HAWTHORN president Jeff Kennett has slammed the AFL website for poor service and regular crashes. The outspoken former premier said if the problems continued it was unlikely clubs would want to remain a part of the website.

"We're very disappointed and highly concerned about the quality of the site," Kennett said. "These concerns were raised with the AFL at the beginning of the season and now we're almost halfway through and we still find it has not been fixed.

"I think a lot of clubs will be reviewing their arrangements. We can't afford to have our members so badly serviced."

In the past two weeks the website has been offline for prolonged periods, including a reported four-day black spot during round nine.

AFL spokesman Patrick Keane denied the site had been down for that long, and said the league was working with Telstra, the site provider, to fix problems as they came up.

"We've never had the site down for four days, the longest period is about five or six hours. It's very frustrating when it occurs and we're addressing the issues as they arise," he said.

"On a number of occasions (Telstra) had some technical difficulties, which is really frustrating both for us and for the people who want to look at (the site), and each time that has occurred they've moved to address it as quickly as possible."

Brisbane Lions chief executive Michael Bowers said his club had received several complaints from frustrated fans who couldn't access their website.

"Call it complaints, call it raising issues, call it what you like, you'd prefer not to be there and everyone's working diligently to ensure it doesn't happen again," Bowers said. "… We've been happy being in the AFL system and technical glitches like this happen from time to time, but we haven't got any problems and we're certainly going to stick with the AFL website."

The website was upgraded during the pre-season as part of the AFL broadcast agreement negotiated last year. It provides all the official AFL statistics and information, as well as streaming matches and radio coverage over the weekend, and supports the official sites of every AFL club except Essendon.

A spokesman for Telstra Bigpond, Craig Middleton, said the site experienced no more difficulties than any other and that Telstra was monitoring it closely.

"It's been totally rebuilt from the ground up," he said. "It's a site that had to be built very quickly. We appreciate that some people have been inconvenienced and we've got all the resources that we can directed at it."

He said the site had increased in popularity. "We are significantly up on last year's numbers for people accessing the site, it's the most popular sports site in the country."

But fans on a bigfooty.com forum have been venting their spleen since the new site went live. Some fans say it is only a matter of time before they stop going to afl.com.au.

"Other websites are beginning to try to exploit the vacuum the AFL site is creating by its horribleness," wrote one. "All of us are trying out any other sites that are recommended here or that we can find via Google, etc. Sooner or later, if afl.com doesn't clean up its act quick smart, we'll all just quietly march away."