Your Site Celebrates a Year of Achievement

By The Eds
August 1 2003

Henley sees us celebrating our first year of running this site, we do indeed have a lot to celebrate. From a somewhat confused start last August your site has gone from strength to strength.

In August, for the first time ever, we were by a clear margin the most visited site in Sportnetwork across all sports. Whilst figures vary from month to month, indeed August was the first time we dropped under 200k since February (193k), the overall trend is very much on the up. Compared to the same quartile last year we are achieving 87% more hits. Most weekdays over 2000 different people visit your site, during the course of a month we normally have over 20,000 different visitors.

Status after 30/7/03

We have gone from nowhere a year ago to being at or near the top of all the major search engines. People find us for all sorts of reasons, last month we had 85 people looking for a Pimms Recipe and 60 checked out Marie's Mulled Wine.

Last season we had on your site a report on every LI game promptly after the game together with a MOTM voted by yourselves. Including match reports and previews we have in the last year published almost 300 stories. This is but the start of what we expect to build up as a valuable archive over the years. It is our firm belief that a web site should be a lot more than just a messageboard.

In the last year The Craic has established itself as the principal online meeting place for London Irish supporters. On a typical weekday some 200 different messages are posted on about 40 different threads.

Your site has been used as a focal point for many of the initiatives that we have seen in the past season from JC fund raising though flag purchase to campaigning to save the Craic. In many instances news has broken here long before it was available from other sources.

We've come a long way in the past year but the journey does not stop here. It is our firm intention to continue to develop this site, to keep it as your number one source for all things London Irish.

The future is bright, the future is The Craic.