Author Archives: laurencereade

Hushed Tones

04 Wednesday Feb 2015

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Saturday 24th April 2010 ko 14.30

Welsh League Division Three

GARW SENIORS BOYS & GIRLS CLUB 2 (Williams 11 S Misbah 64)

CORUS STEEL 3 (Piper 20 Johnson 31 Hislop 50)

Att 31

Entry £3

Prog £1

Badge £3

Tea in a mug 50p

There are grounds that the discerning football enthusiast should visit, the real theatres of the sport, the likes of Wembley, and Old Trafford, and then there are the places with real history such as Hallam and Sheffield FC. Then you start to find the tucked away places that don’t get much publicity, but have a life all of their own. These are the grounds you hear about when groundhoppers congregate over a beer (or two), and you hear names such as Benburb and Beesands, but believe me Blandy Park, Pontycymmer is high on the list of anyone who’s visited.

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The Tapestry Of Life

01 Sunday Feb 2015

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Saturday 31st January 2015 ko 14.00

Sussex County League Division 3

BOSHAM 3 (Lafferty 21 Wilson 75p Storey 90)

BILLINGSHURST 1 (N Stepney 53)

Att 22

Entry & Programme £2

Tea 80p

These days the village of Bosham is easily by-passed. The A27 from Havant to Chichester does exactly that, you head close to back on yourself from the roundabout at the Chichester end. There’s far more to the village than just being halfway along a by-way, this is the village named on the Bayeux Tapestry after all!

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Home Made

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

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Tuesday 27th January 2015 ko 19.45

Southern Counties East League Cup First Road

HOLMESDALE 1 (Coleman 23) Prescott sent off (violent conduct) 84

ERITH TOWN 3 (Weston 3 Cassius 63 70) Craddock sent off (violent conduct) 84

Att 25

Entry £7

No Programme

If you’re thinking,

“Holmesdale- isn’t that the name of the stand with the curved roof at Crystal Palace?”

you’d be thinking along the right lines. The club was formed on Holmesdale Road, South Norwood as Holmesdale Baptists in the 1920’s, before Crystal Palace moved to Selhurst Park in 1924. They moved to Oakley Road, Bromley Green in 2000 in order to progress out of the Surrey South-Eastern Combination. The result is the reason the vast majority of groundhoppers visit.

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A Million Miles Away

22 Thursday Jan 2015

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Sunday 18th January 2015 ko 19.30

Greece Superleague

OLYMPIACOS 2 (Dosseni 69 Maniatis 90)

PANAITOLIKOS 0

Att 18,462

Entry €25

Season’s membership €10

Programme FREE

It only took around half an hour for the metro train on the M1 line to travel from Apollon to Faliro station in Piraeus, but in all honesty it felt like a different world. The Georgios Kamaras stadium was a friendly, homely place, but the Karaiskakis Stadium was a corporate vision of concrete and steel, with the inevitable procedures to go with it.

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Continental Op

21 Wednesday Jan 2015

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Sunday 18th January 2015 ko 15.00

Greece Football League Notios (South)

APOLLON SMIRNIS 4 (Farionola 32 Kyvelidis 43 71 Wanderson 71)

ERMIONIDAS-ERMIS 2 (Papanikolaou 53 Koutsospiros 88)

Att c1500

Entry COMP

Club Newspaper FREE

Teamsheet FREE

The Athens metro train trundled north-east on the green M1 line, and we had a decision to make, which station was best for the Stadio Georgios Kamaras? We went for the shortest train ride, to Ano Patissia, and took a short taxi ride to the ground, only to find out the better option is Perissos one stop further north. All you have to from there is retrace the train’s route back for 300 metres along the adjacent road! Our arrival in a big yellow taxi did have one advantage though, it allowed club official Vangelis to spot us easily, and the welcome was as fulsome as it was unexpected.

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Bubble

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

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Saturday 17th January 2015 ko 19.30

Greece Superleague

PANIONIOS GSS 1 (Boumale 34) Kolovos missed penalty 86

PANATHINIAKOS 1 (Berg 78)

Att 1,849

Entry €25 (Main Stand)

No Programme

Badge €3

Here’s a tip for you. When you take the €8 metro trip from Athens airport into the capital, the metro platforms are the two in the middle, it is very easy to jump on a suburban train headed to…. !

After you’ve reached Athens itself it costs further €10 for a 5 day mass transit pass for the metro, buses and trams. That is easy enough to buy, the machines have an “English” button, but you do need to validate the ticket via one of the machines by virtually every escalator. There are plenty of warnings about failure to pay or validate, but I’m bound to say I saw no ticket checks during my 4 days here, and there are no barriers either!

Greece’s financial problems were manifest, and not just from the political posters and campaigners for the imminent general election. There seems to be a general attitude of make do and mend, but in no way shape or form has the Greek welcome I’d remembered from childhood holidays been diluted. Continue reading →

The Blairites

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

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Wednesday 14th January 2015 ko 19.45

Kent Invicta League Challenge Trophy Quarter-Final

HOLLANDS & BLAIR 6 (Greenfield 6p 54p Denness 21 40 87 West 44)

GRAVESHAM BOROUGH 1 (Heddon 60)

Att 52

Entry & Programme £5

If you were to have a flick through the 700 or so articles on this site, you’d find a common theme, I don’t watch much Step 6 football in the south-east. Part of it is that I clocked up a lot of my local grounds well before I started this, but it is also because Step 6 in this part of the world in many areas is close to not really existing. Continue reading →

Crossroads

11 Sunday Jan 2015

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Friday 9th January 2015 ko 19.00

FA U21 Premier League

WEST HAM UNITED 1 (Morrison 37)

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR 3 (Ward 21 90 Winks 55)

Att c500 at Rush Green Stadium, Romford

Entry £3

Programme FREE

As a writer I suspect if you want to find a football ground to write about, the easiest way of find some subject matter is to head to East London. The Rush Green Stadium is on the A124 at Romford’s edge. Its now home to West Ham’s academy, although the club’s training base is still at Chadwell Heath, a few miles away, and you do wonder when the club moves to the Olympic Stadium the season after next, whether one of those bases will lost.

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Mix & Match

07 Wednesday Jan 2015

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Tuesday 6th January 2015 ko 19.45

Northern Premier League Challenge Cup 2nd Round

STAFFORD RANGERS 2 (Curtis 71 90)

RUSHALL OLYMPIC 2 (Mugisha 35 Heath 88)

No extra time, Rushall won 6-5 on penalties

Att 192

Entry £5 (reduced from £9)

Programme £1 (reduced size)

Don’t you just love seeing a floodlit stadium come into view as you turn round a bend? If like me you do, then a trip to Marston Road is a must. That must for me was way overdue, perhaps that one season when in the Conference Premier, my club Oxford United played Rangers made me subconsciously procrastinate from going.

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