Ebbsfleet United and Football Down Under!

Following Ebbsfleet United, or indeed any English football team, in Australia is quite an experience.  For starters, there is the obvious time zone issue.  What this means is that living in Sydney (as I do) the time zone difference can vary from 9 – 11 hours depending on the time of the year.  For those of you who are wondering, Sydney is currently 11 hours ahead of the UK.

Then there is the lack of football coverage here that you take for granted back in Blighty.  The top English and European teams get a lot of coverage in Australia, but outside of that you will not find out much about say, a Crewe Alexandra or even our beloved Ebbsfleet.  Nowadays, this is less of an issue due to a wonderful thing called the “internet”.  If you haven’t heard about it then please check it out!  This has been a major boost for all ex-pats living not just in Australia but around this amazing world of ours.

However, if you go back not too many years the earliest that you would have found out about your favourite footy team was in the Monday morning newspapers.  Many a Monday I would buy a local Sydney paper and turn to the sports section to find out the results from the weekend just passed.  You could tell by the smiles or grimaces of the passengers on your packed train as to how their team had gone!

How things have changed since then.  Now I keep up to date about all things Ebbsfleet from a number of different sources.  There are, of course, the MYFC and Ebbsfleet United websites.  These contain a wealth of information about the club, players, their opponents etc.

Then we have the social networking giants Facebook and Twitter.  Facebook is a great way to “like” the Fleet and meet online fans similar to yourself.  However, for me Twitter is the most important medium.  Through “following” other Ebbsfleet and MYFC fanatics you can obtain a real time experience of what is going on, viewpoints and general information. For example, raising the awareness of the ‘Best Loosers’ competition was relatively easy through using Twitter.  This reminds me, if you haven’t voted for Ebbsfleet yet then please do at http://www.bestloosers.co.uk/entries_vote.php?page=1

What I have been doing lately is following the live feed of Ebbsfleet’s games via a Twitter feed.  Well I try to, then I generally fall asleep at around 3am local time.  When I awake the next morning, I quickly switch on the laptop and see how the Fleet have fared.  If they have won it sets me up nicely to embrace the action packed day that is a normal Sunday (aka keeping the kids entertained)!