Editor Baboucarr Camara hates being idle

The past five to six weeks have shown the editors of this website just how valued their services are.

Our office line and mobile phones were bombarded with calls from distressed readers both in the Gambia and in various parts of the world demanding an explanation for, as once caller put it, “the sudden termination of our favourite website, our only source of quality Gambian sports news”.

Termination? God forbid.

We put so much time and effort into this online project that the last thing we would do is to terminate it just like that.

Hell no! I, for one, hate being idle.

We want to thank all those who called or sent text messages showing their concern at the lack of service during the past month.

Your calls and text messages showed just how much you value Gambia Sports Online.

Much to our surprise, the website went down at the beginning of December and while our web administrator kept assuring us that the problem “would soon be solved” the whole of December came and went without any positive development.

During the course of the technical break down we shockingly learnt also that the close to 200,000 stories we had on the website in the first 11 months of 2008 alone had all been irretrievably lost.

In other words, Gambia Sports Online would have to start afresh from the moment the website became alive again.

So here we are, only two days into the New Year and ready to go farther and wider.

But before anything else, let me on behalf of my Editor-in-Chief, Mr Peter Gomez, and all my colleagues at Gambia Sports Online and of course our webmaster, Fanding Njie, who we so pestered during the course of the crisis, thank all our readers for browsing our pages in such large numbers in 2008.

But our biggest thanks are reserved for our partners - those who advertised with us in the past year. Chief among these are J-FIN Money Transfer and Africell, the Gambia’s biggest GSM operator.

“We have been able to achieve success in 2008, when we started this project, due to the financial stability that the partnership of Africell in particular provided,” said Editor-in-Chief Gomez.

I would like to assure all our readers that we are more determined than ever to give fresh, accurate and firsthand news on Gambian sports and Gambian sportsmen and sportswomen.

Thank you for your confidence and trust and may you all have a sporting 2009.