Has the internet saved football?

My very best new friend Mike takes Paul Sheehan's monthly anti-football piece apart on his blog.

Simon Hill discusses the continued existence of the Australian anti-football media in this months 442 magazine.

And it got me thinking, given the lack of Free To Air TV coverage and the continued snipes from many in the mainstream media, has the internet saved football in Australia?

Indeed would the A-League have sunk to NSL crowd levels without the internet?

Would it have ever reached it's giddy heights of 40,000 or 50,000 plus crowds.

The World Game website, Four Four Two and mainstream newspapers now provide a coverage to Australian football supporters like we've never had before.

In the old days, pre-A-League where could you get your information about Australian football and footballers from, and how much?

The odd magazine, the Australia (don't make me cry) the Herald Sun, the Sydney Morning Herald.

But how much?

SBS was the saviour.

Now fans can and do connect through the various fan forums. Continually.

Imagine walking into a work place and talking NSL, even A-League could still be a problem as most don't ever see a game. If they don't have Fox do they even know what you are talking about?

Or if you were a female talking A-League with anyone, which girls or women could do that. Now female fans have their own spaces, and voices on the net.

The internet has enabled people like me, a football fan of some years, to connect with people from across the country. With many many fellow passionate Australian football fans in away I never could in the old days.

Not even when Canberra had a team. Even in the Cosmos days people were negative and thought only that the team couldn't survive, and they were right.

But now I can talk to people who are positive about the game. In Canberra and importantly beyond. And it's great.

And that gives football fans further encouragement and strength to continue our support of the new league.

You can now share your match experience, just look at the forums after the grand final wins, and Socceroos games.

The game doesn't stop at the final whistle like it did in the old NSL.

Bloggers, podcasters have increased the ability of fans to connect and feed on new and trivial or vital information.

Sydney FC fans have their internet radio show, Melbourne fan Cecilia has her Girl's Guide blog to the A-League, The Mariners have their forum and so the list and diversity goes on.

Hamish has an Australian Bloggers Cup, uniting the bloggers of the A-League in a unique way.

So next time you see an Australian journalist producing the usual anti-football bias, hop on the web and get some support from your fellow fans on a forum or whichever your favourite blog is.

Better still go to the Mariners forum and join the small but rapidly growing response of the football community to do something, anything, to Paul Sheehan's newspaper, or Tom Zed's (as Simon Hill says are you for real) front page piece in Adelaide,or even Tim Gavel here in Canberra, anti football and loving it.

What we the community will do, I don't know but I'm going to have great thinking about it.