The website's popularity continues to grow exponentially and last week saw the 100,000th visitor to the site.
To mark this milestone, a prize was awarded in the form of an original Swansea v Preston FA Cup semi-final programme from 1964. The lucky winner illustrates the world-wide appeal of the Internet for football fans as the prize went to Paul Phillips in the United Arab Emirates who surfed in at 10:00 am on the Sunday morning after our great performance at Upton Park. (He was just one of 600 to visit the site in that 24 hour period).
Much scare-mongering had gone on on the mailing list leading up to our match with the Hammers with dire warnings about hooliganism and lists of pubs and areas to avoid. I am delighted to report that this was completely unfounded and I managed to meet up with a number of "Swanoraks" in the Queens pub right outside Upton Park tube station where we were given a very warm welcome by the East End locals.
In fact, the following day a number of them left messages on the Guestbook page of the site which were very complimentary to both our team and supporters – a very sporting act and one to be applauded. Makes a change from the drivel that has infected the "Swans Say" messageboard lately.
Over the Christmas period, a number of us locally based supporters managed to meet up with fellow Swans fans from all parts of the globe who were home for the holiday - Caracas, Venezuela being just one exotic location I'm going to name-drop.
Like Swansea, West Ham has its share of Internet sites for the benefit of its supporters but the thing that struck me as a major difference between Third and Premiership (apart from the entry prices), was the number of professionally produced unofficial magazines/fanzines.
The one that I read, "Knees Up Mother Brown", had lots packed into it, but I found the closely set small typeface and monotonous page layout, very user-unfriendly. I wonder what tonight's visiting supporters will make of our efforts – especially the 91st rated facilities on offer J.
Thanks to all who keep supporting the site and the mailing list. If you haven't visited yet, the details are below and by tomorrow evening it will contain all reports and statistics of tonight's match together with video clips of the goal action and hopefully details of our next round match against Derby County.
Links to all Official and Unofficial sites are available at my Swansea Internet Web site. The address is http://www2.prestel.co.uk/gmartin or use the easy-to-remember version http://come.to/swanseacity