The early version blog header
One year ago today, looking to diversify in my writing life, I started a blog. It was one of those things I thought I might devote the odd hour or so to, every other day, while plugging away at the bread and butter stuff. It’d be a change as good as a rest, it seemed to me – a chance to write for my own pleasure about a variety of things which exercised me on a regular basis, chief among them Leeds United AFC. I’d stick in a few of my lefty political rants too, I mused, stuff that hadn’t found its target elsewhere, but stuff I still wanted to say – and have people read if possible. And I figured that, as I was just doing it for fun, I could quietly drop it if the going got tough, or if it got in the way of anything important. I truly didn’t realise how it would grow through this first year, and now I think I’m stuck with it. It’s still a labour of love, but it shows all the signs of becoming far more than that; for the time being, I’m content to go wherever it leads me.
I thought I’d nick a title from one of my heroes, the late, great genius Douglas Adams, and his legendary, superb trilogy of five, “The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy“. So I nabbed a title, inserted Leeds United to make it mine, and there I was. For the first few months I wrote away happily but fairly occasionally, not paying too much attention to readership, or viewing figures. It toddled along quite nicely, my infant blog, entertaining me if not many others. Then it got picked up by the “NewsNow” news aggregator – and the numbers went through the roof.
By the end of August, I’d had a total of 13,000 views in eight and a half months. Now it’s a gnat’s whisker under 400,000. Just yesterday I wrote an article which, by itself, has attracted over 30,000 readers in 24 hours. To say the blog has grown is hopelessly to understate the case. It’s surpassed my expectations many times over. In this, I’m lucky to be writing primarily about Leeds United, a club that has always generated enormous interest and always will. My sidelines of taking swipes at traditional enemies have extended my readership among fans of other clubs. It’s been, in short, a very encouraging first year – particularly the time since late August when I was fortunate enough to see the reach of the thing extend to the entire globe.
The upside of all this has been considerable, for me personally and by implication for my other work – books I have in progress and articles I write elsewhere. There have also been downsides. From the shallow depths of my one year’s experience, I would certainly tell any would-be blogger – go for it, but you’ll need a thick skin and an even temper. The vast majority of the people out there will judge a site on its merits; they have the choice of reading or ignoring it, after all. But you get the odd few who read every word you write and insist on hating every single syllable. They then write in and tell you how useless it is, how you can’t write: “I could of done better than that rubishy nonesense if I could of been arsed” was one of the more literate attempts at scathing critique, selected at random from my Black Museum of rejected feedback.
The home of the blog
The best thing, I have found, is to ignore all of this sort of stuff, on the basis that a heckler denied the oxygen of attention will soon burn himself or herself out – still, they can be very persistent, and occasionally I’ve not been able to resist having a bite back. Sometimes I’ll resort to editing a negative comment of particular filth and violence, so that it reads more acceptably and thereby annoys the perpetrator. Whenever I’ve done this, I’ve added the response “It’s good to be King”, just to distinguish the contributions I’ve tampered with. Only today this so enraged some petulant herbert that he threatened to “slash me with a nife (sic)” if he ever saw me around LS11 – and of course he may well see me – if he ever goes to games. I mention that merely to illustrate the phenomenon of the tantrum-prone troll – it’s not really much of a problem, more a mild irritation and, as I’ve said – best ignored. The one thing that these types have in common beyond appalling literacy skills is their essential cowardice – they strike from behind the shield of anonymity and will not emerge into the daylight of honesty and accountability. It takes all sorts, I suppose – but what a futile existence.
I’m confident now that this blog will continue to grow, and to assist and support my other endeavours. It’s provided a platform of sorts, for which I’m very grateful – and by far the greater part of the feedback has been positive, constructive, thought provoking and intensely rewarding. It’s emphasised for me as well just how incredibly passionate the fans of Leeds United are; how much anything to do with our great club is seized upon eagerly by voracious readers with an endless appetite for all things Leeds. I can certainly relate to that, so it’s extremely fulfilling for me to be able to contribute, in some small measure, to the massive body of work out there surrounding the ups and downs of the Mighty Whites of Elland Road. It will continue to be my pleasure and privilege to do this, and I hope to see this site continue to thrive, to grow and to spread the Leeds United word even further and even wider.
To all of those who have read anything I’ve written this past year – thank you. I hope you’ll keep reading. I’d be grateful if those readers could spread the word, follow the blog, share it among their Leeds fanatic friends. If you want to buy the blog half a bitter for its birthday, you can even do that – there’s a donations link over to the left. Seriously, every little helps, whether it’s a quid or a buck or a share or follow – and there’ll be much more to come from Life, Leeds United, the Universe & Everything as the next year rolls by – hopefully a year of great progress for our club as all the signs are that we may be on the verge of an exciting new era and headed unstoppably for the big time again. It’s been far too long, but you can’t keep a good club down, never mind a great one like Leeds. I’ll look forward to charting our progress, being supportive, showing incredible bias of a totally non-journalistic flavour and perhaps criticising when it seems appropriate.
Every time anyone clicks on an article in this blog, it means such a lot to me, just as every time Leeds United take a step forward it means such a massive amount to every one of us fanatics out here. The next year should be one of continued growth and improvement here on this humble blog and much more importantly there at Elland Road where the stars and heroes do their best to make the dreams we dare to dream come true. Marching On Together, we can all look forward confidently to better times ahead.
Life, Leeds United, the Universe & Everything 
Rob your Blog is a hilight of my day. Living in New Zealand you do feel detached and crave the opinion and thoughts of fellow whites. As you can imagine the globalisation effect of the Premier League is swamping all opinion over here and catching up with what you think gives me the ‘fix’ of leeds debate i miss big time from living in Leeds…..Keep up the great work, happy anniversary and merry ‘whites’ Christmas !!!
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Thanks Jon, that’s amazing – and I know what you mean about the swamping effect of the media Premier obsession. Maybe we can provide some white noise to mess all that up for ’em 😉
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Well done and happy birthday, is it a year already,keep up the good work always like reading your blog.
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Cheers Keith, much appreciated 🙂
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Thanks, Rob, for an amusing and informative year. read it most of the time, until the administrators at work decided to block it. Read it at home now. Keep it up. MOT
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The lousy rotten spoilsports! Cheers, Erik 🙂
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keep up the good work rob
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Thanks Leedsman 🙂
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happy birthday RobBlog! Has it been a year already? Time flies when you’re enjoying yourself…. Keep up the high standards and massive partiality! 🙂 MOT
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Many thanks and MOT indeed 🙂
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I am really enjoying reading your stuff. Keep it up.
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Cheers Daz, much appreciated!
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keep up the good work mate.
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Many thanks, Glynn
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Happy 1st Birthday LLUUE! Keep up the good work Rob. I always look forward to reading your articles. Merry Christmas!
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Thank you, you’ve given me a hashtag!! It’ll be #LLUUE on Twitter from now on 🙂
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Glad to be of assistance 🙂 #LLUUE #MOT
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attention seeking again rob, edit my comments i don’t care,i have you fb account to play with much more fun, funny how no one else wished you happy birthday to your blog.
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You’re a sad, sad, inadequate man, Paul – and a coward and buffoon into the bargain – as well as being a closet man u fan who is too ashamed to admit it, so takes the fake’s route of pretending to be Leeds. It’s not a good combination, is it? Every now and then, I choose to let you make a fool of yourself in public – today is one of those days.
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Always great to see a fellow Leeds fanatic doing well, keep up the good work Rob. I don’t always agree with you,but it’s still a quality blog. Glad to read the readership is growing too. Use your power wisely!ha ha. I see loony tunes at west ham is at it again. At least you don’t hide behind an alias and spout drivel just to get hits.
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It’d be boring if we all agreed all the time – many thanks Mick.
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Great site , you’ve stirred up some fantastic memorys , keep up the good work rob , unless you get offered the spurs job lol
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I’d rather chew wasps lol
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I’m sure you would rob , it was just a reference to something sad Paul had written on a certain wetspam site
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Oh, the Warnock thing? He’s scraping the barrel a bit there, is old HF. A busted flush, I fancy.
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Hey Rob, that is pretty outrageous, cannot believe some twat has resorted to threaten you. your blog along with a few others, lives, sweats and breathes the passion we want, your prose and words make sense 99% of the time. We the true fans all have our opinion wether you or others read it, and comment is up to them ….. the idiot that sent that is a scumbag, shame on you ….. ruddy Idiot grrrrr makes the old 8 pints boil !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
keep on doing what your doing, in many ways you ought to highlight these people and what they have to say!!!!! so we can bring down their walls and avenge, after all the pen is mightier than the sword. God bless you, God bless Gods own country ….. WE ARE LEEDS, WE ARE ON OUR WAY BACK TO THE PROMISED LAND. may you and yours have a great Xmas and a very happy and prosperous New Year. When you get to finish them books, I for one will want to read them …. Good news about Maxi, lets hope it happens and no other bugger nips in a steals him and its not a load of Blarney from YEP.? Keep on blogging son we need you to stir our passion.
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Cheers, Sniffers – it’s only the occasional dickhead, most out there are fine upstanding chaps much like yourself 🙂
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Only recently got back to reading LU blogs after years of cynicism with all things Bates. Really enjoyed your objective views so congratulations on your birthday bash! Many years ago I used to write articles from OZ for the The Square Ball in those days articles by mail and then via the extraordinary fax! These blogs are amazing. Question for you Rob – is BMD the best Leeds manager since The Don! I think so please let us hope he gets the support the club needs from whoever are the owners and the fans. If that happens we just might be part of an amazing revolution! MOT – let us hope so ! Cheers
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Many thanks Michael – a TSB veteran eh? Respect – I’ve had one article in there, I must get my digit out and do more. As for BMcD – I frankly love the man, he says all the right things and knows the manual of supporter engagement and appreciation back to front. With all that, he’s sincere and committed – definite legend material. At the moment I’d put him behind Wilko and even Grayson since the Don – simply for their solid achievements and impact on our historical record – they’re in the books for good. But BMcD, given time and backing, will match or maybe even surpass them. A new era dawns – MOT.
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Don’t always agree with your written word but hey, the objective is surely consistency. I personally think it’s good to have a reliable input of viewpoint that involves LUFC, providing the reader with some motivation to purge and exceed the mundane ramblings from other sources that are very often copy and paste with cheap ‘sauce’ on the side.
Well done for finding the time within the day job and thanks.
”Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm”…. Here’s to….
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The blog is actually augmenting the day job, Mr Wheels. I’ve now got massive great chunks of a book and I just need to stitch ’em together and add a bit of narrative flow – but a lot of the anecdotal stuff and some of the comment and ranting is just there for me to use. I’m glad to know that people don’t always agree, I want to be a highly vocal and opinionated blogger, not a cypher after all! And as you rightly identify, enthusiasm is essential – which is why writing about Leeds gets me going. Many thanks for the kind words 🙂
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Always a very interesting read whenever your blog appears on the “Leeds News Now” website.
Your blog subjects are about what most Leeds fans want to read about and comment on. I think that the abusive Paul must be a scum fan.
Keep up the good work Rob, MOT !
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I think you’re dead right! Thank you for the kind words – MOT
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http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2013/115.html
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You may possibly need to provide some further elucidation as to just how this is relevant?
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