What you are looking at here is the website of Blackout Indoor Cricket team. They've been "Hitting the Nets Since 1989" but only one original team member from those dark days remain and that's the dinosaur we call Rob. But you may call him Hammer. He's the team captain and historian of the now aging side. The team is predominantly made up of banker staff but that's now kind of changing with new blood in the side. The team's original name (for one season) in 1988 was "Hit 'N' Run" but was later changed (by a female player according to Ian "Damage" Ramage) for the following season. We've only had moderate success in all these years with all but three premierships to date. In this whole time the team have been playing at the Sports World Centre at Peakhurst (formerly All Seasons) and court 4 (Peakhurst Inn) is regarded as our favourite watering hole to bitch and gloat about on courts shenanigans after the match.

Truth be known, we are not the longest running side. But I doubt no other team has been as consistent and as loyal as us with only one missed season in the teams extensive history and that was due to the fact that both Captain (Rob Spit) and Vice Captain (Dave Lang) went on holidays to the UK. That was just after our drought breaking Grand Final win in 2002 and was regarded as a much needed break.

But before that fantastic season Rob was apparently getting a bit bored of the whole thing. Something was missing. The team already had tradition and history but was becoming mundane. That was till I entered the side and as I was doing a TAFE course at the time I decided to mix the course with the team by making a team website as my project. That site www.angelfire.com/sports/blackout (now crude looking compared to this here site) is still up and running and was what kicked off what was later to become a focal point of our team's identity. It was originally a free web site that cost absolutely nothing but time to make. But the restrictions in that original set up were becoming apparent and a change needed to be made.

After a quick meet up with the teams then committee members (Rob, Langy, Paul Loomes and myself) we came up with the new domain name for our site. Originally to be called blackoutshed it was decided BLACKOUT (Team Name) OUTHOUSE (Outdoor dunny) would be a double meaning domain name and so it became known as www.blackouthouse.com from that point on. The site has gone on to win a couple of awards thanks to www.frontlook.com for our use of their software on our theme and also for the applets and animations you see about the site. But the site now looks even more professional than back then (IMHO) and we hope to stretch things even further with the site as new changes to updates are about to happen.

I personally hope to see Blackout go onto a new generation and continue to be a face at the Peakhurst centre for years to come. In saying that I also hope to see this site continues to compliment what has been a fun journey.