Bottom of the Barrel is a forum based rather loosely around the idea of lower league football. However, over time it has become a place where you are more likely to be discussing the relative merits of women from Neighbours as you are an away trip to Boston.

As time grew, The Barrel became an online hangout for bored office workers to kill time during their mundane 9-5 office jobs.

Originally the board was moderated by a Brentford fan (Trandy), but that was the year Brentford carried all before them and at the end of the season the moderator felt obliged to hand over to the Dale & Hoddie, since the Bees were off to the brave new world of the Div 2 board.

In those early days the objective of "talking football" was achieved. The definition of this, as we all know, revolves around claiming that everyone else in the league is crap, that their level of support is laughable, and that you will piss all over the weekend's opposition.

As time passed, The Barrel became increasingly popular as clubs participating in the bottom division linked to the board from their principal messageboards. Over time, rivalries between various clubs spilled onto the board, with Kobbler having many a spat with the alleged prisoner Birmingham Poshie.

The board's first ultra controversial posters went by the names of Crispy & Bob Tasker, two Peterborough fans who delighted in telling the world of the Posh's prowess as against any other club in the world, with the expected incredulous responses. In the summer of 1999, the "day-shift" were discovering the Barrel in numbers, and using the board to skive off work & have a bit of a piss about.

Thus the board became a mixture of the football stuff and some rather general musings on life. S(dS) introduced the cheese & weather threads, music became more of a board issue. During this revolution, there was a backlash from many who vociferously protested that the board return to "talking football". Janner posted many a thread to this effect, the famed description of the day-shift as "sad Terry Nutkin look-alikes" survives to this day.

It was around this time that the Third Division Messageboard reached its watershed. Mondays & Fridays were designated "football" days for the day-shift, Tuesdays - Thursdays became the domain of the "Letters Game". Each day would have a different letter, and the contributors would post a band, vegetable, toy and something else, which began with that letter. It was a starting point for discussion, but led to the first real accusations of cliquey-ness on the board. I liken it to the board members getting to know one another, in student freshers-week stylee, but it was very unpopular in many quarters, leading to yet more disruption between the warring factions.

From looking like the messageboard equivalent of Eastern Europe, an uneasy peace was found. The Javier Perez de Cuellar figure was in the shape of Morris (later to re-christen himself JPWoD). It was Morris who first summed up the atmosphere of the board. He likened it to a pre-match pub, where loads of blokes (& the odd bird) would go and talk rubbish, be it about football or any other issue of the day, hopefully in a generally friendly atmosphere.

Several threats appeared to The Barrel over time, mainly through hosting companies disappearing. There was a major war when people from The Barrel decided to pass some time on a New York Giants website. The people running the site complained to the hosting company who deleted the account.

The Barrel then moved to a Voy board, which was lasted for almost two years. However, the board almost came to a standstill due to the lack of security on usernames. The decision was made by the moderators to move the board to a password protected site, allowing people to keep their usernames without fear of rubbish being posted in their name. However, this was a controversial move as some of the older posters felt that a "click through barrel would never work". Eventually, they decided to give it a go and see how it went. After their suspicions had been broken down, they realised that it was better to move with the times.

This then became The Barrel's fourth online home. Everything was going swimmingly and many felt that the decision to move to this form of board was the saving grace of the site.

After six months of vintage barrelling, where the site was probably the busiest it had ever been, the hosting company started to flag the site because of its popularity and the strain that the database was placing upon the server.

Moderator Marlowe (now posting under another name after a psychopathic nutjob threatened him in a pub car park in Aldershot) took charge of the appeal and within a fortnight, enough money was raised to save the site for another two years.

To help with the upkeep, the site became an amazon affiliate which kept money trickling in to help with funds.

When the barrel moved to its new home, the board was then threatened with legal action on several occasions. Indeed, the threats became that regular that they put a counter on the front page. At present, the counter reads three.

The Barrel has spawned many friendships over time; even a married couple met through the board when 3CS (a Mansfield Town supporter) moved to Oslo to settle down with Oslo Dave (a Rochdale supporter). Users of the site regularly meet up for drinks after work, travel to games together or just see each other when out and about.

Regular Posters

AD (now posting as Justin Whittle's Elbow after it made contact with Alan Shearer's Jaw in a league cup tie) is a Hull City supporter who has a quite scary record of attending over 300 consecutive Hull City games.

On The Pier is the Gordon Gekko of the board. It is often alleged that he owns Kent and several swathes of Sussex, but he laughs the idea off. "I don't get out of bed for less than one billion hectares" is a common reply to such allegations.

Fraggle Stag is a Mansfield Town supporter with dubious hair who never goes to away games. Some think this is because his mam doesn't let him stay out late, but others think that he'd turn to dust if he left Mansfield.

Nick Harrison is a part-time Hartlepool supporter and full-time communist who once admitted that he'd consider having a relationship with a horse.

Tommy the Silkman is a Macclesfield Town supporter who once edited the clubs official website. He is also a Manchester City supporter, which leads to a lot of derision from everybody else in the world. Usually found berating the misfortune of Macclesfield. Most likely to say "the fourteenth was offside. There was no coming back from that. Had that been ruled out, I think we'd have hammered them"

DJ is a Darlington supporter who is bit of a playboy. Nicknamed "ratboy" by Spiff because of his thin face, DJ then took it upon himself to fill out. He once famously lost a relationship via the site after he admitted to receiving oral sex from an unknown woman, the thread was then read by his then-girlfriend.

Spiff is a Hartlepool supporter and rather worryingly a University lecturer.

TheManTheyLoveToHate is another Hull City supporter who rarely posted about football, normally choosing to talk about which women off the TV he'd sleep with. He also coined the terms "meff" and "pleb" into common barrel parlance. Often found talking about The Fall and how Mark E. Smith is a misunderstood genius.

Famous Incidents

One thread which spawned a thousand catch-phrases was the Davina McCall thread. It started when Marlowe posted an obviously photoshopped picture of her being shot. Tammy VIP, a departed Notts County fan then suggested that this be deleted "in case some of Davina's family should stumble across the barrel". SunnyStag then waded in and said it was the worst thing she had ever seen. The debate then stemmed several days with the thread mutating into conversations about lesbian sex and bestiality.

The Southwell/Suthell incident is still harked back to today. It started with a thread about how places were pronounced nothing like how their spelling. local posted about Southwell is pronounced Suthell. Ricko and several others disagreed saying that it was the biggest misconception going that it was pronounced in that way. local decided to leave the site for several years based on losing this argument and has only recently returned.

Nigel Clough/Gary Crosby. local (surprisingly) posted about how she had seen Nigel Clough head the ball out of Andy Dibble's hand to score a goal for Nottingham Forest against Manchester City. Almost all of the people pointed out that she was wrong, but she still argued that she was right. Hundreds of sources were cited to show that she was incorrent, but she admirably stood her ground and claimed that she had only recently seen it.

The Cricketgirl saga was probably the sorriest tale in all of the barrel. Longtime poster Spiff had appeared to have found the great love of his life with a former student of his who was supposedly working in the media. She moved in with him and started to contribute to the board, to the chagrin of some of the members. The saga took a rather macabre twist when it emerged that she had been having an affair with two other people from the site. As is the barrel, Spiff was on the wrong end of some merciless ribbing over the subject.