Category Archives: B

The Sweetener

03 Thursday Oct 2013

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Tuesday 1st October 2013 ko 19.45

Isthmian League Premier Division

BURY TOWN 0

DULWICH HAMLET 4 (Oztumer 35 75p Walker 35 57)

Att 273

Entry £10

Programme £2

Badge £3

On the way home from Bungay I’d actually stopped for petrol in Bury-St-Edmunds without realising I was less than a mile from Ram Meadow. Nevertheless, regular readers will know that if I pass by a town, the chances of me returning to watch their football team increase dramatically!

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The Charm Offensive

23 Monday Sep 2013

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Saturday 21st September 2013 ko 14.00

North Berkshire League Division One

BERINSFIELD 4 (D Murphy 34 45 46 Curtis 80)

FARINGDON TOWN 0 Quegan sent off (2nd Booking)

Att 251

Entry & Programme £4

Badge £3

Chicken Curry & Baked Potato £3

All the way back on the very first North Berkshire League groundhop, we’d reached Sutton Courtenay and the game was just about to kick off. Me being me, I’d gone for an extra cup of tea so was a little late in walking over from the clubhouse. I was rushing over, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was a young lady, and she half asked, and half demanded, Continue reading →

Cooperation

23 Monday Sep 2013

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Saturday 21st September 2013 ko 11am

North Berkshire League Division Three

BENSON LIONS 1 (Keightly 83)

WESTMINSTER 4 (McMahon 17 59 Bourton 30 69)

Att 153

Entry & Programme £4

Badge £3

Bottle of Real Ale £2.50

Full English RAF breakfast including tea £5

The North Berkshire League Groundhop is very much my baby, so much so it’s the only time that at GroundhopUK Chris Berezai and I swap places, with me leading, and him acting as deputy. It makes sense, when I live a mere 10 miles from Steventon, the village that provides the centre-point of the league. Continue reading →

Taking the King’s Shilling

08 Sunday Sep 2013

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Saturday 7th September 2013 ko 14.30

Anglian Combination Division Two

BUNGAY TOWN 11 (ELEVEN) (Flint 8 Barnes 19 27 Ling 20 87 Mirner 24 52 89 Wilby 32 Andrews 76 Hammersley 86)

BRANDON TOWN 0

Att 88

Entry -5p

Programme 50p

Burger £2.50

Once a year Football has, ” Non League Day,” when an international weekend means there’s no Premier League and Championship games scheduled. Fans are encouraged to support grass roots football, and the smaller clubs try their best to entice new supporters to come and visit them. Last year, I ended up at an iconic ground, Northern League Crook Town http://wp.me/p1PehW-1dV, but this year I wanted a fresh approach, so I decided to pick the club with what I thought was the best marketing gimmick. And Bungay won that battle by an absolute mile. Continue reading →

Pope’s Wood

21 Wednesday Aug 2013

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Monday 19th August 2013 ko 19.45

FA Cup Extra-Preliminary Round Replay

BINFIELD 3 (Rapley 15 Havermans 34 Davies 45)

FLACKWELL HEATH 2 (Dickens 9p 68) Brown sent off 90 (2nd booking)

Att 204

Entry £5

Programme £1

I think Binfield the village has an image problem. The trouble is that when you tell people where you’re heading you inevitably tell them its near to Bracknell, and Binfield is as far removed from the New Town modernity and roundabouts as is possible.

Painter John Constable spent his honeymoon at the Rectory in 1816 and sketched All Saints Church twice. The church said to have been a refuge for a number of Parliamentary soldiers during the Civil War. Poet Alexander Pope lived nearby and was a choirboy here.

From the late 19th century to the 1960s, brick-making was an important industry in the area, with the Binfield Brick and Tile works at Amen Corner being an important employer. Binfield bricks were partly used to create the Royal Albert Hall.

Hill Farm Lane is tucked away off the main road, the signs the club have provided are both welcome and necessary. You expect a small rustic ground, so what opens out in front of you is a real bonus. Continue reading →

Thinking About The Lions

15 Thursday Aug 2013

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Tuesday 13th August 2013 ko 19.45

Spartan South Midlands League Division One

FC BROXBOURNE BOROUGH 1 (Hussey 6) Bashkal sent off 90 (2nd booking)

WELWYN GARDEN CITY 0

Att 76

Entry FREE

Programme £1

Whilst I enjoyed my Saturday in Cumbria, I’d found it slightly bruising. I like to see all of these events go off as flawlessly as possible, so after digesting the lessons learned, it was good to get back to simple, solo groundhopping, and a nice easy one at that.

The Borough of Broxbourne is probably best known as being where Tesco’s head office is based, in Cheshunt, but there’s News International’s Park Plaza, Waltham Cross to consider also. It’s the world’s largest printing plant, printing the English editions of The Sun and The Times amongst others. It can produce 86,000 newspapers per hour on each of its twelve printing presses. It cost £350 million and replaced the News International press in Wapping, the scene of a strike and civil disobedience when it closed in 1986.

The club play on the outskirts of Cheshunt, and that’s where the fun starts. Continue reading →

Itinerant Football

17 Wednesday Jul 2013

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Wednesday 17th July 2013 ko 19.00

Pre-Season Friendly

BUCKINGHAM TOWN 3 (Schembre 11 Riley 66 Murrell 80)

GRENDON RANGERS 1 (Lewis 14)

Att 24

80 minute game

Played at Medbourne Pavilion, Pascal Road, Shenley, Milton Keynes

Entry FREE

Football Card £2

It’s fair to say I have a mixed relationship with Milton Keynes. I’m no fan of the New, or Expanded Town, and Milton Keynes is the epitome of the entire genre. The facilities in the town are first class, and there’s no denying that everything was planned logically. It’s that last point that rankles with me, I don’t like things to be too planned, sterile even. I approached MK this evening on the A421 and once again winced at the name of the first of the multiplicity of roundabouts. Its called the Bottledump Roundabout; could the authorities have dreamt up a less romantic name to introduce the visitor to their town?

The planners did make one gift though to the collector of football grounds, there are many well-appointed sports grounds, so many in fact that there are more grounds than there are adult football teams! Judging by the last couple of years I seem destined to visit one of them each pre-season! Medbourne gets used for the occasional Sunday morning fixture, but as far as anyone could tell the venue has never seen an adult Saturday side settle here.

Buckingham Town have led an itinerant existence since losing Ford Meadow in 2010. They’ve had a temporary base in Winslow which was less than ideal, http://wp.me/s1PehW-solace before taking on the former Bletchley Town ground, Manor Fields. It isn’t Buckingham nor is it close to it, but at least its a base, and one that can be improved too. Perhaps now they can improve on the 15th place (out of 18) in the United Counties League they achieved last season. For a club that’s won the lower division of the Southern League, UCL Premier football should be within their grasp. Whatever the club do manage in the future, they will have the UCL management to thank for helping the club massively in their time of need. In another league they could have folded.

Grendon from Grendon Underwood are approaching this season from the other perspective. They’ve moved from the North Bucks & District which is off-pyramid, into the second division of the Spartan South Midlands League. It’s a move to Step 7 football, nominally one notch lower than Buckingham, but at this level of the game there often isn’t much difference in quality.

And so it came to pass this evening. Given the heat wave, a decision was made to pay the fixture as two halves of 40 minutes each split in half with a short water break. That and regular rolling substitutions made, a little counter-intuitively for a better spectacle and fresh legs were always available. It was clear who the step 6 side was, Buckingham were just that little bit more crisp, and the 3-1 was a fair result in the end.

Big Les

16 Tuesday Jul 2013

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Monday 15th July 2013 ko 19.45

Bedfordshire Premier Cup Final

BIGGLESWADE TOWN 1 (Witham 52)

LUTON TOWN 1 (Banton 60)

Att c130

Entry £5

Teamsheet FREE

For once I was rather spoilt for choice for a Monday night game. I could have visited AFC Totton, as the club still looks in danger of folding, or head north-east for a competitive game. It wasn’t a difficult decision and despite a flat tyre on the way, I parked up at the Carlsberg Stadium in good time.

The town is mentioned in the diaries of Samuel Pepys. On 22nd July 1661, he  stopped off in Biggleswade (called ‘Bigglesworth’ by Pepys) to buy a pair of warm woollen stockings, hardly suprising as the town was a centre was centre for the trade at the time.

In 2001 a gold coin bearing the name Coenwulf was discovered at Biggleswade beside the River Ivel.  The 4.33 g (0.15 oz) mancus, worth about 30 silver pennies, is only the eighth known Anglo-Saxon gold coin dating to the mid to late Anglo-Saxon period. it was initially sold to an American collector for £230,000 at auction the British Government placed an export ban in the hope of saving it for the nation. In February 2006 the coin was bought by the British Museum for £357,832 making it the most expensive British coin purchased to date.

Biggleswade is also the base of the Jordan’s cereals business, so you now know where your muesli comes from!

Biggleswade Town used to be based adjacent to local rivals Biggleswade United, at Fairfield Road, but after a groundshare at Bedford FC, moved into their purpose built ground on the Langford Road, in 2008. It holds 3,000 has turnstiles from Sheffield United’s Bramall Lane, and has a grandstand that seats 300.

My worry about so many developments like this is its location on the outskirts of town. I watched a club local to me move out of a central location to the outskirts and, in time it killed them. Witney Town like so many, saw the improved facilities, but forgot the non-football trade completely. The small clubhouse in constant use is often more lucrative than the superbly appointed sports bar that you have to drive to get to. I hope Town can make it work for them as the ground design is perfect for their needs.

Those needs are of course entirely different from those of the groundhopper! We like unusual and quirky and there’s nothing remotely of either here. It simply does its job, in an unassuming manner. The people are friendly, the sightlines good, and there’s plenty of scope for expansion should it be needed.

I was a little intrigued by the opposition. Luton Town are very-much a League club in waiting, only being relegated out of the Football League in 2009 after a total of 30 points were deducted as the League tired of repeated insolvency events, and financial mismanagement. With average attendances of 6,000 plus, way more than most Conference clubs each season they are always amongst the favourites for promotion each season. And each season they fall short, there can’t be many clubs who’ve made the play-offs for the 3 out of the last 4 seasons and failed to get promoted.

This game didn’t attract as many Luton fans as I expected, perhaps due to them only sending a reserve side. The first half vindicated the absentees’ decision, as there was only one notable chance, Luton’s Jake Woolley producing a smart save from Sam Wyer. It wasn’t that there was a lack of effort, the tackles flew in from both sides, it was just that the end product was missing.

It opened up a little more in the second half, the Waders taking the lead though Alex Witham’s improvised finish at the back post from a right-wing cross. Luton soon equalised, JJ O’Donnell’s cross was volleyed home by Zane Banton.

Both sides had the chance to win the tie, but the Bedfordshire FA sensibly decided to eschew any thought of extra time, and Luton prevailed 3-2 on penalties. The presentation swiftly followed and those remaining were treated to Luton captain Alex Lacey’s perfunctory lifting of the trophy and non-celebration. I trust more senior brains at the club will remind him that others involved in football are not paid full-time wages, and that one day he may value winning a trophy a little more. After all it could easily be the only one he will ever win.

The Long Game

12 Friday Jul 2013

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Friday 12th July 2013

The Old Berkley Golf Course, Boars Hill

If you leave Oxford, heading due south and cross over the A34 and head towards Abingdon, you’ll soon see the turn-off for Boars Hill. There are many reasons to visit, the perpendicular tower of Ripon Hall, once an Anglican theological college, but now rebadged Foxcombe Hall, and now used by the Open University.

There’s also Lord Berkley’s Gold Course, Abraham Wood, and Chilswell Fields, fine examples of acid grassland, immortalised by Matthew Arnold in his poem Thyrsis. Here’s the excerpt I have in mind.

Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm,
Up past the wood, to where the elm-tree crowns
The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames?
The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs,
This winter-eve is warm,
Humid the air; leafless, yet soft as spring,

The tender purple spray on copse and briers;
And that sweet City with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty’s heightening,

And it’s those dreaming spires that is the reason I’ve wanted to come up here with a camera for years! The view is spectacular, although the elm tree is , in fact an oak! The view is often obscured by cloud, or haze, and all too often I was in the wrong place at the right time. The more eagle-eyed amongst you will note that the compact camera has made a reappearance, as I wanted a wide-angle view that I can’t get with the SLR.

But let’s not get too worried about the technicalities, just enjoy the view. It’s quite something isn’t it?

 

The Devil Queues For Prada

08 Monday Jul 2013

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Sunday 7th July 2013

Bicester Village, Oxfordshire

There’s nothing new about the outlet shopping centre, where the designer brands sell off their end-line-stock at discount prices. The Bicester Village centre sits on the edge of the pretty Oxfordshire town, and was first opened in 1992. Few could have predicted the colossus that its become, being the biggest tourist attraction in the county.

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