If Dundee United’s Scottish Cup clash at Ibrox proves to be half as entertaining as the users’ poll we’ve been running on the site over the last day or so, we’re all in for a treat.
I won’t go too much into the background here. My colleagues on the sports desk have that well covered.
Suffice to say, with such a live issue it was an obvious subject for a website poll.
But it has turned out to be if you’ll allow me to ruin one of the great football cliches a game of three halves.Stage 1: poll goes live. Voting is steady but unspectacular, with 60%-70% support for the view that the game should be played at a neutral venue. Stage 2: Rangers fans’ forums get wind of the poll. A flood of ‘no’ votes swings the vote round to supporting the SFA’s plans. Stage 3: We arrive on Thursday morning to find United fans have staged an overnight comeback every bit as dramatic as their team’s against St Mirren last week.We’re normally happy if our polls hit 500 votes. This one is at over 6000 at time of writing.
Yes, we have been alerted to some foul play.
We received a steady stream of emails yesterday from people pointing out that Rangers fans had found a way to vote more than once.
Were we going to stop the poll in response? Declare it match postponed?
No. If the poll could be skewed by tactical voting, that option was open to both sides.
We just hope people don’t take these things too seriously. We certainly don’t.
We post these polls to give people another tool to express their opinion but also as a way for us to gauge the level of interest in subjects.
It’s just one of the ways we can use our website to help us to decide what The Courier should cover and how.
So the very fact fans have gamed the system and bombarded our site with votes is in itself a sign of how strongly people feel.
We don’t mind that. We like it. (And I particularly like how it has helped us exceed our site traffic targets for the week.)
So there’s been a lively clash, some good banter (and some bad…), and no-one got hurt.
Let’s hope the game itself goes the same way.
* In the interests of good governance and fair play (any jobs going at the SFA…?) I should confirm that the poll closes at 2pm today (Thursday).
UPDATE. We have a final score.Yes, it should be at a neutral venue: 3560 votes (54%) No, it should not: 2570 (39%) Too late to change: 432 (7%) Total votes: 6562