When did you switch to the Internet for Football Information?

[Satchmo Distel]

The thread on March 1998 has reminded me that, at that time, BBC CEEFAX was still my main source of information when I arrived home from an early morning Saturday shift or when I was following midweek games. I did not change to Soccernet as my main source until I moved in with my future wife in early 2001.

When did you switch from CEEFAX to the web, and which site did you use?

[Arturo]

Intermittently from about 1999 via very unreliable connections at work and in the library. Permanently from 2006 when I finally got a Desktop at home, but I still clung onto Ceefax, albeit sparingly until it's demise. I actually still miss it.

[Jah Womble]

Today's the twentieth anniversary of moving to my current flat. Before I did so, I had to move from the previous gaff and spend three months in a rented place in Tooting, during which time I had no internet access at home. (This was obviously well before smartphones and tablets - don't think I could even send/receive texts at that point.) I was basically doing email and what-have-you at internet cafes, but for all other stuff - news, info, football, etc - it was strictly teletext for that short while.

I was using the service well into the millennium, for sure. I booked my 2002 Christmas holiday in Grenada via teletext, and can certainly remember reading Ceefax during the 2004 Euros. (I mean, I used it well after this, but by then it wouldn't have been my primary source.)

The first time I can recall using the web daily for football news was possibly the 1998 World Cup. I remember the BBC's site, which had a deep blue background behind slow-generating graphic heads of Lynam. Motson and Hansen, among others. (I don't think any trace of that still exists, unless somebody somewhere printed anything off and kept it.)

[Satchmo Distel]

[Satchmo Distel]

Source of the above:

https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/bbc-website

I remember the 2001 design from that site but not 1998, which confirms that my switch was after France 98. I think the 5-1 win over Germany (1/9/01) was the first result I obtained via the web. 2001 Wimbledon was the first big event I followed entirely online. 9/11 was all online, except that the Internet went down for several hours that day (perhaps intentionally for security reasons). Subsequent bombing of Afghanistan was online for me.

[Foot of Astaire's]

I was travelling around Asia in 2000/01 & despite trying to see everything a place had to offer, immersing myself in the way of life etc some of the best times were thanks to internet cafes and the sky sports website. Our great form that season had a lot to do with it though.

[Southport Zeb]

I guess around 2002 when I went to university. This would have been reinforced by my parents switching to digital TV around the same time, so the main TV at home would have had the less good non-analogue version of Ceefax.

[Billy Casper]

During Barnsley's Premier League season (97/98) I was living in Canada and it was either a phone call home to my parents, or a read of the following day's Vancouver Sun.

The following season Mrs C told me she had this internet thing at work and I could find out all the latest scores instantly through it! The next Saturday morning we drove thirty minutes to her office and arrived there just before 7am. I'd put my Barnsley shirt on for the occasion and was beside myself with excitement. The entire office was deserted as I sat in front of the screen and waited for her to set it up... It wasn't working. After about forty five minutes we gave up and drove back home again.

I called my parents at ten past nine.

[Jah Womble]

Thanks for finding - fairly pleased with my memory of that (bar Brooking for Motty). Have to say that it looks surprisingly high quality, arguably more so than the 2001 BBC Sport front page.

[jwdd27]

This thread reminds me that, difficult to imagine though it is, there was a 3 or 4 year period where I had the internet at work but not at home. From about mid 1998-2002.
The work internet would have been dial up at first (unhelpfully cutting people's conversations off when checking your email, which was something done every few hours). Then it went to a dedicated ISDN so everyone was online all the time. It seems weird now that all my online activity (mailing lists [and then forums], browsing, ordering books, CDs etc, socialising with friends,) was all done in work time. Surprised I got any work done, although perhaps being in my 20s I was more productive. And there did come a tipping point where most of your emails became work related and the other stuff became a distraction.

I guess 2002 was when cable broadband got big and affordable and to answer the question from the OP, The Guardian was the site of choice, they were early adopters and producers, and I found their stuff slightly less laddish and BRC dominated than Football365, which was the main competitor I recall.
Soccer base was also really good for the more detailed stats in the early days.

[That Night In Barcelona]

There was a good site called Onefootball.com around 2000-2002ish I remember. Ceased to be a long time ago now.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

I think I got my first home PC and internet access around 2000, probably around the time I first joined this board. We weren't allowed on any external internet sites at work in those early days, they were still very terrified of viruses etc getting into our systems so it was banned, and you had to get written approval from a Director to send e-mails outside our internal address book.

[Incandenza]

I've only ever relied on the internet for football information, so starting with 2002, when I got into it apart from the World Cup.

[longeared]

1997, when I went to uni. Main sites I used initially were Soccernet and something affiliated to the Premier League that had a URL along the lines of fa-carling.com. We signed Petter Rudi from somewhere like Brann early in my first term and the latter site carried a picture of him. I can't overstate how revolutionary this felt at the time. Also used Team Talk a lot after a West Brom fan I knew put me on to it. Wednesday news was via a long disappeared site called Owlsnet, the club didn't get an official site until around the end of 97.

I still used to use Ceefax for some years after though, used to watch scores on the vidiprinter up until about a decade back.

[Sits]

I was using Web at work and Ceefax at home until a cut-off point of late 98 when we emigrated to Sydney. I think they had some sort of teletext thing here but we never used it. Web at work was decent but at home it was dial-up and web time was limited for each family member as we had to use the phone cable, which was stretched from the kitchen into the little study where the PC lived.

Soccernet and TeamTalk.

[ad hoc]

I left the UK in 87 and moved on to world service on short wave and occasional copies of the Guardian. For 18 months in 89 and 90 I lived in Abu Dhabi where you could read football scores on Reuters teleprinters in the lobbies of certain expensive hotels. Much of the first few years of my exile was in western Europe where finding football results was relatively easy in the sports papers. Then I moved to California and then Micronesia where there was no short wave signal and no papers. It was after the first few months, probably early 97 that we got the Internet and suddenly everything became available. I even had a blog (before the word blog existed) following the 98 World Cup on Geocities.

One of the best results sites in the early days was the Sporting Life website

[3 Colours Red]

It would have been in early 2000 using a Sega Dreamcast (no way could we afford a PC back then). You've not witnessed the "beauty" of turn-of-the-millennium websites properly until you've seen them rendered in 640x480 on a 14" TV via an RF connection, using 24-point system fonts and with seemingly all formatting and multimedia elements completely broken.

I only really visited the BBC Sport site as it was one of the few that would load in a reasonable amount of time and work vaguely correctly.

[Sits]

I left the UK in 87 and moved on to world service on short wave and occasional copies of the Guardian. For 18 months in 89 and 90 I lived in Abu Dhabi where you could read football scores on Reuters teleprinters in the lobbies of certain expensive hotels. Much of the first few years of my exile was in western Europe where finding football results was relatively easy in the sports papers. Then I moved to California and then Micronesia where there was no short wave signal and no papers. It was after the first few months, probably early 97 that we got the Internet and suddenly everything became available. I even had a blog (before the word blog existed) following the 98 World Cup on Geocities.

One of the best results sites in the early days was the Sporting Life website

I’d forgotten Sporting Life. Not that I would touch anything betting related now, but it was a good site for football.

And a blog you say? Don’t suppose...?

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

I’d forgotten Sporting Life. Not that I would touch anything betting related now, but it was a good site for football.

And a blog you say? Don’t suppose...?

I'd forgotten about it too, but it was a good site and quite pioneering.

Early 2000 for my conversion I reckon, remember spending a lot of time on boards (and the CUFC internet mailing list) discussing our impending doom towards the end of 99-00.

For several years, before exiles could get online radio coverage we would do commentary in a chat room, where someone volunteered to transcribe the Radio Cumbria commentary in real time. I did it on numerous occasions and it was a hell of a job trying to follow the commentary of the fondly remembered but often chaotic Derek Lacey and make it make sense to impatient expats desperate for news.

[seand]

The first thing I remember following on the web was Michael Owen's debut for Liverpool, v Wimbledon at the end of the 96-7 season, when I was supposed to be preparing for my finals at uni. I think he scored, Liverpool lost and confirmed Man Utd as league champions. The move online was slow enough at first but since about 2000 it's been an ever-increasing move to online

[pebblethefish]

I still use the BBC red button, which is practically Ceefax, for scores. I'm really having to be dragged into this century.

[Capybara]

I still use the BBC red button, which is practically Ceefax, for scores. I'm really having to be dragged into this century.

Heh! I was kind of waiting for that.

Actually, as I don't use a smart 'phone, if I've been out while games have been going on and want to check the scores when I get in, I also use the text on the TV as it's quicker.

[Jah Womble]

It would have been in early 2000 using a Sega Dreamcast (no way could we afford a PC back then). You've not witnessed the "beauty" of turn-of-the-millennium websites properly until you've seen them rendered in 640x480 on a 14" TV via an RF connection, using 24-point system fonts and with seemingly all formatting and multimedia elements completely broken.

I only really visited the BBC Sport site as it was one of the few that would load in a reasonable amount of time and work vaguely correctly.

Given that choice, I think I'd have stuck with Ceefax.

[Sporting]

When I was at junior school I got the football scores and reports from the Daily Express during the week and the teleprinter on Saturdays. Occasionally (and intermittently thereafter) I bought whatever local version there was of the Football Pink which appeared an hour or so after the matches finished. Other people's transistor radios were another source. In secondary school I caught on to local radio (Merseyside and Manchester) for midweek matches.

Later when living inn Sudan sans internet or TV or (mostly) newspapers I had to rely on Paddy Feeny and his BBC World Service programme as well as week or more old copies of the Guardian Weekly which arrived by post (this in the north; in South Sudan I went 9 months once without letters or any news from my family whatsoever. Luckily the BBC reception was usually good).

As for the internet, I didn't have my own until about 2002.

[Jah Womble]

Paddy Feeny - there's a name from the dim and distant past (for me, anyway). I only really recall him from Top of the Form and Young Scientist of the Year.