Well this is it, the last day.
It only seems like yesterday since we left the old ITW
set up and moved to the Rivals network. Since then, its
been one long roller-coaster ride of laughs and tears. The
early days were a bit dodgy, we behaved ourselves, not
wanting to rock the boat and just try and fit into the
background.
But we was never going to stay there. Before the site
went 'live', we were pulling in more hits than sites that
had been running for a good while. The early days saw the
gobshites come, we their stupid "We're bigger than
you" posts and one by one we sent them packing as it
became apparent that there was more than just a site
growing, it was a community.
The sense of humour was second to none as we started to
get more and more funny stuff being posted on the boards,
it was a risky move, but we decided to leave all the daft
stuff on. The gamble paid off as nutters started to come
in their droves from all over the place, it was wall to
wall daft stuff.
Things started getting a bit big, we were only a few
months old and the site hits were fast approaching a
million page views per month. Various people came in to
help with the site, but they all fell by the wayside as
the need for more original stuff became a big need. We
strived to make sure there was new content on the site two
or three times per day.
Flicking around a Stoke City site one day and I spotted
some brilliant work and pictures by a certain Mr Gareth
Cooper, we had now spotted our target for help, we set our
sites on getting him and struck! Gareth started of writing
a column or two a week for us and soon became my right
hand man. We were now set to really go to town.
Things were ticking away nicely, hits were going
through the roof. Then something well weired happened. A
message was posted on our messageboard asking for money to
help out Port Vale. This looked like the biggest scam that
I'd ever seen and decided to keep an eye on it during the
evening, the tread grew and it was getting so funny that I
did not have the heart to delete it.
Then it happened!
A Valiantitus post!
"What the f---?"
You all know the rest, we had an instant cult hero on
our hands, the hits that came with that sent the site
soaring into space, people were coming just to read what
'The Wise One' had written. Other nutters appeared, some
we now know were made up, some by me, some by other
regulars. Some have been admitted to, some not. You know
some of them, others we know who they are but are sworn to
keep it to ourselves and that's the way it will stay, no
matter what the leader of the Scooby gang says.
Talking of nutters, there was another one that came to
join us that is now held in the highest regard with
AWAGERS! And that's the one and only Dangerous Dan Miggs.
A mystery Dan may be, not quite a full shilling you may
think, but in his own way, he has offered advice to ,most
Awagers here and he cares about every one of you.
So there is just a very quick and rough 'cant really be
arsed' potted history of whats been happening around here
for the past 18 months. Of course we must mention The
Gills, Wolves @the Door, Dave Crewe Alex, Charliesmart,
and many other nutter types including my very own Ash
Tongate (who had Millwall fans pulling their hair out) and
we must even mention one of Kev's creations Royalist, who
I must admit I did admire from a distance as he really
pissed off the more mouthier of the Royals fans and left
us with the good stuff.
All in all, its been fun, I'm not going to pick out any
users for special thanks individually, that would not be
fair to the one's that I would be bound to miss. But I
would like to thank the people that sent things into the
site, the brilliant columnists that we have had the people
who stepped in to help when I was in hospital and Rivals
for giving us the site to play about on, it really has
been a blast.
But most of all, I'd like to thank every single one of
you who use the site, (except the tosspots) from the very
bottom of my heart. ITS YOU that made the site what it was
and deep down I love the lot of you.
Without your humour and general caring for one another
what we had here could never have been achieved. We can
honestly look back over the threads on the board and say
we've laughed, cried and helped each other together. (The
Towers Thread where we felt empty together, The Foodbeast
Thread, Where we laughed our arses off together, and the
Thread left by Old Stokie when he sadly lost his wife
where we cried together) We have proved beyond doubt that
you can get football fans from a wide scale of different
teams and bring them together as one.
And that was all we ever set out to do in the first
place, I knew it could be done, I just needed to sort the
cream from the rest to do it with.
So that's it as far as this place goes, the end of an
era, I could have mentioned a lot more but I would have
gone on forever and as its 4 am, I need a kip. But we will
not die off. We'll have a board that we can pass the time
of day on later today so we can all keep in touch, Awaging
will not end, it will go on, you're welcome to come with
us, the more the better.
Because as we know, we are ENORMASS
Thank you all
Andy
