As is standard for Australian football, there's a lot of negativity regarding the A-League, A-League clubs, NPL clubs, the national teams, etc, etc, etc.
Just wanted to share that it's not just football that has embarrassing issues at times.

The Western Force (WA's team in the Super Rugby competition) lost control of their Facebook page 10 days ago and have not been able to get it back.
Since then, there's been no Rugby/team posts, but a steady stream of "Funny" videos.
I guess it's lucky that the hackers have been posting fairly innocuous videos - they could do serious harm to the brand if they wanted to.
Be interesting to see if the Western Force manage to regain control of their FB page before the season begins.

https://www.facebook.com/westernforce

Whilst it's fun to have a laugh at Western Force for this, Facebook are a disgrace if your account gets hacked. They are absolutely appallingly bad at helping people get their accounts back. One of my family members had their account hacked and eventually they just gave up, the account is lost and facebook straight up it's a miracle if they say anything.

What about cricket signing with Amazon. That's a bloody big mistake 

Interesting.
I know of a few people who had to start new FB accounts and said that their previous one was hacked.
But I would've thought (perhaps incorrectly) that FB would be a little bit more on-the-ball when it comes to accounts with the blue verification tick.

Please elaborate.

You have to be trying pretty hard to lose control of accounts in the days of two factor authentication

Prime bought the rights.

Whats with these stand alone franchise leagues shitting on the actual sport they are trying to represent by the way?

HAL's "football but not as you know it" was dismissive enough but big bash, I just noticed, is running with "It's just NOT cricket" ?!?!?!?!?!!?

Not what i was asking, but i think you knew that.

Wow, the videos are even posted with Western Force watermarks hahaha

I wonder if that's actually a clever tactic from the hackers - FB probably don't know or care who the "Western Force" are, and if the account is still posting a stream of content with Western Force branding (although unrelated to Rugby), it's a bit harder for the legitimate owners to convince FB that they've been hacked.

https://www.footballvictoria.com.au/news/chris-pehlivanis-appointed-ceo-football-victoria?fbclid=IwAR0Mif6H721b2bdRtmAOdXkKY0cwyIBCNSBxJYA-h4R6TqEsfZ0ICbozNec_aem_AVsZ5FVLFgS88iXtQ0zHoeQKLTmNG_OKQ2knzH2_Pmt98r-64XaKRemnOMZAReK6NUg

Cant get anymore Tinpotedness than Football Victoria Im afraid.

Big bash cancelled after 6 overs 

Quite a lot of debate about Perth test cricket crowds. Pakistan aren't a draw card though and I felt it was a dull slow paced test.

I wonder how Melbourne will turn out for this Boxing Day test. 

Came here to write this. 

Dire.

I say every summer 'Melbourne will turn out' I think the past few years have seen some tame Boxing day crowds but I put it down to the draw card of the opponent and slight changes in behaviour that people just want to do something different. The hype will rebuild eventually. 

That's the thing. The TV opportunity chilling in ones own comfort was too good to pass up. It's being watched and followed somehow. The discussion around people actually going to the ground is another thing. 

boxing day test will always have good numbers - summer, holidays and what else is there to do in Melb :) lol......

https://www.afr.com/companies/sport/super-rugby-s-melbourne-rebels-falls-behind-on-tax-bill-stadium-fees-20231212-p5eqti

Rugby in worse shape then then a league 

Control of the Western Force page still hasn't been returned to the Western Force.

Thanks for the update. Useful. 

Hey - it appears they've finally regained control of their FB page, and have gone thru and deleted all the "spammed" videos.
Ironically 2 of the 3 videos they've posted since regaining control don't have the Western Force branding - unlike the "spam" videos.

And now a spam video has appeared in the middle of their "legitimate" videos. :laugh:

Surely the first thing you'd do after regaining control of the page would be to change the password?

There's still random spam videos appearing in the midst of their legitimate content.

I genuinely don't understand how this happens.
Surely once you see spam videos appearing you'd realise the password has been compromised and change it immediately. 

Melbourne Rebels have just been shut down 

That's sad for their sport 

It has only just hit me now.

I often subscribe to KAYO for a month for big cricket tournaments.  Mates I know with Fox subscriptions, who show a lot of cricket, can't believe Amazon has the T20 WC rights.