Welcome (back) to JackArmy.net

This evening we have completed (what appears to be) a successful migration back from Planet Swans to JackArmy.net.

It is a step back into the past for us with JackArmy.net being the original name for this particular Swansea City site which started life almost a quarter of a century ago,

It was back in the summer of 2001 that the keys to JackArmy.net were handed over from Keiron McDonnell to Phil Sumbler.   Keiron had started the site some years before under the guise of “Army of Jack” but upon its move to the Rivals network it had been renamed JackArmy.net.    Keiron’s other commitments meant that he had to give up the site and Phil stepped into the breach on July 1st 2001.

Little was it known at that time that the site would play a part in one of the largest battles that the fans had seen to keep the club afloat.   Having broken the news about a handover of ownership from Mike Lewis (who had acquired the club from Silver Shield) to Tony Petty and the battle lines were drawn just a short while later when the site broadcast the news that the new owner was trying to sack the players.

For the next three months we joined forces with the Supporters Trust and endless supporters both in and out of the city in a campaign to oust Tony Petty, a campaign that was eventually won in January 2002 when the club passed hands to a local consortium.   During that period the readership of the site had grown to huge levels and it was revealed that Petty himself was a big reader of the site at the time although he did not like what he read.

As the club was now under local ownership we retained a close working relationship with the owners and celebrated with them at the time when we secured our football league status on the last day of the 2002/3 season.   And from then on in there followed ten years of huge success for the club that resulted not just in Premier League football but also a League Cup win and a European campaign.

Whilst the football club was on an upward trajectory the site found itself needing to develop and change for a number of reasons.   The first was the demise of Rivals.net that saw us leave the network in 2008 and they retained the JackArmy,net name meaning Planet Swans was formed in December 2008.   The site became totally independent and ran on its own servers for a period of time before joining up with FansNetwork in 2014.   By this time the club was that Premier League team and we became the largest site on the network outside of their founder site in TWTD.

FansNetwork remained our home until the summer of 2020 when Phil took a decision to take the site back independent again and moved Planet Swans back to its own servers.   One of the purposes of that was to try and give further functionality to the site and the second was to regain the JackArmy.net name – a domain name that had been returned to his ownership some time before.

So whilst Planet Swans continued the desire to go “back to our roots” never disappeared and JackArmy.net was relaunched to the world at the start of 2024.

The fundamentals of the site remain the same as they did on those opening moments twenty-three years ago.   To bring you news and views of the Swans and give a place where people can discuss matters both on and off the pitch.   The longest serving site for Swansea City remains.

Welcome to JackArmy.net.   Enjoy.