Almost a decade ago a lunatic had an ambitious project, an idea to come up with a website that had no structure, no real purpose, no exact category, no name and no idea how it worked. So despite all the negatives and challenges, here we are now celebrating The Gurgler website’s 3000th article extravaganza.
3,000 you say? That does sound like a whole heap of crap. Well, it has been a labour of love, which is good, because the website makes no money through a combination of pure laziness toward any admin and well, laziness. But The Gurgler does receive its fair share of various spam selling many, many different forms of pornography and spam compliments from mainly Russia and China. They haven’t taken any of our zero dollars either, so it’s a net result of zero, which works.
Lack of money aside, The Gurgler has still seen some little victories along the way. Like out-ranking sites like the BBC and Sky Sports UK for things like Premier League predictions or Fox Sports and betting sites for NRL selections. Not a bad achievement for a website with one and a half staff coming out of the corner of a lounge room late at night.
Somehow The Gurgler has made it through to 3,000 articles, with a varied and at times eccentric range of subjects. Of course the favourites are stats-heavy, over-complicated sporting previews, but there always has to be room for the out-there attempts at humour or humourous observation pieces from the Wooden Spooners and Everyday News teams.
One of the latest additions is the Everyday News that may look and smell like a Betoota Advocate rip off, but we assure you we aren’t that good. And there has to be room for the lighter side of life in our opinion. The Wooden Spooners team do the same with sport, covering more angles than a hectogon.
You may ask, why all the self-promotion, why all the self-indulgent tripe, why not just hammer social media with our 3000th episode spectacular. Good question, we went looking for our Twitter account and found an X and got too confused. As admin isn’t a strong point, we’ll have to get back to you on that. We’d put our Social Media person onto that, but that’s us, and we can’t be bothered.
But surely if we can’t celebrate 3000 articles then we can’t celebrate anything.
Who else could bring you a tale about a Spaced theme Shopping Centre in suburban Kallangur?
What about the Everyday News team bringing you stories that mainstream media can’t be bothered with, as they can’t blame a Labor government. Like how there should be a National Pie Identification System, or Baby Boomers Buying those white metal table and chairs, a cat’s peace being destroyed, the new nickname search, and so much more.
Of course the fun and games is only a small part of The Gurgler over the years.
We are proud of our weekly coverage of NRL, Formula 1, Football and more, where the stats go hand in hand with unbalanced opinion and thoughts on the sports covered. We think more is always more so throw more stats than anyone would ever need or want.
But there’s always more to sport, like our Wooden Spooners team that interview Firehawks, or have the Brisbane 2032 Olympic venues covered, the NRL Dolphins Recruitment Hotline, or just find a unique take on the sporting world.
During Covid we launched the A to Z of Rugby League because there was nothing else happening. It remains some of our most popular gear, and is a must-see for anyone who likes their rugby league slightly obscure and great time-filler. With deep discussions into the best Moustaches, mascots, UK players and more. 26 different rugby league stories to sift through. A specific shout out to Andrew Pelechaty for his massive cotnribution to this.
There’s also the launch of our fake betting company GurglerBet. We there are weekly specials and you can only bet at fifty cents at a time in a revolutionary new way of responsible gambling. No half measures or poxy ads that people ignore.
We have even covered entire Rugby League World Cup and the Football World Cup in 2022. The football version getting almost as few reads the number of games we covered. Sadly that meant that our very best work – the 2022 Football World Cup – got the fewest reads for the year. But for one last time we offer up our Match Centres for both, in the desperate hope that someone recognsies the hard work. We covered over 100 games in six weeks with just one writer.
2022 FIFA WORLD CUP
2022 RUGBY LEAGUE WORLD CUP
There’s probably been too much talk and love for Greg Norman, with the his penchant for nudity. But we still lover Greg, miss that TV show Holey Moley, and hope he’s still going when we reach our 5000th article. Maybe he might reach out to us and do an intro.
The Gurgler makes no apology for championing various people and things a little too much. Greg Norman being one of the worst. But who could deny our love for the PNG Hunters rugby league team, who we boldly predicted their 2017 Intrust Super Cup Premiership. Or idolise the human wrecking ball that was/is Willie Minoga from that very team. Or F1 driver Pierluigi Martini who we name our F1 Driver of the Year after. Of course our list of champions couldn’t exclude Football’s greatest ever personality Adebayo Akinfenwa. He liked our twitter photo of a personalised Wycombe shirt. Of course he did.
Indeed, we also love the celebrate the forgotten heroes of everyday life. Like Local Councillors, Garbage Collection Staff, and so many underrated, great Australian heroes.
Like the one-time sport’s most mediocre teams Ipswich Town. Or Doboy Station. Or Election Night guru Antony Green.
We’ve celebrated the People of the Year and the Jerks of the Year according to us, letting people know we care either way.
Our Person of the Year more often than not didn’t end up being human, but sporting mascots and cartoon characters. Maybe we are warped, or maybe the human race wasn’t good enough to supply decent candidates to beat sporting mascots or cartoon characters. We’ll go with the latter. So you might be wonder who is our esteemed Persons of the Year, well here is the list below. We also realise we haven’t done this since 2020. Perhaps that’s Covid related. Or 5G related. Or both. Or maybe again, the world is worse place now than before, so a Person of the Year hasn’t been deserved. We’re happy with the 2020 winners being the last ones ever.
2020 – PEOPLE WHO OBEYED RULES DURING COVID / ADEBAYO AKINFENWA
2018 – SBS WORLD CUP COVERAGE & GREG NORMAN
2017 – FARMER from SHAUN THE SHEEP
We have also caned relentlessly, but appropriately the things and people who deserve it too. Like any sport coverage on Channel Nein, tennis twin brats Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic, Fox League writers, Buzz Rothfield, Politics, and so many more.
Which leads us into our once popular Jerk of the Month/Year.
Don’t remember who our Jerks of the Years have been then here is the list below. And stay tuned later in the year to vote for the 2023 “winner”. It used to be monthly too, but that became too depressing. The annual honour board is bad enough.
JERK OF THE YEAR “HONOUR BOARD”
2022 – Donald Trump
2021 – Scott Morrison
2020 – Donald Trump
2019 – Israel Folau
2018 – David Warner and Donald Trump
2017 – Jarryd Hayne, Donald Trump, Bernard Tomic
2016 – Channel 9 Cricket Commentary
We could go on about the range of good gear we have offered readers of The Gurgler down the track, and we’ve quietly done that already with loads of links to our favourite stuff to share. But as you can imagine, 3000 articles is a lot of garbage, and we remember so little of it, that occasionally we are surprised when a story from seven years ago pops up in our stats.
And when we say good gear, that’s not a promise of quality, as we are aware that with 3000 articles, we have produced a lot of rubbish. But that hasn’t stopped a lot of websites doing similar things like Fox Sports, anything from News Ltd and most influencers. The last entry being so new and bad our spell check doesn’t recognise the word, or simply rejects them like we do. Either way.
So to the many, OK, few friends of The Gurgler we thank you for the sympathetic chuckles, social media likes and thumbs up over the years, along with the polite smiles when we have produced something really crap. To the spammers and spam bots, thanks for caring. I won’t need most of your services, but will certainly get in touch if I do.
But mostly to the contributors big and small, of half an idea, one good article or many great articles, we thank you and appreciate the contributions.
Stay tuned for more quality and our 5000th article spectacular in a few years time. Legal troubles pending.
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