Friday 7th March 2025 11:00

National League U19 Alliance-South Division

WELLING UNITED 4 (13 24p 71 90+2p)

MAIDENHEAD UNITED 0

Att 5 at Goals Eltham, Baldon Sports Ground, Eltham Palace Road

Free Entry

I’m well used to explaining my rather odd hobby to people, a starting point is usually “Some folks collect stamps or coins, I collect visits to football grounds” and then the next question is invariably “how many?” and that produces incredulity, to which my response is that there are people who watch far more football than I do! This game was in part to demonstrate that, and try out what some of the more committed hoppers do.

I watch around 120 games a season, but there is a strand of the hobby that watches double that and more. And if if you’re going to average over a game a day you’ll need to look beyond adult male football and Apps for your mobile phone. This is where a detailed knowledge of youth leagues, venues and the FA’s Full-Time site is necessary. And if you happen to live anywhere near London, that really helps too. Get all of that right, and you can easily clock up a game a day, and a good deal more if you really put the effort in.

I had a couple of days off work, and decided to explore this idea a little. I called a couple of friends and they found me Welling United Blue vs Maidstone United Ambers in the London Tactic League- a college based competion. The venue was “Goals Eltham” very close to Cray Valley Paper Mills FC – you can see their floodlights in a couple of the photos. There are no end of these “Goals” places, I even saw a deaf womens team play at the Slough version! They aren’t usually places to enthuse, imagine 10 or so caged 3 pitches, but the Eltham one is on the old Baldon Sports Ground, so there are full sized grass pitches too.

So I arrived expecting an 11 o’clock kick-off, the teams arrived and it became blindingly obvious that it wasn’t going to kick off on time. But the weather was warm, I wasn’t in a rush so who cares? But then the game kicked off and there was something not quite right. It concerned the visiting team, I couldn’t imagine a team from Maidstone called “Amber” playing in lilac!

I asked some parents watching, and it transpired via a little Googling that I was watching Welling United and Maidenhead United‘s under-19’s. A good deal later I found out the game I was meant to be watching had been switched to the University of Greenwich due to a double-booked pitch. It demonstrated neatly that these games are there for the clubs, not spectators, and certainly not groundhoppers! Yes, folks, you do have to know your place and be flexible!

The game went by the formbook, Welling won straightforwardly, and the game was very easy to watch. But does that mean that I’m likely to evolve into a 360 game-a-year hopper? Probably not, each to their own, I have other interests and responsibilities that would get in the way of that level of commitment. But I’ve watched this kind of football before, and undoubtedly will do so again.

Because as my regular reader will have seen, I’ve no great interest in hard-and-fast rules, if it interests me, and I have both time and money then I’ll go. And that counts for more than just football.

My thanks to Dave Bogie and Barry Fenn for their help.