(Vin Maskell would welcome contributions from readers about their home-ground scoreboards for his website - scoreboardpressure.com.) 

The southerly wind was blowing a gale straight off Port Phillip Bay and down the guts of the Williamstown football ground. It was round three of the Victorian Football League, 2010. 

The home team was a point down deep in the last quarter, kicking with the wind. 

I was standing inside the Williamstown scoreboard, in the forward pocket at the southern end of the ground, praying the yellow and black metallic numbers wouldn't fly off their nails, hoping the scoreboard itself wouldn't blow down. 

The siren went and I waited for the all-clear from the goal-umpires. My pride as a scoreboard attendant wanted the scores to be correct. My passion as a Williamstown supporter wanted the scores to be wrong. Maybe I'd missed a point. Or even two. 

The goal umpires waved their flags from the middle of the ground. Williamstown had lost to Sandringham by a point. As I packed away the numbers, I knew I'd just experienced scoreboard pressure, real scoreboard pressure. 

Until I became the Williamstown scoreboard attendant, on a whim four years ago, I took scoreboards for granted. I'd look at the scores but I wouldn't think much about the structure of the scoreboard or its history or the people who hung up the numbers. 

But the more I looked, the more I learnt. Sure, all footy scoreboards have the same basic function - to tell the fundamental story of the game - but scoreboards differ from ground to ground and from town to town. And they're changing: from manual to electronic, from distinctive rickety structures to portable, storable generic boards. 

Here are a few curios I've learnt over the past few years: 

- The classic old MCG scoreboard is now at Manuka Oval in Canberra. 

- The official name of scoreboard at the Junction Oval in St Kilda, Shane Warne's home ground, is the Ralph H Smith Scoreboard, named after a St Kilda Cricket Club official. 

- The 1966 Victoria Park scoreboard at Collingwood was demolished last January and will be replaced by a sculpture, as part of the ground's $7.2million redevelopment. 

- The scoreboard at Subiaco was packed to the rafters in 1937, as fans tried to get a view of the Western Australian v Victoria football match. 

- The scoreboard at Sunshine, in Melbourne's western suburbs, is an old bus shelter. 

- The scoreboard at Birregurra, in western Victoria, is built from local logs, probably radiata pine. 

- The scoreboard in Merredin, Western Australia, is a trailer and can be towed from ground to ground. 

But scoreboards are about people too. 

Ross Dodd, at the Junction Oval, puts up the race results and AFL scores, as well as the amateurs game being played on the ground below him. And sometimes Ross puts up happy birthday messages. 

Peter Vesty at Port Melbourne says the modern game, now much faster than when he started in the scoreboard 30 years ago, presents its challenges. But he's not sentimental about his 70-year-old relic: ''It should be blown up, or burnt down,'' he says. 

Basil Walley at Goomalling blames his involvement in the weekly task of scoring on "me and my big mouth". 

Bryony McCrudden at Gidgegannup said of her first game as scoreboard attendant just a few weeks ago: "You feel like part of the game." 

I've learnt that I'm not alone in my interest in scoreboards. In February of this year I started, with Western Australian sports journalist Les Everett, a website all about scoreboards. 

It's called scoreboardpressure.com and currently has photos and stories of 50 scoreboards, mainly Victorian and Western Australian. City, country and suburban scoreboards. Old, new and demolished scoreboards. Tin sheds, log cabins, bus shelters. All sorts. And the myriad stories they contain.