Saturday 18th April 2026 ko 11:30

Somerset County League Premier Division

CONGRESBURY 0

WORLE 0

Att 211

Entry, Programme, Bacon Roll, Badge £10 (if bought in advance)

On the day entry £4, Programme £2

From pretty much the moment that Bristolian Robyn and I became an item 10 years ago the Somerset County League has been a favourite destination on my regular visits west. There’s no secret that I’d like to see more organised groundhops at Step 7 and below, variety is the spice of life after all. GroundhopUK did speak with the league about an event for Somerset, but organising an eighth event in a season would have been too much for us. Our offering ended up being the West Lancashire League Hop in August, and the Somerset County League opted to organise their event for themselves.

We were completely comfortable in that, I’ve said it no end of times, I have no interest in GroundhopUK being the only show in town. I saw the event as being a time to enjoy a league I like and to see if there was anything we could learn. There proved to be plenty to think about. The most stark is that we provide accomodation and coach travel, but after that it does get a lot more nuanced.

The event started on the Friday at Fry Club; after this and the Clevedon United games the hop took in Nailsea United, with the Sunday games at Glastonbury and Chard Town. That made the event contrast with our events, we’d visited Chard 10 years ago on the Western Hop- would a percentage of the target audience not bother going? Also in a league not blessed with many clubs with floodlights Sunday saw two clubs not using theirs. Those lights woould have been handy for subsequent events. I could have put Chard on Sunday morning to encourage hoppers attending Glastonbury first to not head for home. My understanding was the 6 clubs that hosted were the the 6 clubs that volunteered, but all of this points to a maxim.

You can run these events how you wish, there are a few hard and fast rules (printed programmes being one) but the great joy of someone else’s hop is someone else’s spin on it. Here the interesting spin was the advanced ticket- each club did their own deal that included entry and a programme as a minimum, and sometimes more. In practical terms that meant that to book for all six games, that meant six transactions, with potentially some extras you didn’t need, but complete flexibility of what games you could book for.

To allow for comparison other organisers have done the following. We do a prebooked ticket for the entire event which includes programmes and a brochure. We also do a split ticket for each day’s games, and we also do prebooked badge packs too. Phil Hiscox for the South West Peninsula League does a prebooked ticket for the entire event that includes a brochure but no programmes and the Essex Senior League produce a “Passport” that allows the bearer into the league’s entire league programme!

I booked for the two games I attended- the two at grounds I’d not visited before, and it was completely straight forward both buying then collecting my merchandise at each game. It worked, but my only observation would be that take up seemed disappointingly low. I will happily bear testiment to how difficult it is to get some folk to buy in advance. In the nicest possible way I can’t exactly ask people to buy in advance if don’t myself- yes my hand was little forced which is absolutely fine by me.

With family also in Weston-super-Mare I drive through Congresbury a lot- it’s a handy short-cut to southern Bristol when the M5 misbehaves. I must admit I had no idea where the Broadstone Pavilion was and if you want to make a wonderful impression on first time visitors, have people in position on the main road directing people in. It was extremely impressive, I had my welcome pack before I’d even parked up! From there, the bacon roll was inclusive for me, but good value at £4 nonetheless.

It was good to see so many of the regulars, and I do wonder whether their appetite for groundhopping weekends is greater than mine!? The weather was glorious, in fact the only let-down was the game, and despite being blamed on some of my events, that and the weather are the only two factors the organisers can’t be blamed for. It was attritional in the extreme, so sometimes you have to suck it up, amuse yourself at the nil-nil haters, and move on.