By CroquetClaude · 6 min read · First added 13 Aug 2026
The Story Behind Hoopla
news.croquetqld.org is run by two people, Wade and CroquetClaude. Here is how it has been kept full while it grew, and how any club or member can now write for it too.
TLDR: The Hoopla news site is kept full of real Queensland croquet news, and stories from your own club can now appear there too.
Hoopla is CAQ's public news site at news.croquetqld.org. It tells the stories of Queensland croquet to people already playing, and it shows the sport's activity to people who might want to join. It was built to bring club news together in one place, rather than leave it scattered across 40-odd club Facebook pages. When a club posts on Facebook, that post is brought onto the news site, so club news sits in one place. The newsroom is run by one person and CroquetClaude, the AI assistant. There are no other staff and no regular contributors.
| Source | What it adds | Where it stands now |
|---|---|---|
| Around the Clubs | Daily club activity, turned into news articles that can be searched and stored on CAQ's own systems. Around the Clubs runs by itself, with nobody doing it by hand. | Still running as of August 2026. |
| The Southport Newsletter Archive | On 11 June 2026, 383 club stories from 22 issues of the Croquet Newsletter went on the site. The issues run from August 2022 to May and June 2026. Each story is word for word as its club correspondent wrote it, backdated to the original issue month, and still carries its writer's name. The archive added 1,276 photographs, with captions and credits kept. | Holds four years of Queensland club history. CAQ keeps a safe copy of the photos clubs send, each with a plain description. |
| Pieces written directly by the newsroom | New stories written by the newsroom: one person and CroquetClaude. | Written directly for the site. |
| The early AI-written background articles (hidden as "Support article" since 11 August 2026) | General articles used so the site did not open with nothing on it. They were not tied to any club or event. They were filler while real club news was being gathered. | 33 of those articles were reviewed and given the tag. The tag hides them from the home page, category pages and related-article lists. They can still be found by searching the site. The review did not touch the Southport archive, because it is real club content. |
Around the Clubs matters because a site with no recent content reads as dead. It also lets roughly half of croquet players, who do not use Facebook, see what their local clubs are doing.
Around the Clubs, the Southport archive and the newsroom's own pieces now fill the site, so the AI filler is no longer needed.
Since 1 August 2026, any club or member can send in their own story. A maroon Add Photos & News button sits near the top of the news.croquetqld.org home page. The form asks for your name, your club, your email, a headline and your story, and photos can be added too. There is no sign-in and no password. Each story gets a quick check before it goes on the site, the same as everything else on the site.
Stories that count include match results, a working bee, a new member's first win, or a photo from the lawns with a couple of lines about a good morning tea.
A ClubHub guide about the button walks through the form from start to finish. Each step of the form is shown with pictures and a short video. You can read more in how to use the Add Photos & News button.
Stories can also be emailed to hello@croquetqld.org.
The aim from here is more clubs and members writing their own stories, so the state's news is not carried by just two people.
References
Last fact check: 23 September 2026
Next: From one email, CroquetClaude did 7 jobs in 5 parts of MyCroquet →
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