Monthly Archives: October 2013

The Colour of Magic

20 Sunday Oct 2013

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Saturday 19th October 2013 ko 15.00

Western League Division One

WINCANTON TOWN 5 (O’Hare 2 35 Gale 12 90 Davis 89)

DEVIZES TOWN 0

Att 51

Entry £5

Programme £1

To the groundhopper the A303 is something of a mixed blessing. The arterial road has no end of interesting sites to visit, and a multiplicity of quirky football grounds to be discovered. If you haven’t been to these two, Amesbury http://wp.me/p1PehW-pz and Gillingham http://wp.me/p1PehW-fh are highly recommended. The downside of the road is the congested traffic particularly around Stonehenge, it’s always a good idea to factor in an extra 30 minutes for your journey.

Wincanton is a small market town which is just about in Somerset. In fact to give you an idea of how close to the border with Dorset you are, the football club played for much of its history in the Somerset Senior League before transferring to the Dorset Senior League then being promoted to the Dorset Premier League. Last season they finished runners-up and gained promotion to the Western League for the first time in their history.

Of course in sporting terms the town is far more famous for Continue reading →

Behind The Bike Sheds

18 Friday Oct 2013

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Wednesday 16th October 2013 ko 19.45

Southern League Cup First Round

POOLE TOWN 1 (Byeley 63)

WIMBORNE TOWN 1 (Davidson 14)

No extra time, Poole won 5-4 on penalties

Att 206

Entry £10

Programme £2

Tea £1

The Dorset town of Poole is famous for many reasons; there’s the large harbour, and Poole Pottery now sadly closed. There’s Brownsea Island, the birthplace of the Scouting Movement, and during the English Civil War the town was a Puritan stronghold, a bastion against ship tax being levied at the time. With the Royalists on the brink of defeat in 1646, the Parliamentary garrison from Poole laid siege to and captured the nearby Royalist stronghold at Corfe Castle, the ruins of which are still a major tourist near Swanage. During the Second World War the town was a major embarkation point for Operation Overlord, as 81 landing craft containing American troops from the 29th Infantry Division and the US Army Rangers departed Poole Harbour for Omaha Beach for D-Day, in June 1944.

I arrived on a good day for the sporting folk of Poole, as on the previous evening Continue reading →

Square Pegs

13 Sunday Oct 2013

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Saturday 12th October 2013 ko 15.00

League 2

OXFORD UNTED 2 (Constable 44 Rose 45p)

NORTHAMPTON TOWN 0

Att 6,177 (910 away)

Entry S/T

Programme £3

It did seem strange swapping the mud of Bedfordshire for some League 2, but that I suppose is the dichotomy of being a groundhopper but also having a season ticket at a Football League club. It was great to get the occasional text and Twitter message from Craig and others that the day went well, and that by and large the weather was kind.

Oxford versus Northampton is one of those fixtures that looks like a local derby but isn’t. Oxford hate Swindon like no other club, but in the case of Northampton I do wonder who their local rivals are these days. It used to be Continue reading →

Doing it Right #2

12 Saturday Oct 2013

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Saturday 12th October 2013 ko 10.30

Bedfordshire County League Premier Division

MARSTON SHELTON ROVERS 3 (Reid 59 60 Franks 79)

SHEFFORD TOWN & CAMPTON 1 (Jones 62)

Att 162

Entry FREE

Programme £2

Bacon Roll £2

Badge £3

This season has been by far the busiest by far for organised groundhops with, if I’m correct, this Bedfordshire League being the fifth so far with another six still to come. The diary is congested, and I expect that to be the case for years to come as it seems that Leagues have finally worked out that there’s a windfall to be had from the purse of the groundhopper. There has never been a better time to Continue reading →

Wakering Stairs

10 Thursday Oct 2013

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Wednesday 9th October 2013 ko 19.45

Essex Senior League Gorden Brasted Memorial Trophy First Round

GREAT WAKERING ROVERS 10 (Skeels 7 18 Trenkel 24 43 82 85 Baldwin 40 62 Sparrow 56 Read 59 )

SPORTING BENGAL UNITED 2 (Ougbo 47 79) Riviera missed penalty 72

Att 71

Entry £6

Programme £1

Teamsheet FREE

When I used to follow Oxford United both home and away I used to dread the Southend arterial road. Time does dull the memory, and roadworks made the usual hold-ups still worse on what is, after all, a pretty much straight road. After passing by the almost perpetual suburbia of Southend itself, the scene changes rapidly. You become more aware of the flat land, this is I suppose the southernmost tip of East Anglia, and soon you reach the village of Great Wakering.

The village has links to the MOD island of Foulness, much of the land around Great Wakering is inaccessible due to their restrictions, the beach area is often used as a firing range.

The village’s most famous son is footballer Continue reading →

Rope-a-Dope

10 Thursday Oct 2013

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Tuesday 8th October 2013 ko 19.45

Football League Trophy Southern Section 2nd Round

OXFORD UNITED 1 (Constable 89)

PORTSMOUTH 2 (Agyemang 66 Marquis 82)

Att 3,697 (1,132 away)

Entry £10

Programme £2 (reduced size, fold out) inc’ Oxford Mail

It has to be said that the Portsmouth support for this fixture was astounding, I did start to worry that the away fans would outnumber the home support! I remember Oxford United doing that to St Albans City during OUFC’s first season in the Conference.

The Football League’s competition for the bottom two divisions does at times Continue reading →

Refiner

07 Monday Oct 2013

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Saturday 5th October 2013 ko 15.00

Scottish Championship

FALKIRK 2 (Loy 33p 84)

QUEEN OF THE SOUTH 1 (Russell 84)

Att 3,189

Entry £18

Programme £2

Badge £3

Macaroni Pie £1.80

This is another in the occasional series “Travels with Iain,” the last being the trip to Irvine Meadow last year http://wp.me/p1PehW-1lY. For Iain and I a ten month gap from seeing each other is pretty good for us! His son Ross loves his football too and I enjoyed seeing him return from football training with his Månkarbo shirt on, and I’m not sure his teammates will have seen a Swedish Division 5 shirt before! So Ross, here’s what the place is like! http://wp.me/p1PehW-1KD

We’d decided to watch Iain’s local team Queen of the South’s away game at Falkirk. It’s around a 90 minute drive up the M74 and M73 from Dumfries to the Falkirk Stadium, but let’s be honest here, a 3-sided stadium in an out-of-town location isn’t what I’d normally choose to visit as I get enough of that following Oxford United! So you have to work just that little bit harder to make it interesting. Fortunately Falkirk allows you to do that with just a little research. Continue reading →

Transformer

04 Friday Oct 2013

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Wednesday 2nd October 2013 ko 19.45

Hinchingbrooke Cup First Round

PETERBOROUGH SPORTS 2 (Brader 82 90)

BOURNE TOWN 1 (Robinson 30)

Att 85

Entry & Programme £3

It’s the lot of the groundhopper that you expand your circle of comfort time after time. Consider that idea for a moment, its that point on a journey when you can’t find your way home off the top of your head. When I was a child Dad would drive the family Mini to a resort somewhere in England or Wales, and initially it was a case of wondering whether at the end of the road we’d turn left for south or right for north.

As the years went by you learned more roads, the ring road around Oxford, the route to my Aunt and Uncle in Reading, and I saw a lot of the A34 south (I still do!). But as a groundhopper you gradually learn a taxi drivers knowledge of the motorways, and trunk roads of the country, but then, as you complete the football grounds of a particular area or league, that knowledge falls into abeyance.

It was the case to a large extent for Peterborough, up the A43, with the one junction stint along the M1 before heading past Northampton, Rushden and Raunds, before crossing under the A11. It was for a good reason, as Peterborough Sports are new to the United Counties League, and this was their first game under their new floodlights. However what I and the handful of other hoppers saw on arrival surprised each and every one of us.

The ground, in Lincoln Road used to be Continue reading →

The Sweetener

03 Thursday Oct 2013

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Tuesday 1st October 2013 ko 19.45

Isthmian League Premier Division

BURY TOWN 0

DULWICH HAMLET 4 (Oztumer 35 75p Walker 35 57)

Att 273

Entry £10

Programme £2

Badge £3

On the way home from Bungay I’d actually stopped for petrol in Bury-St-Edmunds without realising I was less than a mile from Ram Meadow. Nevertheless, regular readers will know that if I pass by a town, the chances of me returning to watch their football team increase dramatically!

Continue reading →