The Story Behind Hoopla

The news site at news.croquetqld.org, known as Hoopla, exists to tell the stories of Queensland croquet to those already playing. It also shows the sport's activity to people who might want to join. Wade built it to centralise information, rather than leave it scattered across 40-odd club Facebook pages. His own words for why: "if someone posts on Facebook, right, I'll grab that post and put it on our news site... that's just centralizing everything."

The newsroom is very small. Just two people run it: Wade and CroquetClaude, the AI assistant. If you've wondered who's actually behind it, that's the honest answer. No other staff. No regular contributors.

To keep the site active without a large team, a tool called Around the Clubs pulls daily activity off club Facebook pages and republishes it as searchable news articles. Those posts are stored on CAQ's own infrastructure, not left on Facebook, where pages and posts can vanish overnight.

It runs automatically. No manual step. Still running today.

That matters, because a site with no recent content reads as dead. It also lets the roughly half of the croquet demographic who don't use Facebook see what their local clubs are actually doing.

Another source runs alongside it: the Southport Newsletter Archive. On 11 June 2026, the full back catalogue of the old Croquet Newsletter went live on the site. 383 club stories, 22 issues, August 2022 through to May and June 2026.

Every one of those stories was uploaded word for word, exactly as the original club correspondent wrote it, backdated to its original issue month. The archive added 1,276 photographs too, captions and credits kept intact. Each story still carries the name of whoever wrote it. What happens to every one of those photos, and every photo the site harvests, has its own guide.

Here's the honest part. In the early days, some general AI-written background articles helped the site avoid launching bare and unloved. Not tied to any specific club or event. Filler, plainly, while real content was still being gathered.

On 11 August 2026, 33 of those pieces got reviewed and tagged "Support article". The tag hides them from the home page, category pages and related-article lists, kept only for search.

The Southport archive was left well alone in that process. Real club content, not filler.

So here's where things actually stand. Around the Clubs keeps pulling in real club activity, automatically. The Southport archive gives you four years of documented Queensland club history. On top of both, Wade and CroquetClaude write real, direct pieces. Between the three, the general AI filler simply isn't needed to keep the site full anymore.

The next step is moving away from a two-person newsroom. Since 1 August 2026, any club or member can submit their own story directly. A maroon ADD NEWS button sits at the top of the news.croquetqld.org homepage.

Click it, and a simple form opens. Your name, your club, your email, a headline, your story. Photos upload or drag straight in. No sign-in, no password to remember.

Submissions get a quick check before they go live, the same as everything else on the site.

What counts? Match results. A working bee. A new member's first win. A photo from the lawns with a couple of lines about a good morning tea, that counts too.

Would rather not use the form? Email it in instead, to hello@croquetqld.org. The goal from here is simple: more clubs and members writing their own stories, so the state's news stops being carried by just two people.