Category Archives: B

Timing

09 Tuesday May 2023

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Saturday April 2023 ko 14:30

Spartan South Midlands League Division Two

BUCKINGHAM UNITED 3 (King 30p Urquhart 35 68)

RISBOROUGH RANGERS DEVELOPMENT 1 (Martins 30)

Att c15 at Lace Hill

After my adventures in Scotland, I needed something straightforward, as did the car. The clutch had spent the weekend slowly dying, and while the car was booked in to get it replaced, I was still limping it around for short journeys. So a trip to Buckingham was handy and there was a bus service home if the car really let go. But car or no car, or even bus or no bus, there was good reasons for me to be at Lace Hill, serendipity is a wonderful thing! Continue reading →

Silkmore

04 Tuesday Apr 2023

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Sunday 5th March 2023 ko 11:45

North West Counties League Division One South

BROCTON 1 (Smith 61)

STOCKPORT GEORGIANS 0

Curbishley sent off 76 (2nd booking)

Att 457

Entry £6

Programme £2

Sunday on the hop dawned, and as a coachload of hoppers kept a Stafford hotel’s staff busy replenishing the bacon at the breakfast bar. I contemplated the day’s football, two Stafford-based teams, or in purely personal terms two revisits! Brocton is a village to the south east of Stafford but the club bearing their game play at the former Staffordshire Police Ground in Silkmore Lane, in Stafford itself. Continue reading →

Robyn

27 Monday Feb 2023

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Sunday 29th January 2023 ko 15:00

FA Women’s Cup 4th Round

BRISTOL CITY 4 (Hayles 45 Hutton 48 Woolley 73 Syme 83)

OXFORD UNITED 0

Att 449

Entry £8

Teamsheet- Free

After seven years together and three years married, its a little surprising that Robyn and I’s teams Bristol City and Oxford United have only met once, again the women’s teams back in 2016 at Stoke Gifford Stadium. So when the two clubs were drawn again, this time in the FA Women’s Cup it was obvious we’d be making a beeline for the game! Continue reading →

Cheer

06 Monday Feb 2023

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Saturday 24th December 2022 ko 14:00

Central Midlands League Division One North

BESSACARR 3 (Cooper 25 34 Tyers 77)

780 JLC 2 (Teal 7p Allison 88)

Att c65

Free Entry

Programme £2

Badge £2.50

Judging by the amount of groundhoppers at this one a lot of folk had the same conversation I’d had with Chris Garner. It went something like, “Do you fancy a game? Where? Yeah, but where?” 

For the record Bessacarr is a district of Doncaster, its where One Direction singer Louis Tomlinson is from. He of course famously turned out for Doncaster Rovers’s reserves, and while he didn’t actually play there, we did pass by the site of Doncaster Rovers old ground Belle Vue on the way to Cantley Park. Continue reading →

Men of Kent

01 Thursday Dec 2022

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Saturday 8th October 2022

11:00 Southern Counties East League Division One

STAPLEHURST MONARCHS 1 (Osagie 74)

ROCHESTER UNITED 0

Att 331

Entry £6

Programme £2

15:00 Southern Counties East League Premier Division

BEARSTED 2 (Freeman 18 52)

FISHER 1 (Kationa 52)

Att 229

Entry/ Parking/ Programme £8

17.45 Southern Counties East League Division One

LARKFIELD & NEW HYTHE 2 (Burdon 13 West 30)

GREENWAYS 1 (Saxton 49)

Att 243

Entry £5

Programme £1

There could be no doubt as to how important the SCEFL saw the groundhop; they did as the South Wales Alliance did and placed an official on the coach, mainly to help with directions but to troubleshoot where needed. Having Barry Fenn around was a godsend, not just for what he was mandated to do, but for the little nuggets of knowledge he imparted on the way. Continue reading →

Humble Bumble

11 Friday Nov 2022

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Saturday 24th September 2022

11:00 Witney & District League Division 2

BRIZE NORTON 0

CASSINGTON RANGERS 1 (Blackman 3p)

Att 168

14:00 Witney & District League- Division 1

TOWER HILL 1 (Scott 82)

HATHEROP 3 (Hathaway 31 Turner-Williams 56p 63)

Skinner sent off 20 (violent conduct)

Att 154

17:00 Witney & District League- Division 1

HEYFORD ATHLETIC 2 (Chambers 20 Phipps 90)

CHADLINGTON 2 (Charlesworth 7 61)

Att 153

Entry to each game, including programme £4

When the league and I were putting together this event, I found myself thinking back to Steventon, the first game on the first North Berkshire League Hop back in 2011.

Rightly or wrongly I see the North Berks and Witney Hops as being continuations of each other- both are grassroots leagues playing (mostly) in Oxfordshire. I remember a senior (in terms of numbers) groundhopper coming up to me before the event in 2011 to inform me that, in his opinion, a groundhop here couldn’t possibly work. We held 7 hops in the North Berks, and this was to be the 3rd in the Witney & District. And while I’ll be the first to admit that these hops aren’t for every hopper, they certainly do a lot of good for the clubs, I get a lot of personal satisfaction from seeing a good club do well, and any hop organiser will tell you, the smaller clubs tend to make the most effort!

Continue reading →

A Mixture

19 Wednesday Oct 2022

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Saturday 27th August 2022

11.15 South Wales Alliance Division Two

FAIRWATER 2 (Coles 30 Jefferies 69)

PENYGRAIG UNITED 3 (Tann 13 63 Langford 24)

Att 201

Entry £3

Programme £1

14:00 South Wales Alliance Division Two

CARDIFF COSMOPOLITAN 0

ST ALBANS 0

Att 109

Entry £3

Programme £2

17:00 South Wales Alliance Premier Division

BRIDGEND STREET 1 (Taylor 90+ 4)

CARDIFF CORINTHIANS 1 (Davies 78)

Att 264

Entry £4

Programme £1

Saturday on the Welsh Hop was a little unusual. For a start we normally make Bank Holiday Monday “Cardiff Day” but here we ended up having two days in the capital.  Now while a lot of that was due to the slightly unusual set of circumstances that saw us hopping the South Wales Alliance for a one-off reunion year. Like Tongwynlais the evening before Fairwater were one of the winners of the series of last season’s play-offs of the district leagues’ champions to get into the SWAL. Continue reading →

Cherry

07 Wednesday Sep 2022

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Saturday 23rd July 2022 ko 15:00

Pre-Season Friendly

AFC BOURNEMOUTH 0

BRISTOL CITY 1 (Martin 49p)

Att 4,870

Entry £15

Programme £2 

Teamsheet FREE

As a footballing couple Robyn and I have one small issue that we work with and it’s that she’s roughly 1,900 grounds behind me. We’ve dealt with it by having what gets called “Robyn Revisits” where I take her to what I tend to describe as my “Greatest Hits;” trips to the likes of Chesham United have certainly fallen into that category. But Robyn is also interested in completing her “92” and that will involve a lot of the expense and inconvenience that can come with watching a club in the Premier League and EFL. Continue reading →

Viennetta

28 Thursday Jul 2022

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Wednesday 25th May 2022 ko 18:00

East Berkshire League Premier Division

HYPE TRAIN 1 (Mannion 90)

BRITWELL 4 (Taylor 4 Kelly 15 23 Hartridge 36)

Att 114 at Longfurlong Drive ( Britwell FC)

Free Entry

On a purely personal level it was good to end my little run of cup finals, even if this one felt like another! The mathematics of it all were straightforward. Britwell needed to win this game to ensure they couldn’t be caught in the race for the title by Old Windsor and they had the advantage of the away tie being switched back to their home ground of Longfurlong Drive. Continue reading →

The Day Of Seven Borders

26 Thursday May 2022

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Wednesday 14th April 2022 ko 20:00

Liechtensteinster Cup Semi-Final

FC BALZERS 1 (Stolz 82)

FC VADUZ 3 (Djokic 9 Di Gusto 92 Ulrich 111)

Att c300 at Sportenlage Rheinpark

Entry 10CHF (€9.67/ £8.29)

Programme FREE

We’d spent a happy few days exploring Salzburg but the second part of Robyn and I’s honeymoon involved a 3 hour drive west to the Tirolean Alps and the little village of Höfen near to the pretty town of Reutte. I’d hired a car for a week, and ended up travelling 3 stops by train, and from Austria to Germany to collect it. That was a handy move, a fair percentage of Austrian autobahns require a vignette to use them so crossing back into Austria to collect Robyn meant easy access to a filling station just over the border to pay the €9.60 for a sticker for 10 days’ use. It also meant I’d be driving a car with a German numberplate, and since all Covid checks seemed to be made by German border guards, we weren’t stopped for the entirety of our stay! 

Continue reading →