Message Boards

Its quite poignant that Ben Hayes - Supporters Director recently wrote about Message Boards and mentioned Covered End Choir which having taken over from Netaddicks on the Rivals hosted site, owned by Sky, was making rapid progress under the administration of the hard working Paul May. Paul took over the site when Trevor took netaddicks away to be hosted by Clubfanzine (its a murky world of different hosts), citing forthcoming changes.

Paul has done great work increasing the information value of the site and bringing old and new posters to Rivals.net. As a reward Rivals have introduced their new, jumbled, confusing site totally ruining Pauls previous work. It is difficult to work out how to post messages and new threads, so the average of 70 postings a day has gone down to 12 so for today and that includes two from a Palace fan so that does not even count. It looks like I'll be spending more time looking for useful employment now, which can't be a bad thing.

Over the next few days, I am sure Charlton life and netaddicks.com are going to see an increase in traffic and Rivals, who have changed all boards across the league, a sharp decline.

It is strange how the technology of the web has changed our expectations, when I was living in Humberside, when Charlton were promoted to the old 1st Division top flight, a message board was something you had in your kitchen and a Charlton message board was something your mate in Charlton had in his kitchen. Now it seems its the font of all knowledge, ludicrous rumour and a place to vent your spleen whether you are in SE7, Exeter or even Peru about all things Charlton. It will be interesting to see how Murdoch's SS react to the negative response to their re launch, but in its present form I can't see too many posters going back. If that is the case then I'll miss Covered End Choir, although the immigration debates will be happily confined to the dust bin.

Whatever the outcome a big thanks is due to Paul may also known as Reams of Verse.