presented with more sophistication. AFL.com.au and the Official AFL App do all this brilliantly. It was a privilege to lead it in a new direction back in 2002 and to still be a small part of such a rich and tremendous offering 16 years later.

If this reads like a farewell column, that’s because it is.

AFL.com.au gets the best of care and attention from a brilliant group of writers, editors, producers, developers and designers. But now the time has come to help breathe some new life into the AFL Record, another media property that’s vitally important to tens of thousands of fans every footy season.

Crocmedia has bought the Record and has some big plans to reinvigorate it. It is exciting to be part of the team that will do just that, starting from round one next year.

I won’t be totally lost to this website. Movers and Shapers IV will get a run here on the eve of next season and with an added twist. Hopefully there will be other opportunities for AFL.com.au to showcase the best of the Record.

This website and in particular penning this column, has been a blast and a huge part of my professional career. And I’ll miss it.