Blog (Activity) Suspended

A couple of months ago I decided to retire from spending around 20 hours a week on adding to the archives contained on this blog, for a variety of reasons. 

I'd decided not to bother going to the State Library to compile newspaper compilations and do research when they reopened after yet another lockdown. I was a little dirty on them being so slow to reopen that section of the library. I had a finishing line in mind for what I noted I would be seeking in my last blog post, and it was constantly moving away from me. After the best part of a couple of years under lockdown and restrictions, sitting in libraries and on computers all the time does not seem like a liberating freedom. Neither did finding boxes of stuff to scan.

I had spent a lot of time on the computer, either scanning or creating pdfs from jpgs, joining emailed pdfs, searching for items via the Wayback Machine, most of it with a football game from somewhere being streamed and cast onto the television alongside it. What I'd noticed was that the games had become mere background noise. If I missed a goal because I was working on something, sometimes I would not even bother to catch it on the replay, so little was I invested it the match.

This was brought into sharper focus when I watched the premiere of the Optus Sport Football Belongs documentary. With many using it to argue for or against the regular political issues in the game, or the sport's place in the Australian landscape in general, I was more drawn to the glimpses of club life that I missed. The moments that reminded me of when I really felt the passion, and every kick did matter. With my two clubs now gone, and not having another one in me, those moments are gone forever.  

I'm happy enough to keep adding the contributions emailed to me by the network established over the years - great people like Paul Mavroudis, Greg Stock, George Cotsanis, Greg Werner, Peter Rowney, Graeme McGinty, Travis Faulks, Laurence Hall, Tony Persoglia, Doug Butcher, Warrick Ford and Ian Syson.

Every once in a while I may put up a list of what they have sent me and what's been added to the archives, because that will still be ticking along for a while yet. I won't be tweeting out a link to every item added as I add them, so that may be needed to keep some up to date with where to find new items.

The blog was down for a few hours yesterday after I received this email from Blogger/Google.

                                                  Click on image to enlarge

                                                       

I found the link to appeal, and the site was restored. I think the issue may have come from the advertising spam posted in the comments sections of posts and pages, so I have disabled commenting for now and spent a few hours catching up on removing comments relating to football tips, sports streams, call girls, drugs and supplements and a lot of stuff in Turkish and some Asian alphabets I didn't understand.  

This scare has made me even more wary of spending too much more time actively working towards expanding it further, given so many hours of work could one day very easily disappear with nothing to show for it.