By Tom Parsons
November 20 – Football Federation Australia (FFA) has come up with a new way of displaying their players names on official team sheets for their international home games. Instead of the traditional name and number combination that has served clubs and countries well over the years, the FFA introduced their squad by putting their Twitter handles on the team sheet for their 1-0 win over Costa Rica at Sydney’s Allianz Stadium this week.
Leaving room for supporters to tick the boxes for the players who were in the starting XI and were on the bench, this new format certainly brings team sheets up-to-date and raises the profile of players’ social media handles.
There are currently more than 2.9 million Twitter accounts registered in Australia whilst a recent social media report by Sensis suggested that about 15% of Australian internet users used Twitter.
Australian midfielder Tim Cahill has the highest following in the Australian squad with 565,228 followers. Cahill gained 422 followers in the 24 hours after the team sheet was released. This small rise could also be attributed to the fact that Cahill scored his 29th goal for the Socceroos in the match – equalling a national record set by Damian Mori.
Cahill’s following is 7 times as big as the official @socceroos account, which itself is one of the most active national football federations on Twitter.
Participation in football is on the rise in Australia, and according to recent figures there are now more registered soccer players in Australia than there are cricketers. This is no doubt contributed to by the coverage the team gets on social media and on TV after qualifying for three consecutive world cups. Australia knew that there was a big opportunity to build a bigger fanbase through social media if they did it well.
The effort the socceroos media team puts into running and making their social media engaging is clear, with nearly every tweet sent by them replied to, and a big emphasis on behind the scenes access to the players and staff through photographs, tweets and video.
The account is run as if they themselves are a big supporter of the side (rather than the official body). Most national federation Twitter handles are formal and generally not the most responsive to their fans.
Only five of the Australian squad don’t have a twitter handle. Mark Bresciano has the smallest following of all active players with just 895 followers. He hasn’t tweeted since 2011 but perhaps the publicised team sheets will encourage him to start tweeting again.
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