By Mark Dingwall
It seems just like yesterday. Where do those years go?
Our first proper home with the follow follow.com address was with rivals.net and we opened for business 10/11 August 2000. But before we talk about that I think it’s right to give a nod to our first appearance online and in that I have to make a rather shamefaced admission.
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I had become aware the year or so before that an Edinburgh University student had take to posting up the front page of the latest issue of the fanzine and perhaps and article or two and then gave a link as to where you couple get a copy by posting a cheque. I emailed the lad and we met at Ibrox a few times to chat and I’m sad and shamed to admit I can’t now recall his name offhand. He did however look like Professor Denzil Dexter – the beared, ponytailed and large spec wearing character from the Fast Show. His place in our story is notable and I send him once again a big thumbs up and show of thanks for his help.
Late in 1999 I was contacted by letter by a Hibs fan from Edinburgh, working in London, named Mark Ranaldi – his first loves were Hibs, motorbikes and photography and he’s made a good career for himself travelling the world at times photographing bike races and various football associated jobs. His job with RIvals.net was to talent spot and sign up people for the new network. He knew that we didn’t have a proper website but didn’t really rate any of the then existent Rangers sites but he knew the fanzine and reckoned the material would translate to the web.
Mark came up to Glasgow from the London office and I signed on the dotted line. Rivals.net was an offshoot from the hugely successful rivals.com network in America – the rights to own the name and run a network for football were bought by Chrysalis and the Japanese bank Softbank were supposedly bankrolling to the tune of £10million. It meant all the technical. legal and sales stuff would be handled down south and we would concentrate on articles and running the messageboard.
We had some tutorials and a big get-together of all the Scottish sites in a Perth hotel – you felt like part of a movement. One guy asked the expert panel “what happens if your club chairman is a paedophile” – what can you say about that? To general laughter from the top table the legal expert explained that whilst you might suspect that you could never say it as he’d have you in court. “No I can” said the publisher from East Fife – their chairman Julian Danaskin had such convictions. We each got a copy of “The Bible” which was a guide to building community – wish I had kept it! Such was our introduction to the legal pitfalls of running a website.
I never cease to be amazed by the depth of the knowledge football fans have in the game. Whether that be historical or in the progress of some youngster in the youth system. One of the first articles I wrote was a preview for a Dunfermline game at Ibrox ( 4-1 Albertz pen, van Bronckhorst, Dodds and Wallace) where I noted that a Dunfermline played would be missing because he had “picked up a knock” in training. The first responder to the thread was a Dunfermline fan who noted that I was “a stupid moronic thick bastard” as the player in question had broken leg. Quality research!
In those days Hibs.net was the biggest fan forum in the UK – their publishers Stuart Crowther and John Campbell would later be headhunted to run their official club media presence. I always found it a bit po-faced but there’s no doubt they had the magic formula for running a forum. Another site that was huge in those days and opened my eyes to the possibilities was run by a lady called Andrea Throstle who I believe either lived in or retired to the Isle of Wight and it concerned the travails of Cambridge United. She ended up as the club PR officer. Her piece of magic was to supply three articles a day come rain or shine – they could be excruciatingly impenetrable to non-Cambridge fans but she seemed to have cornered the market for Cambridge fans and they flocked to it from around the world. I never forgot that people thirst for news about their club – and even up to today I always try to get news from the club onto the message board quickly – but nowadays often other users get there first!
After the first full day of launch we had amassed a total of 950 internet hits.
After a year of rivals.net they pulled the plug on every site apart from the English 92 clubs – all the Scottish sites, F1, racing, rugby union and rugby league all got chopped. We had hit the internet bubble – until then advertisers were scrambling to get online – then it gradually dawned on them that there was no agreed metrics for measuring the effectiveness of online advertising. They pulled their cash until the online industry got it’s act together. In the meantime all the non-English top flight club sites got our marching orders. Some people weren’t happy about that but at a meeting in Edinburgh I said that rather than sabotaging our sites that we just work out our contracts and fulfil our sides of the bargain. That proved the correct avenue to go down as many of the rivals.net staff in London would go onto other things but we retained contact and many good things came of that over the years.
Meanwhile I had to find a new home for the site. Not being technically gifted I looked around for similar networks who could handle all the technical gubbins. Eventually I found Footmad who were based in a rather nice industrial pavilion just off the motorway near Burnley. The chief exec was a mad Burnley fan and he built the network. That actual owner of the network was the mysterious “Mr Taps” – he had all sorts of businesses but had made his money in bathroom fittings. I never got to meet him. Footymad, or sometimes Footy-bad, as they struggled to keep up with the growth in traffic across all their sites, would provide a decent home for many years until after changes in ownership to Leeds and then London for a few years would see the service decline to a point where we left.
However, Footmad was a place where we would have some high jinks and fine times over the years even if there was a temporary exile to ProBoards necessitated by a nameless admin posting a Hang Neil Lennon cartoon and it becoming the lead item on the BBC news and subsequent newspaper coverage. One of the English guys at head office of rivals.net had previously said that the only worse rivalry in sport was that between Indian and Pakistani cricket fans which he described as “the Old Firm with nuclear weapons”. Footymad was enlivened for a while by the actitivites of Gagga (once online for four straight days according to the online league table – until we discovered that the Opera browser had an automatic update feature!) and the Splinter Group Loyal who were a faction of the Blue Order fan group much addicted to swally and jolity. They used to organise “Away Days” on the message boards with the system of other clubs – once you registered on one fan page you could access them all. Suddenly unsuspecting admins at clubs like Scunthorpe (what fun there was with that club in the swear filter system!) would find their forums filled with people discussing Rangers team selections, the infamy of Celtic FC or the colour of a partner’s genital discharge.
EPIC THREADS
I’m sure you all have your favourites but mine was the one of Proboards entitled “Just battered the father in law” which retold the tale of a Celtic supporting father in law being physically chastised for cruelty to a dog. The court of FF found in the defendants favour! I’m sure you have your own choices – the James Blarney thread by Rex is my choice for the silver medal.
THOSE WHO HAVE SERVED
We’ve had FF romances, FF marriages and FF babies. We’ve also had some sad losses along the way – although not exhaustive or in any kind of order I’d like to remember QV Loyal, Ethel Cardew, Number Eight, Bulldog and ontheline. Number Eight was one of the three of us who effectively formed the Rangers Supporters Trust – Gordon had written for the fanzine and the continued with posts online. At times, he could frankly be infuriating as once he had an idea in his head it was hard to shift him with logic! Yet, I suppose that is what makes a great poster – individualism.
AN INCUBATOR FOR IDEAS
The thing I’m probably proudest about is the campaigns which were started on FF and then flew in the real world amongst a big circle of Rangers fans. Of those I can name some have been big and some have been small – the Rangers Supporters Trust, Black and Red Scarves, Rangers Supporters Erskine Appeal, Founders Trail. etc etc.
I’ll come to what I think was our biggest contribution shortly but in passing I must mention the Sam English Centenary celebrations – his career and his life had sadly been overshadowed by the John Thomson tragedy – everyone knew John’s story but Sam’s fantastic career had been largely forgotten. We changed that and honoured him properly. At the dinner we held that night at Ibrox where the Sam English Bowl was unveiled I asked his daughter as she headed home how she had enjoyed the evening – her face was lit up with happiness and simply said “thank you” to the committee. Chairman for the evening was John Gilligan and he would later serve as the Rangers Chairman – in his closing remarks he said “Tonight, we have righted a great wrong”.
THE TRUST
Although it didn’t end in the way anyone would have predicted or wanted I thought it was a great achievement – we had spotted that David Murray’s ownsfership was taking us down the wrong path – although none of us thought it would ever end how it did. The website promoted the Trust and helped take its activism and it’s message of defending the reputation to new heights – it popularised themes about the media and fairness and getting fans a fair deal. I was, and still am, intensely proud of the Trust.
DAYS OF HOPE
Although they were dark days they were also great days. I speak of course of the departure of Murray and the coming of Craig White and the Spivs. It was not an easy fight or one easy to recount as there were so many false dawns and twists and turns. During those days I was RST spokesman and often did interviews outside Ibrox – I made myself available. The despicable behaviour of some on the RST board who betrayed simple honesty and the membership will not be recounted here but those who know them and their actions will forever hold them as an example of personal pride taking prominence over what is best for the club.
Those in charge tried everything they could to close FF down and drag us into court. Housty, Chris Graham and myself would be regularly described in internal club emails as “the arch agitators” to be chased down and dragged in front of the courts. David Leggat who worked hand in glove with us was actually the subject of High Court proceedings and Rangers fans as a whole owe him a great debt of gratitude for all his steadfast work.
People from all parts of the world and different fan organisations all played their parts in the darkest of days. I doubt we shall see similar darkness for our club for generations to come.
It stripped away a lot of pretences and made you make decisions in the fight even if it left you isolated at times. I’m delighted to say that FF was a bastion of resistance throughout those days and never wavered.
NOT THE SAME AS IT USED TO BE?
Well, it’s been 25 years and the site is a lot bigger – but the principles are the same. The guiding principle I set out to all new admins is to always remember that “the bad drives out the good.” Under the old Footymad system we banned over 6,000 usernames during our years there. Not a single one of them ever accepted we were correct to do so.
I’m not in favour of “free speech for all” – in that case we’d let paedophiles and IRA supporters run amok. Free speech must be temperate and well informed or it is worthless. Never had a problem with opposing opinions.
Some have got it into their heads that we as a support should counter the lunacy of Celtic fans be either becoming a mirror image of them or becoming more extreme. I disagree with that – the counter to hate and ignorance is not to promote more of it – it is in rationality and common sense and human decency that we should wish to live.
MOVING ON
I believe in this old club of ours. That we will see better players in every position that are currently held by heroes of the past. That we will win greater honours. That we will change things for the better. I chose the title Follow Follow because it’s a great song of not just hope but of enjoyment in following the team. We can’t choose how or why fans of the future will support the club but we can hope they all enjoy the sort of camaraderie we’ve shared on the terraces and in the stands and online.
Thank you to everyone who has contributed over the years – it has been a ball.