BY CURTIS WOODWARD

@woodward_curtis

The Western Suburbs Magpies are the kings of suburban New South Wales rugby league, on Facebook, anyway. That is according to sports social media analyst website shunt.com.au.

In a report posted to their website, Wests Magpies led the way from other traditional clubs such as the Newtown Jets and North Sydney Bears.

Shunt covered 328 NSW clubs throughout all of 2020 on Facebook which didn’t include the local NRL organisations.

“NSWRL clubs and associations were particularly hit hard by the effects of Covid-19 lockdowns last year with social media results broadly in line with grassroots trends across the industry,” the story reads.

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“The silver lining to this has been a recalibration of core productivity and engagement metrics that has left overall performance levels holding steady.”

According to Shunt, the NSWRL club that posted more than any other in 2020 was Newcastle’s Cessnock Goannas with 802. The next best was Penrith’s Cambridge Park with 731 and North Sydney with 720.

But it was the engagement of the Wests Magpies with their fans that blew the competition away with almost 110,000 engagements for all of 2020. The next best was the Bears way back on 64, 585.

The Magpies again dominated the rest of the state in average engagements per post.

“Shunt’s performance metric is all about striking the right balance between content quality and quantity with Western Suburbs Magpies delivering a sensational result of 178.34 average engagements per post. This is one of the highest results yet seen by Shunt in its analysis of 30 sports.”

Meanwhile the Magpies have announced they will take several of their games away from Campbelltown in 2021 in a return to Lidcombe Oval.

The Magpies have confirmed to the81stminute.com they will still play games at Leumeah as curtain raisers to NRL fixtures.

@woodward_curtis