What can Sheffield Wednesday teach us?

[obligatory joke answer] How not to play football! [/obligatory joke answer]








Sheffield Wednesday, a Championship football club in South Yorkshire are probably making a lot of bloggers and forum users think at the minute.

Sheffield Wednesday currently lie 22nd in the Coca-Cola Championship and, as I type this, are trailing 2-1 at home to newly promoted Scunthorpe United. They are reportedly in financial trouble and their supporters, understandably, are frustrated with goings on at the club.

It's the sort of scenario that most sports supporters will probably be familiar with.

In the past, these sorts of issues would be discussed over a pint in the local pub, around the water cooler in the office or in the factory canteen. You could shout, swear and put the world to rights as much as you wanted with no fear of the consequences.

Today, we've got a new medium - the world wide web.

If you can think of a special interest, no matter how mainstream, how commercial or how bizarre, there's probably a website, blog and forum on it and in this case, you don't have to look hard to find a football forum.

That's where Sheffield Wednesday come into it.

After being unimpressed with the running of the club this summer, a number of supporters, like fans of any club would, vented their frustration on the fans forum Owlstalk.

The board at Hillsborough however, didn't take too kindly to the comments and filed a defamation lawsuit against 34 of its own supporters. That number has since reduced to the point where the High Court has ordered the owner of the site to hand over details of three users of the site.

It made me question my own position, both as a blogger and as an internet forum user.
I've looked at some of the posts that have been mentioned in the court documents and, to be honest, you soon realise how careful you could have to be.

I won't post examples in here, but you can read them for yourself here.

Upon reading those comments, it's nothing that I haven't already read on plenty of internet message boards in the past. I've also posted my fair share of uncomplimentary things on here about certain firms / people in the past with minimal thought and I'm sure most other blog posters have as well.

Whilst it's no excuse for a publication (and a web forum or blog is a publication) to defame individuals, I'd like to think that most football clubs would be "PR savvy" enough to realise that taking legal action against users of a fan site is something of an "own goal". It also opens up the whole "freedom of speech" argument. We aren't going to see a "Google.cn" style of censorship, but are we going to be in a position where people are wary of sharing opinions and ideas?

Whatever happens in this case over the coming months, the stance taken by a lot of football forums in the future could be extremely interesting.