I’ve hinted a few times over the last year or so about planned changes to the online presence of the blog and the podcast. Now that those plans are close to coming to fruition, however, I realise that the time has come to do more than provide hints about what’s coming down the track in the near future.

The blog and the podcast have been pretty much joined at the hip for the best part of ten years at this stage. At the same time, though, both have largely existed in different areas online. Even though Rob, Mike and I have for the last number of years operated to all intents and purposes as a single entity for the work we do on the blog and the podcast, we’ve never had a single dedicated online space that encompasses all we do together.

At the minute those activities cover the podcast, the columns that have come under the banner of the podcast, the blog, the results archive, the Club Stars, a bit of merch and the odd live event. We decided several months ago that the time was right to bring all of the online effort we’re involved in under the one roof. What I want to flag now to those who frequent the blog is that we’re close to making this a reality.

This will be a new website, with a new name, new branding and all the rest. It’s our aim to establish the new website as the essential online destination for all activity relating to Gaelic football within the county.

We’ll be revealing what this website will be called and the content we’ll have on it in due course. What I want to discuss here is what it means for the blog.

When I started the blog, largely on an idle whim, back at the start of February 2007, I never in truth expected it to survive all that long. Most blogs started back then died quick and painless deaths, many seen only by those who created and then abandoned them shortly afterwards.

Somehow – and I’m still not sure why this happened – the one I established stubbornly refused to die. And then, when the county team’s fortunes started its dramatic ascent from 2011 onwards, the blog’s rise began in earnest too, in time becoming the main online forum for Mayo fans to come together. A place to vocalise all those hopes of success and console each other when, yet again, the Promised Land evaded us.

But the blog was born with a fatal design flaw. It had a single point of failure.

I started it in my forties but now in my early sixties I’m painfully aware that up ahead somewhere there’s a day that will dawn which, for me, will mean that the blog, along with lots of other things, won’t get seen to in the way it needs to on an ongoing basis. Or at all.

That means that for the blog to survive into the future it needs to become part of something bigger. I’m delighted that the plans which are now coming together will make this happen, securing for the blog a long-term home within a bigger and better online vehicle.

Change is always disruptive and the upcoming change will be no different. But my aim in all of this is to ensure that the coming transition is as seamless as we can make it and to preserve the best of what makes the blog special. My earnest hope is that, when things settle down in our new online home, all that’s familiar about the blog now will still be there. Surrounded by lots of other interesting stuff as well.

We’re not quite at the point yet where we can confirm specifically what exactly is going to happen and when it is going to happen. We are, though, nearing that stage, which is why I felt it was important to let you, the community that has grown up around the blog, have a sense of what’s coming down the line.

As soon as there’s more information to share – which I expect will be soon enough – you’ll hear all about it here. In the meantime, please carry on as normal.