Happy Birthday to us

Quite a few years ago Sir Eski Kanka, or just plain Eski Kanka as he was then before he was knighted for his services to Ankara football, started up an e-mail group to keep various people up to date on Ankaragucu.

At some stage I joined up with the great man and started writing about Genclerbirligi. All was well and fine but I wanted glory. So I set up this blog to bring our inane mutterings to the world.

That day was December 6, 2005, and my first post was "A sausage too far", the first of many obscure headlines which actually was in reference to my last e-mail story in which I reported that various Gencler players had been fined for stopping off to eat sausage on the way home from an away match. It also happened to be the first post in which Isaac Promise was not exactly praised.

Those first few days of blogging were rather lonely. Sir Eski Kanka still hadn't figured out how to post and the comments on the blog were few and far between. Genc Kanka Eddie was the first to post a comment.

I have no idea what our actual traffic figures were in those days but by February, when I finally added a counter thing, we had 218 visitors. Nowadays we are averaging about 1,000 visitors a month. Not exactly enormous but not too bad for a blog writing about teams that most people in Ankara, let alone Turkey or the world, couldn't give a toss for.

With such numbers Sir Eski Kanka and myself will not be retiring soon but in just the last few days we cracked 100 US dollars in advertising. I have no idea when the cheque will arrive but no doubt Sir Eski and I will spend it all at the Red Lion Club.

I've had a great time, met all sorts of new people and seen the odd good game of football, along with plenty of dross.

One thing that has surprised me though is the lack of abusive comments from supporters of other football teams. Gulay jumps in every now and then with a condescending comment but there have been very few full on abusive attacks. Clearly we aren't important enough to warrant any.

Perhaps next year.

In the mean time. Happy first birthday to us all, Genclerbirligi and Ankaragucu fans alike. Although obviously we don't wish any happiness on those evil buggers at Ankaraspor.