About
THE HISTORY
Keo.co.za was launched by rugby writer and former Springbok communications manager Mark Keohane just before the 2003 World Cup. Keohane joined Highbury Safika Media (HSM) in 2006 and sold the blog to the company. HSM publishes 29 magazines, including sports titles SA Rugby, SA Cricket, Business Day Sport Monthly, Foschini SportsClub, Foschini SoccerClub, Sowetan Soccer, SASCOC’s Road to London quarterly, and the Stormers and Western Province Matchday programmes.
THE TEAM
Mark Keohane, author of five rugby books, including the biographies of Chester Williams and Percy Montgomery, was the 2008 SAB Journalist of the Year, and has also won Columnist of the Year, Features Writer of the Year and Sports News Reporter of the Year awards. He is supported by a strong team at HSM. Sports editorial director Gary Lemke was the 2009 SAB Sports Journalist of the Year in addition to being Sports Feature Writer of the Year, and he won the latter title again in 2010. Simon Borchardt is the editor of keo.co.za and has edited SA Rugby magazine since 2002. Senior staff writers Jon Cardinelli and Ryan Vrede have developed into two of the best rugby writers in South Africa, while Gareth Duncan is a young up-and-coming junior staff writer. Nick van Rensburg and Dan Gillespie are keo.co.za’s copy editors, while Roy Foubister, keo.co.za’s webmaster, is responsible for the blog’s look and oversees the technical side of things.
THE STATS
Keo.co.za has over 700,000 unique visitors per year and over 13 million page views (an average of almost three page views per visitor). The average time a visitor spends on the site is 10 minutes and visitors come from more than 220 countries/territories.
THE AWARDS
Keo.co.za was named the Sports Blog of the Year at the 2011 SAB Sports Awards and also won the Overall New Media award.
