The History of LU.
Well its all thanks to another league website that LeagueUnlimited came about.
Many years ago basically the only place you could talk local footy with local people on the internet was rleague.com. Owned and operated by Bulldogs tragic Matt O'niel who is still going strong along with his site. Matt was a person who was so completely devoted to league, he wouldnt hear a bad word against it. It wasnt a good idea to rubbish the code or speak of others (esp union) and continued rubbishing and talking of rival codes usually meant you didnt stick around long.
At the time (we were all pretty green about footy websites and in particular, forums) most of us conformed. It was Matts site, after all.
Ali and I became involved doing live updates and writing the occasional article for rleague.
rleague became quite popular, a lot of people joined up and along with the success came the need for moderation in the forums.
In hindsight, it must have been very difficult for young Matt to keep his site and its members on the straight and narrow. Here was a young kid who was trying to keep grown men (and some of them were pretty hard buggers) on a leash while promoting his other part of the site, news/scores etc, at the same time.
At times thing became very heated, post editing/deletions were becoming common and the number of people banned was rising as quickly as his membership.
I cant actually remember the catylst for us leaving (by 'us' I mean about 6-8 regular rleague posters) but Willow had something to do with it. He had his own St George Dragons site and I,m pretty sure it involved a conflict over that . I'm sure he will be only too happy to set the story right
So poor old Matty was told where to shove his website and off we went, in search of another forum.
Trouble was, there really wernt any. Legend, in desperation, found an outfit called MSN and so was formed Legends WorldofSport.
A truly fantastic, albeit basic, board where we stayed and argued for many years about basically anything and everything. Some amazing posters from all around the world, some who had had a gutsfull of rleagues heaveyhanded moderation and those who 'found' us.
There was one basic unwritten law at LWOS, no heavey moderation. Maybe wrong, but I dont think 1 person was given the shove from the joint.
A lot of people posting on lu came along for the ride from rleague and LWOS. Included in the kiwi side are NZWarrior, MKEB, Bobbi Digital, Spacemonkey, Skinner and a few others who I cant recall.
Some of the classic threads can be found in the Classic Threads forum at LU. Willow started a blow by blow account of the 9/11 terror attack and it remains one of the most powerful threads Ive ever read.
Anyways, all good things had to come to an end, MSN were shutting up shop as far as their noticeboards went so we were looking for a new place to talk footy, again.
We tried out heaps of names for a site and I think it was Legend who came up with the name and so LeagueUnlimited was born.
We were lucky enough to have a talented young web designer, Eli, offer his services so off we went.
Ali, Willow, Legend, El Duque, Eli and myself threw ourselves into it. It was like having another fulltime job, every minute you thought of things to do/improve/ or try on this new site.
Legend was the ideas man, Willow was the stability and actually financed the project, El Duque, Ali and myself did whatever we could.
Although official records say we started in 2003, I have a suspicion that it was actually 2002.
To begin with, we were just another league website (there was a few by now) and although we had an initial base membership from LWOS, it actually took some time to kick off,,, but when it did...
We perservered, lots of league news, lots of live match updates (we have not missed updating an NRL game since we started), Willow created an idea called Forum 7s (where different forums write an essay type article which is league related) and just kept at it.
Membership started to bloom, Willow and Legend have had to buy new servers twice, to my knowledge, to cope with the traffic. Other organisations have noticed LU and we have advertised their companies on the site. We have also had the down times, we were hacked by a rival site, Willow with the help of the NZ Police tracked down the perp.. shame it was a kiwi.
Anyways, LU is now the largest privately owned sporting website in the world.
Have personally met quite a few of the members (Willow and Legend are footy fans first, bloody good blokes seconed and web moguls thirdly)
Has been a hell of a ride, Ali and I have imense pride in being part of it and huge regard for the guys we 'rode' with. A real team effort.
All of us (perhaps with the exception of El Duque/Diablo, who still does a massive mount of moderation work) have stepped back now and have taken our rightful (and where it all started from) place as members of a great football website.
Place is in good hands now, Twizz looks after the forum and a snotnosed kid who has basically been with us fron day 1, Timmah, does a fantastic job running the news side of the site.
and from Legend,
""The catalyst for forming LWOS was the heavy moderation at WORL and the fact that when I asked to be more of a contributor to Rleague, I was basically told by MattO that if I tried to start my own site, I would be crushed.
Steven Birchall was disillusioned with rleague and gaveus a hand with the original site design on LU, which did start in 2002, not 2003. The phpbb forums were installed in 2003 and that hepled the site grow. Starkers came aboard in 2003 and Eli left in 2004 but the original LU team was:
Willow
Legend
Ali
Tony
Jeremy
Eli""
