Lately we've been getting hammered with spammy new user accounts here at On The Pitch (dozens a day). It was becoming an administrative nightmare, so we've taken a few steps to try to reduce the load on our server and still make it easy to comment and participate in discussions.

1. We've enabled captchas for creating user accounts and for posting comments anonymously.

Today marks the return of open commenting on Fake Sigi. Users will no longer have to pony up the $36.52 subscription fee to leave comments on this blog - at this point, all they'll need to do is register.

The bottom line is that this site used to be more of a conversation than a monologue, and much of the time it was a damn good conversation.

Medan Chiefs have been without a coach ever since Jorg Steinbrunner left, reportedly unhappy at what he saw as managerial interference in his position.
The fact that the coaching vacancy ad on the club website, seriously have you ever heard of a football club looking for a coach by posting an ad on their own website, states any future coach must accept the CEO's intervention any time he feels is right suggests some truth in that supposition.

Just thought I'd add this post as a bit of an experiment. I wonder how many cr*p sp*m comments 'readers' will try and post. It's been amusing me for a while now all the spun comments and blatant plugs for websites that have nothing to do with the beautiful game that get posted. Be interesting [...]

In an article that focused on football Athletes seek help finding colleges the writer apparently spent some time talking to players and looking at the question of whether a service is valuable.

Enter college recruiting services, a growing industry where high school athletes and parents can turn for help in gaining exposure and making contact with colleges.

I've decided to modify the existing policy on comments. Effective immediately, commenters will no longer be required to authenticate themselves using Typepad, Facebook, or other social networks. Instead, those who choose not to authenticate will be asked to enter an alphanumeric code before their comment is accepted.