Author Archives: laurencereade

Blueprint

16 Sunday Aug 2015

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Sunday 2nd August 2015 ko 14.00

Peterborough & District League Division One

OUNDLE TOWN 3 (Hipwell 3p C Murphy 45 Kaye 77)

BASTON 4 (C Murphy 31og Pick 49 Waters 58 90p)

Att 321

Entry £4

Programme £1

Badge £3

For me the grounds I visit that give me the most satisfaction are the ones that surprise me. There is a tendency amongst the less experienced groundhoppers to treat everything below Step 6 as “Fields” with little other than the game to excite. The truth is that without research you genuinely don’t know what you’ll find. It could be no more than a pitch, or it could be a gem, the trick is to put your prejudices in your back pocket and find out. Continue reading →

Class

16 Sunday Aug 2015

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Sunday 2nd August 2015 ko 10.45

United Counties League Division One

THRAPSTON TOWN 4 (Whiteman 19 Morgan 27 Parkin 34 Hope 46)

ST NEOTS SAINTS 1 (Ageymang 87) Osei-Addo missed penalty 49

Att 257

Entry £5

Programme £1

Badge £3

Here’s a thought. If I was the chairman of a club about to host a game on a hop organised by GroundhopUK, the slot I’d want is the first game on the Sunday. That is of course at variance with just about every club official I’ve spoken to when we first ask their club to host! There is always resistance to moving fixtures, it’s why for example we were turned down for a hop by the Highland League recently, but when you look at the the various time slots, there are some fairly startling conclusions to be found. Continue reading →

Anticipation

09 Sunday Aug 2015

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Saturday 1st August 2015 ko 19.45

United Counties League Division One

OAKHAM UNITED 5 (Jenkins 40 Nelson 58 McDonald 65 Leckie 88 Lambie 90)

BUCKINGHAM TOWN 2 (Weymoth 2 Delderfield 77) Weymouth sent off (2nd booking) 82

Att 341

Entry £5

Programme £1

Sometimes when you put a hop together a club just leaps out of the page at you. It’s usually a club with personality, the type that doesn’t just wait for the circus to reach their town, they demand it arrives. I remember Berinsfield doing that on the very first North Berkshire Hop, and Oakham did more or less the same thing last year whilst winning in front of a huge crowd at Coates Athletic.

That was down in no small part to the force of nature that is manager Wayne Oldaker, and its personalities like him that have seen a small club in Rutland move from Catmose College (now used by Rutland DR) to Barleythorpe College, improve the place to United Counties League standards, and win last season’s Peterborough & District League. Whilst it was always Chris Berezai and I’s intention for the hop to visit Oakham United, Wayne in the nicest possible way made sure we had little or no say in the matter! Continue reading →

The Good Queen

09 Sunday Aug 2015

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Saturday 1st August 2015 ko 16.30

Peterborough & District League- Division One

STAMFORD BELVEDERE 1 (Saddington 42p)

WITTERING 3 (Middleton 17 McRoyal 23 Watson 76)

Att 314

Entry £4

Programme £1

Badge £3

So, on to game 3 of the day, and the slot that proved to be the most problematic to fill. The original idea was to visit Uppingham Town, they turned us down so we then turned to Oakham’s Rutland Dead Rabbits FC, but due to a small committee and an unhelpful landlord we had find another host club. That was a real shame, we loved the name, it was another Rutland-based club and those of you who saw their badge on sale by Terry’s Badges, the club crest was a corker! But Dead Rabbits’ loss was Stamford Belvedere’s gain, and they made the most of their opportunity. Continue reading →

Terms of Endearment

08 Saturday Aug 2015

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Saturday 1st August 2015 ko 13.45

United Counties League Division One

BLACKSTONES 1 (Evans 64p)

RUSHDEN & HIGHAM UNITED 1 (Cormack 30)

Att 327

Entry £5

Programme £1

Badge £3

So back to the UCL for our second game of the day, and over the border to Lincolnshire and the historic market town of Stamford. Blackstones take their name from their background as the works team of the Mirlees Blackstones engineering firm (more here) but I did wonder what the crowd would be like here. Continue reading →

Much In Little

07 Friday Aug 2015

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Saturday 1st August 2015 ko 10.45

Peterborough & District League Premier Division

KETTON 2 (Waldron 32 Brockbank 83p)

NETHERTON 2 (Randall 16 Rankin 65)

Att 284

Entry £4

Programme £1

Badge £3

When we at GroundhopUK took on a the task of organising a hop for the United Counties and Peterborough Leagues, one area loomed large and that was the tiny county of Rutland. The tradionally smallest county in the UK intrigued Chris Berezai and I, and when I paid Uppingham Town a visit around 4 years ago, I wrote an article titled “Rutland Weekend Television.” a nod to Eric Idle’s 1970’s humorous TV show. So when we agreed the hop we were able to see if we could organise a groundhop exclusively in Rutland but was it even possible? Continue reading →

Types

06 Thursday Aug 2015

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Friday 31st July 2015 ko 19.45

United Counties League Premier Division

HARBOROUGH TOWN 1 (Wright 2)

YAXLEY 3 (Cotton 9 Gearing 48 82)

Att 313

Entry £6

Programme £1

Badge £3

The more organised hops I help organise the more I feel I can see how the future of the organised hop will pan out. On one hand it would be easy for Chris Berezai and I to simply organise events in leagues we’re interested in. With around 3,000 grounds visited between us that would see lower level leagues featuring, along the lines of the Ceredigion or North Berkshire Leagues, but we both feel that we owe it to those with far lower ground counts to organise events at Step 5 and 6. Continue reading →

Ox-Bow

06 Thursday Aug 2015

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Thursday 30th July 2015 ko 18.30

West Dean Charity League Junior Section Group 1

ST BRIAVELS 3 (38 58 85)

WESTON 3 (27secs 12 50)

Att 8

Its tempting to define the Forest of Dean as that part of Gloucestershire that’s between the rivers Wye and Severn and is south of the A40. You soon discover the fallacy of that when you head south down the A48, then turn off at Westbury and climb. The forest gradually takes over and the pace of life slows, it really is a different but beautiful part of the world, and you forget just how close you are to the Welsh border until you see mileage signs to Monmouth in single figures. Continue reading →

The River

03 Monday Aug 2015

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Tuesday 28th July 2015 ko 18.30

West Dean Charity League, Senior Section Group 1

WESTBURY UNITED 1 (Jeffries 45)

MITCHELDEAN 1 (Jones 31)

Att 25

Entry FREE

Programme NO

Is there such a thing as a quasi-friendly? If there is then the West Dean Charity League would be it. It serves for the most part in lieu of pre-season friendlies for clubs in the North Gloucestershire League with the competition divided into Senior, Intermediate, and Junior sections according to the clubs’ league status. The big change for this season is that the competition is being covered on the FA’s Fulltime website. Continue reading →

Gorge

27 Monday Jul 2015

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Saturday 25th July 2015 ko 14.30

Pre-Season Friendly

CLYDACH WASPS 0

NEWPORT YMCA 5 (28, 32, 66, 78, 81)

Att 24

Entry FREE

No Programme

If I were to scroll back through my football watching, 10 years ago I simply wouldn’t have watched this. It seems to me the lot of the new groundhopper is that the potential enormity of the hobby leads to the pursuer making rules to limit the sheer volume of possibilities on any given Saturday. Some of the popular ones include, “I don’t do fields,” ” I must have a programme,” and ” I won’t do below (names a division)”

Now the trouble with any hard-and-fast rule is that as soon as you make it, someone will immediate find an equally hard-and-fast exception to it. And the Clydach Wasps are a classic example of this. Continue reading →