The English Game

13 Tuesday Oct 2026

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Sunday 30th August 2026 ko 11:00

West Lancashire League Division One

STONECLOUGH 3 (Greenhalgh 14 Howlin 36 80)

Bentley sent off 67 (2nd booking)

CHIPPING 2 (Edmundson 10 Hewitt 74)

Att 324

Entry £5

Programme £1

The third day of the West Lancashire Hop saw us stay in Bolton’s envirions, but of all the games on this year’s event the one I was most looking forward to was Stoneclough, and for the oddest of reasons. Put simply the ground is a star of Netflix!

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The Bride

11 Sunday Oct 2026

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Saturday 29th August 2026 ko 17:00

West Lancashire League Division 2

GALGATE 2 (Moore 45+2 McKeeking 78)

Lewis sent off 62 (DOGSO)

APPLEY BRIDGE 3 (Ray 11 Atkins 64 90+2)

Att 268

Entry & Programme £5

From Storeys to the village of Galgate the heavens opened. I smiled at two ironies, the firest was that the rain would help the rhubarb that grows prolifically here, and was once reckoned to havge been used to dye the silk that once was spun here. The second was that since we were sat in a traffic jam, I knew the hop was causing it, and so the weather wasn’t putting people off.

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Storied

09 Friday Oct 2026

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Saturday 29th August 2026 ko 14:00

West Lancashire League Division Two

STOREYS OF LANCASTER 7 (Hollywood 11 19 47 Creech 40 64 88 Fenton 43)

HAWCOAT PARK 0

Att 253

Entry £5

Programme £2

We headed into Lancaster itself for our next game, and another with difficult parking, in suburbab streets. It wasn’t difficult to find a suitable space and half the fun of doing so was walking down York Road to the ground. A cat glowered at me, wondering why I and so many other strangers were invading his territory!

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At The Heart

06 Tuesday Oct 2026

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Saturday 29th August 2026 ko 11:00

West Lancashire League Division Two

CATON UNITED 1 (Curwen 69)

LANGHO 5 (Clarke 7 McLoughlin 56 Darcy 57 Cumpstey 73 Phelps 90+3)

Att 241

Entry £5

Programme £2

Saturday on the West Lancs Hop was unquestionably Lancaster day, even if the pedants like me would point out that the village of Caton does lie a few miles outside! It is a pretty place, and we did get to see more of it than normal as car parking at the Caton Sports Field is limited, so an overspill car park was organised a 5 minute walk away. It did serve to burn off some off my hotel breakfast!

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Cream

05 Monday Oct 2026

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Friday 28th August 2026 ko 18.30

West Lancashire League Division One

COPPULL UNITED 1 (Richardson 80)

FRECKLETON 3 (Kelsey 43 61 Ako 64og)

Att 353

Entry & Programme £5

You may find this surprising, but I think you see GroundhopUK at its very best when it operates at Step 7 or below. Let me explain; if you understand the organised groundhop as a compromise between the needs of clubs, leagues and groundhoppers, then the needs of the groundhopper- game, programme, and badge you’d think would be mostly easily be satisfied at Steps 5 & 6, or would they?

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Parsloe

01 Thursday Oct 2026

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Tuesday 25th August 2026 ko 19:45

Eastern Counties League Challenge Cup 1st Round

ATHLETIC NEWHAM 1 (Kennybella 89)

STANSTED 2 (Elenkov 65og Mignot 86)

Att 25

Entry £8

Programme online only

When I saw this fixture pop up I saw this as a good excuse to recomplete the Essex Senior League, you may recall me having the option on one of the Essex Senior’s Hop days when I ended up at Little Oakley . It was only on closer inspection that I realised that Athletic Newham had been relegated last season, and so I’d be completing what used to be the Eastern Senior League- now the Eastern Counties League Division One South.

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Mustapha

28 Monday Sep 2026

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Saturday 22nd August 2026 kpo 15:00

Northern Premier League, Premier Division

LEEK TOWN 4 (Weir 56 Panter 64 Griffiths 69 Bickerton 90)

BAMBER BRIDGE 1 (Ferguson 32p)

Att 442

Entry £14

Programme £3

This season I’m making a few changes. One is that I’m adopting a “Tidying up” policy- there are so many grounds I’ve yet to visit that make little sense, given the 2700-plus grounds I’ve seen a game on. One of these was Leek Town’s Harrison Park; I visited the now demolished Ball Haye Green, and Leek CSOB but not the biggest ground in town, why?

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Yellow

24 Thursday Sep 2026

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Tuesday 11th August 2026 ko 19:00

Wiltshire League Premier Division

DOWN AMPNEY 2 (Bailey 14 45+1)

WROUGHTON 0

Att 27

Free Entry

Football is full of geographical quirks, and in England the counties do seem to cause quite a few of them. Down Ampney is in Gloucestershire even if the football team do play in the Wiltshire League but I suspect the more important factor is that the village is in the Cotswolds.

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Sliding Doors

11 Friday Sep 2026

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Saturday 8th August 2026 ko 15:00

EFL Cup 1st Round

LEYTON ORIENT 2 (Mitchell 85 El Mizouni 88)

OXFORD UNITED 0

Att 3,783 (979 away)

Hospitality in Justin Edinburgh Stand £45 (entry, programme, teamsheet, lounge, 2 course meal)

Back in the early 90’s I was at university in North London within easy reach of Arsenal’s Highbury Stadium. I didn’t go very often, preferring to head home to Oxford whenever United had a home game and if they weren’t at home I’d try and visit every Football League ground in the capital. 35 years ago all you needed to do was turn up and pay, tickets were cheap and easily bought- how times change!

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Sphinx

10 Thursday Sep 2026

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Sunday 26th July 2026 ko 15:00

United Counties League Premier South

COVENTRY SPHINX 1 (Parker 64)

DESBOROUGH TOWN 2 (Blaikie 2 Bradshaw 18)

Att 422

Entry £8

Programme £2

In a hop that was, for me, made up entirely of revisits, a trip back Coventry Sphinx was intriguing. For those not in the know the club was formed in 1946 as the works team of Hawker Siddley which immediately made me think back to the Hawker YMCA ground in Kingston-on-Thames I’d visited a week or two earlier. The firm, now swallowed up by Rolls Royce made aircraft, and luxury cars, with one the Sphinx giving the football club an interesting name change in 1993 with the Coventry prefix being added in 1995.

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