Goodbye, old friend...

I was going to write an article today about the closing stages of this season's FA Cup competition, but I now have a more important piece to write.

It's with great sadness that I have to announce today that my good friend and co-blogger, Smart, is standing down from helping me run this little old blogsite of ours. We both created Some People Are On The Pitch way back in May 2006 just before the last World Cup started, and it was Smart's enthusiasm and fresh ideas that helped the site get off the ground to such great effect.

Since then, Smart has regularly contributed articles on a wide range of subjects, always and without exception getting a favourable response from you, our valued visitors. It's in that very capability of his that you can see how ideally suited his talents were in contributing to a football blogsite like ours, and it will now be all the worse off for no longer featuring his writing.

Smart's last collection of articles for Some People Are On The Pitch were for our '12 Days of Christmas' series at the end of 2007. It was intended to be a series we wrote in equal parts between us, but unfortunately it coincided with me moving house, so without an internet connection for a week or two I was unable to do my share of the writing. Smart grabbed this unfortunate situation by the scruff of the neck and wrote almost every single one of the twelve daily pieces himself, thereby ensuring the feature was completed for everyone to see.

It'll be that ability to get stuck in and get the job done that I'll remember most about Smart's involvement in the site, not to mention all the fun we've had thinking up ideas for new articles and features. Without him, Some People Are On The Pitch will be considerably weaker.

I therefore raise my hat to Smart and wish him well as he leaves us for pastures new. Goodbye and come back soon, old friend - maybe as a special guest writer, some time? :-)