His article highlighted the fact that the Internet can be used to create a community, despite the fact that those who take part can often be many miles and even continents apart. Regulars in the Abbey Arms chat room include a young Norwegian fan and an exiled U in Boston USA, and yet when they log on they can pick up a conversation with other United fans as though they are old friends.

I have written previously about the chat room gatherings that occur on the nights of big cup games, and last Tuesday was no exception. When it got to the stage of 'golden goal' extra time in the AWS tie with Exeter, Jon in the USA, Matt in Australia and a couple of long-distance supporters in the UK were agonising along with everyone at The Abbey. There was even a Sunderland supporter logged on, ready to telephone the result to a North Terrace regular who was exiled to Glasgow for the night!

A little bit of history was made when it came to the penalty shootout, thanks to Mark Johnson. He supplied live commentary on the penalty shootout from the press box so I was able to keep them informed kick by kick, and they knew the result within seconds. The result was typed into the news page on the site and broadcast to the Internet within a few minutes and we even beat the on-line news ticker provided by Press Association News!

The PA news feed, supplied to www.sporting-life.com, is one of the best ways to keep in touch with games if you cannot access Teletext or Ceefax, or local radio. They, along with the service at www.soccernet.com, provide almost instant updates of scores from all the divisions. I know the services are invaluable to overseas fans where results from outside the Premiership do not warrant a mention in their local press.

A lot of the Premiership clubs provide Real Audio commentary from their official web sites, which allows Internet users to hear live audio commentary on the games, and I know some United fans listened to the game from Sheffield Wednesday using that technology. However I was sad to see that some of those clubs are now charging subscriptions for this service, which makes our chances of benefiting from their commentary in the future almost nil.

Every day, fans who are new to the Internet are reading the U's Net site for the first time and I am still receiving feedback about an interview I had with Roy McFarland in September. He agreed to answer questions from members of the Moosenet mailing list and the questions and his answers are on the web site for all to see. There have been a lot of positive comments from fans who appreciate the manager taking the time to do this, and I hope to be able to repeat the exercise again before the end of the season.

The polls are still running on the site and attracting a lot of opinions at present about the 'Billy' Beall transfer saga. Running alongside that poll is one suggested by club director Gary Harwood. In view of the current supply problems with the replica away strip, he and Roger Hunt are keen to learn your thoughts on the current strip ahead of plans to possibly switch suppliers at the end of the season. If you have Internet access then do take the opportunity to give your opinion about whether any new strip should be as similar as possible or completely different, but if not, they would like you to drop the club a line.

This weekend the voting for Player of the Month will start again, and a poll is also planned to find the ten most popular goals of the 1990s, with the eventual aim of making small video files available for download from the site. More about that next time.