By kwin
May 22 2005

This month marks three years since The Prof and I started up Come All Within. Three eventful seasons for Harlequins, with triumph, disaster, inspired performances, undue aggression, fantastic team spirit and unending leadership controversy. And that's just the message board.
Looking back now, I'm struck again by the uncanny parallels between the 2001/2 Season and that of 2004/5. Both seasons started full of hope, following a European Title and ended in the relegation dog-fight. It's no surprise that the first article I wrote for the site -  the spirit of Rugby, was concerned with relegation politics, a topic that's very much alive today.

Season1: 2002/3 : Trouble at Mill

In our first season at CAW  Prof and I were lucky to be blessed with a very impressive set of writers. Right from the start we were able to publish one or more articles every day.  Perrygo was our Tuesday pundit, with a weekly column analysing the on-pitch performance. Right from his first column we knew we were on to a winner, and his thoughtful comments were the engine room in keeping the site rugby-focused, and steering it away from the in-jokes which featured heavily in those days.

Our other star was KevT, who emailed me, diffidently, to say that he'd be willing to write the previews if no-one else would, and then went on to set the bar higher than Prof and I had dreamed of, each week phoning the opposition's press office for comment, arranging press passes for our reporters, and normally finding time to interview a player or two by phone as well. Here's a typical, well researched piece That first season also Worried of Whitton's Players of the Month and the first of DOK's long running polls

We also started the tradition - that endures to this today, and much copied on the network, of a different supporter each week writing our match reports. In this we were massively supported by the Club who were happy to invite our reporter to the post match press conferences and, as we hoped, this set up generated a massive amount of variety and originality - take this one from the first season. Where else could you read an article like that? 

The Club have been great for  CAW, right from the start, and as well as access to all the Press Events, they've arranged interviews with players, been helpful with fact-checking and background information and, not least, Mark Evans has been available for interview whenever we've asked. .

In the first season on the message board there was one story that ran and ran - the long conflict with the Harlequin Supporter's Club - a fight that eventually led to the HSC's demise.  The HSC had never been popular on the boards, but the trigger for battle was an article I wrote in the Old Kwin series (material taken from the secret future archives of the club). Old Kwin had discovered some minutes from a 2023 HSC meeting. The HSC Committee were furious, they found the article disrespectful (which of course it was) but worse, we were accused of a grave breach of confidence, they were convinced that the source of the article must have been genuine, leaked, minutes from an earlier meeting :-)   The Prof and I were hauled in front of a disciplinary hearing and censured, some CAW regulars got up a petition and, to cut a long story short - Quinssa was formed.

Our first season ended in May 2003 with our busiest month ever - nearly 300,000 hits compared with 50,000 in May 2002. We held a combined CAW/Quinssa party, and even gave awards for the contributors. A good first season.

Season2: 2003/4 : Building Site

Our second season was the quietest of the three. In terms of hits, we held on to the traffic that we'd generated by the end of the first season, but we didn't grow much - May 04 was just 13% busier than May 02 (see graph)

it was actually an odd season all over. The first few months were dominated by the Rugby World Cup and club sites like ours didn't seem to benefit from any overspill traffic while it was on, or even - really - afterwards. There's the also the truism that supporters' sites are always busier when the club is struggling, than when it's doing well, and in 2003/4 we mainly did well. 

Looking at the monthly numbers you can see the obvious spikes - the relegation special (May 03), the winning of the Parker Pen (May 04) and of course the relegation struggles in April and May 05. (Note - for anyone dubious about the concept of end-of-season play-offs and wild cards, a look at these stats shows why they will always be with us)

In 2003/4 on CAW we suffered a loss of some regular columnists as PerryGo retired and Old Kwin took an extended sabbatical (from which he is yet to return) but Prof's positives, KevT's previews, DOK's surveys and WoW's round-ups kept us honest, and the site gained extensively with the comprehensive coverage of 2nd XV games that Alanquin launched that season, and continued this.

On the message boards we probably had a fallow patch, and a constant refrain was that CAW boarder formed a clique, which became one of those words guaranteed to spawn a hundred angry messages - but while it was unfair, it was true that many of the posters knew each other in those far off days.

Off field the club launched the plans for the West Stand, and CAW covered this extensively generating considerable comment and leading to a feisty interview with Evans, over the sale of the training ground.

The season ended in May 04 with the stunning Parker Pen victory and - again - CAW's busiest month to date, although the key Feb-May period was overall flat on the previous year.

Seaso3 : 2004/5 : Tumult and Trolls

This was the season that CAW came of age. As can be seen from the graphs, right from the start we were busier than we had ever before, and despite the boost that the Parker Pen had given us, the season opened with the site busier in Sep than it had been in May

How did that happen? I reckon it was the double-header.  At the time I opposed the idea, and I'm still suspicious of the long-term implications of playing home matches away - but there's no denying that it succeeded in its own terms - 40,000 people can't be wrong, and it set up the season beautifully.

If the disappointing defeat to London Irish that day set the pace for the whole of on-pitch season, it most certainly did for the message-board season. Peter Cox's precipitate 'Evans Must Go' post, the following day warning of much trouble ahead seemed prescient with the advantage of hindsight, and - taken up by others -marked the start a conflict that hadn't been seen on CAW before, and which took Prof and I by surprise. The debate got increasingly stormy and personal and although CAW was busier than ever, with more hits, more readers, more posts, more posters and much more rugby-centred, it also became a less pleasant place to be, and Prof and I - belatedly - wrote and enforced some new House Rules.

Nevertheless the board did change significantly. If you had to sum up each season in a single word or phrase, then the phrase for 2002/3 was EGM, and for  2003/4 was Maltesers.  But the word for 2004/5 was bish.  Bish had always been present on CAW, but 2004/5 marked a significant increase in his activity and a new, relentlessly negative point of view. Careful to keep just inside the House Rules (most of the time) bish was able to stir up controversy, despite and applause in almost equal measure, but never lost his popular touch - receiving a steady stream of encouragement [replies] from the other boarders.

Statistically, the site boomed in 2004/5, with Sep, Oct, Feb, April and May all setting new busiest-ever levels. May 2005 looks set to break 600,000 hits - nearly double May 2004 and we've managed more hits in a single day than we did in the whole of May 02.  This has been managed as always with an engine room of great content - supplied by you all. In 2004/5 Worried of Whitton took over the previews and stepped ably into KevT's footprints, AlanQuin and DOK kept up the 2ndXV and polls, and a host of new match reporters made their debut.

In Jan 2005 SportNetwork introduced a story of the month award, and CAW have scooped it no fewer than three times- Batquin, HESM and myself! and we also won site-of-the-month in April.

We'll finish May not only with  busiest that CAW has ever been but also the busiest rugby site on the network! Not bad for a ND1 Club, eh?

A New Era

I've enjoyed every week of CAW, but all good things come to an end and I've decided to hang up my editing pencil.

I'm not going away! I've renewed my season ticket, I'll still be at every game, and no doubt still spending far too much time on the message board and I'll still be writing match reports (I've got my eye on Pertemps Bees, Sep 4th), but I need to concentrate on some other things in my life, and I know it's time to step down.

Throughout the three years, one of the best things about doing CAW has been working with Prof. His tireless devotion to the site puts me to shame, and on more than one occasion his good judgement and sound advice has helped me dismount a tired hobby horse.  I think we've worked well together and I'm very proud of what we achieved in partnership. I know that I am leaving CAW in safe hands.

But CAW is not really about me and Prof, it's about the community of people - sometimes strange people! - that inhabit it, post on it and - most of all - write for it. I tried to assemble a list of names - but there are too many, and I know I'll forget some. So perhaps a jumbo thanks to everyone who's ever written an article, handed out a leaflet, or supplied a photograph... you know who you are.

Thanks!