Albion Till We Die (ATWD) is an independent West Bromwich Albion Football Club website and is run by Albion fans for fellow fans.

This site is dedicated to every single person that has over the years supported or contributed in some way towards our great club.

HISTORY

The idea of the site originally came about in early 2004 when due to disgruntlement with the quality of a number of other West Brom sites on the internet, the soon to be editors of ATWD made the decision to try and provide fellow Albion fans with something different as opposed to the usual results, squad details and basic history that most other sites seemed to offer.

After five months of  planning and finally deciding on a name (Boing Boing Baggies and WBA 4 Life were very briefly considered... and very quickly discarded!) July 2004 saw the launch of a very primitive looking and very basic ATWD (image right), however, it would be the latter stages of the year before the site had any real readable content.

April 2005 saw a revamp carried out with a brand new look for the site and a number of new ideas. Unfortunately this meant most of the original content disappeared although most of it only temporarily.

The following month saw the launch of the site's very own message board - Albion Chat. For about a year or so it was a popular and busy board, boasting over 200 members, but eventually, due to dwindling contributors and better alternatives, it was rarely posted on and the decision to close it down was taken.

The start of the 2005/06 season saw the site take on it's very own match previewer and reporter in Dale Brookes, who had previously wrote for westbrom.com. This was followed a few weeks later by NewsNow agreeing to publish news, previews and reports from our site thus giving it for the first time a potentially huge readership.

In October 2005 and six months after it's first major revamp the site underwent another thanks to the site’s then assistant editor Richard Hooper. This time, not only was it given a new look (image left) but also a totally new navigation system. For the first time since it's launch the site had a professional look.

Just one month after the revamp the website saw changes in personnel with Richard Hooper and Dale Brookes both leaving. It did however gain a new contributor in Martyn Todd, who had previously written for baggiesworld.co.uk

New Year 2006 saw the website given valuable publicity when the site editor was given the opportunity to write an article for the 'Irish Examiner' newspaper. Basically a look at the Premiership season so far, the article was published in a special supplement issued with the newspaper. This was followed in 2008 with an article for 'World Soccer Magazine', previewing Albion's Premier League campaign.

January 2009 saw Richard Hooper return and provide another new look for the website - the one you see today. Again the revamp would result in large amounts of content disappearing but as the year progressed the majority of it would reappear, along with long overdue new content. The year also saw the site welcome new writers in Julian Safe and Sam Bradley.

Five and a half years on from it's humble beginnings, ATWD is now established as one of the better independent West Brom websites. Having said that, the site is run purely as a hobby and due to far more important things in life taking up time it has not developed as quickly as was initially hoped. The long-term aim does remain the same though - to be THE most informative and accurate online resource for all things WBA. (December 2009)

THE TEAM

Mark Thomas - Founder & Editor

DISCLAIMER

albiontillwedie.co.uk is an independent and unofficial website and is in no way connected to West Bromwich Albion Football Club. The views and opinions expressed in the material on this site are not those of West Bromwich Albion Football Club, nor are they necessarily shared by the editor of this site.

Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained within this site, ATWD accepts no responsibility for any use made of the information provided and shall not be liable for any loss suffered thereby.

All content is the property of ATWD unless otherwise stated and may not be reproduced without express, prior permission.

Some content and information has been extracted / modified from other sources. In these instances all credit is given to those sources where possible and ATWD do not take any credit or responsibility for the content and information.

ATWD is not responsible for the content of the various websites to which we have provided links.

PRIVACY

ATWD does not collect nor does it disclose any personal information i.e. email addresses.

EDITORIAL POLICY

All contributions are welcome although racist, sexist, libellous or abusive submissions will not be considered for publication. All material forwarded to ATWD is subject to editorial review.

COPYRIGHT

ATWD is run as a service to fellow supporters without any commercial or private gain. We have no wish to abuse copyright regulations and apologise unreservedly if this occurs. If you own any of the material used on this site, and object to its inclusion please contact us and we will either remove the material or if preferred give proper acknowledgement.

ADVERTISING

ATWD is a non-money making website and the editor and writers receive no payment for running this site. We would however consider providing advertising space to help towards running costs of the site.

GETTING INVOLVED

We are always looking for people to help with this site, whether it be by writing match previews and reports, articles, ground reviews, your memories of the club or by contributing photographs, anything Albion related will be considered. It can be on a regular basis or it can be a one-off contribution. Please get in touch if you can help in anyway. More details on contributing can be found here

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A huge thanks to everyone that has contributed towards this site. Special thanks also go to the following people for their help.

Richard Hooper for designing and helping to establish the site as well as providing numerous photographs.
Martyn Todd.
Julian Safe.
Dale Brookes.
Sam Bradley
Tim Rigby of Tim's 92, Chris Richards and Manish Patel for providing photographs to be used on the site.
Mike Kinson and Stuart Hatfield for their help with former players.
Simon Wright for his help with the Player of the Year awards section.

RESOURCES

Some of the information on this site has been extracted from / clarified against the following sources. Thanks to all those listed and to the many other people who have over the years devoted their time to writing about 'The Albion'

The Official Club Programme
The Baggies Newspaper
West Bromwich Albion The Complete Record - Tony Matthews (2007)
The Who's Who of West Bromwich Albion - Tony Matthews (2005)
The Official Encyclopedia of West Bromwich Albion - Tony Matthews (2002)
100 Years At The Hawthorns - Tony Matthews (1999)
The Hawthorns Encyclopedia, An A-Z of West Bromwich Albion FC - Glenn Willmore (1996)
West Bromwich Albion A Complete Record - Tony Matthews (1993)
West Bromwich Albion Who's Who - Tony Matthews (1989)
Albion, A Complete Record of West Bromwich Albion 1879-1987 - Tony Matthews (1987)
The Hawthorns Golden Jubilee - W. Ellery Jephcott (1950)
Grorty Dick Fanzine
Fingerpost Fanzine
wba.co.uk
westbromwichalbion-mad.co.uk