When too little sport is nowhere near enough

Sports blogging has been a tad deficient in the Australian blogosphere since Scott Wickstein’s Ubersportingpundit site went belly up a few months ago. So I’m pleased to see our very own Rafe Champion is trying to revive the genre with his AFL blog The Real Game. Moreover, and whatever you might personally think of aerial ping pong, Rafe has come up with an especially interesting concept:

The idea is to have a supporter of each team contribute their view of how things went on the weekend. I will put the comments up in pairs for each game. Then of course others can buy in using the Comments facility. Those who are sufficiently enthusiastic can contribute extra stuff, like their favorite stories, their greatest team ever, how they learned to love the game, their most memorable achievement if they played, etc etc.

Contributors can use real names or a dummy, no probs either way.

It occurs to me that we should try to extend Rafe’s concept into other football codes, and maybe even other sports generally. Hence this post. I’m inviting expressions of interest from readers who might be prepared to contribute short (250-500 words maximum) weekly previews and match reports for their own favourite team, in NRL and rugby union Super 14 (we’ve already missed the boat for Six Nations, but there are still assorted tests coming up). Next summer, we might try to extend it to soccer and cricket. If we get enough takers, I’ll have a go at setting up a separate sports blog on the Club Troppo domain. Post your expression of interest in the comment box, or email me at ken DOT parish AT cdu DOT edu DOT au .

PS – I’d be very grateful if some other bloggers could see their way clear to giving this idea a plug on their own blogs. It’s unlikely that the Troppo readership alone is wide enough to generate a decent coverage of so many teams in various different codes. We’ll need to cast the net wide to drum up a decent team of partisan sports bloggers.