Category Archives: C

I Was Wrong

25 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by in C

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Sunday 18th October 2015 ko 11.00

Western League First Division

CHIPPING SODBURY 8 (Bishop 1 Barrett 17p Downes 24og Beecham 30 Mackie 39 Taylor 46 Simms 58 60)

BISHOP SUTTON 1 (Keet 68og)

Att 261

Entry £5

Programme £1

For Chris Berezai and I one game loomed large on the Western Hop, our visit to Chipping Sodbury. Part of it was that it would be the only new ground for Chris and I, and that because this is the club’s first season back in the Western League since 1952. That last fact, and the unusual kick-off time would mean that they would see hoppers that perhaps the other host clubs wouldn’t. They attended the host clubs’ meeting, asked all the right questions, and I drove home content that we’d given them the best chance to making the best of their day. But a few days before the day I received an email.
Continue reading →

Clues

24 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by in C

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Saturday 17th October 2015 ko 16.30

Western League Premier Division

CADBURY HEATH 0

CRIBBS 0

Att 185

Entry £5

Programme £1

Once again another lean forward to check the coach driver’s sat-nav revealed another mile’s journey between games. And just like between the first two games we spotted someone who was walking between the games, so we offered him a lift to Keynsham after this one but he declined, perhaps he foresaw the score here!

Continue reading →

Listening

19 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by in C

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

Friday 16th October 2015 ko 19.45

Western League Division One

CORSHAM TOWN 1 (Lardner 82)

CALNE TOWN 2 (Windsor 12 Beasley 54)

Att 293

Entry £5

Programme £1

If you metaphorically scratch the surface of the Western League Hop, you get League General Secretary Mark Edmonds. It was him who put the idea in as part of his successful application to the role, and it was him who first put the idea to his clubs. From GroundhopUK’s perspective we’d had an abortive attempt at the project a decade or so earlier, so we hadn’t even considered the idea. But all kinds of coincidences happened to make this happen. Continue reading →

Scandal

01 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by in C

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Wednesday 26th August 2015 ko 18.15

Thames Valley Premier League, Premier Division

COOKHAM DEAN 0

WOODLEY UNITED RESERVES 5 (Waller 10 Male 45p 68 Wilks 59 73)

Att 14

Entry FREE

No Programme

Most people have regrets, but John Profumo most have had more than many. If only he’d never met Christine Keeler, and Mandy Rice-Davies, or paid Cliveden House a visit… Actually the Taplow-based mansion could have been his salvation, if he’d only looked from a west-facing window and stared over the valley towards Cookham Dean. Continue reading →

Gorge

27 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by in C

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

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 →

The Path Less Trodden

15 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in C

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

Friday 10th July 2015 ko 19.45

League of Ireland First Division

CABINTEELY 0

SHELBOURNE 1 (English 55)

Att 620

Entry €10

Programme €3

The previous day I’d spent a faintly boring few minutes strolling round the bookshop at the airport. These days the sport section is full of Premier League players’ ghost-written “auto”-biographies, and for the most part they follow a similar pattern. Usually a child is discovered by a club, then quickly graduates through the ranks, makes his first team debut, then fame and fortune follow. But what happens to those who for one reason or another don’t make it? Continue reading →

Sphinx

13 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by in C

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Tuesday 7th July 2015 ko 19.00

Pre-Season Friendly

COVENTRY SPHINX 3 (Thompson 51 Evangelinos 80 Jayes 90)

RACING CLUB WARWICK 0

Att 41 at Pitch 3, Sphinx Drive

Entry FREE

Programme FREE

I have to confess that I tend to read “Sphinx” and think of “Carry on Cleo” and the appalling joke, “Why the sphinx in Egypt? That’s because they have no drains.” The unusual suffix is due to the ground being the former Hawker-Siddley Motors works ground; the Sphinx was the firm’s badge. Continue reading →

Together, Stronger

22 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by in C

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

Saturday 13th June 2015 ko 15.00

South Wales FA Play-Off Final

STM SPORTS 4 (Reffell 12 Graham 48 Worsley 57 84)

PONTLOTTYN AFC 1 (Colbourne 32)

Att c600 at Cardiff City Stadium

Entry £3

Programme £1

Groundhopping and the amateur game go back a long way, back to the days of 4-game Saturdays in the South Wales Amateur League, and those hops only ended when we finally ran of clubs to visit! Back then we all wondered why there was the odd position of two leagues, the Amateur Leaguer and the Senior League occupying the same footprint and the same level, the fifth tier? Continue reading →

Heaven & Hell

01 Friday May 2015

Posted by in C

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Tuesday 28th April 2015 ko 18.45

North Berkshire League Division One

CROWMARSH GIFFORD 3 (Woods 10 Sandiford 27 Joe Nathanielz 73)

BERINSFIELD 4 (Ingram 41 Osbourne 53 D Murphy 57 62)

Att 76

Entry FREE

Nothing for sale

I’m sure some of you wonder how I pick my fixtures, well this one did rather leap out of the page. Firstly I hadn’t been back to Crowmarsh since they staged their hop game in August. They’d got the biggest attendance of any hop game that weekend, and staged the game quite beautifully, including producing a programme that would put professional clubs’ issues to shame. Sadly their success on that day hasn’t been replicated on the pitch and sadly they’d been relegated the previous Saturday. So I did want to catch up with the Nathanielz family and both thank them and commiserate in equal measure. Continue reading →

Cagefighter

19 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by in C

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

Saturday 18th April 2015 ko 15.00

Midland League Division Two

COVENTRY UNITED 1 (Stokes 80p)

BARNT GREEN SPARTAK 1 (Semple 44)

Att 98 at “The Cage” Alan Higgs Centre, Allard Way

Entry FREE

Programme £1.50

Badge £2

As the patrons walked across the car park towards the caged grass pitch at the side of the Alan Higgs Leisure centre they walked past a minibus decorated in full Coventry City insignia. It served as a salutary reminder to all on how tenuous a club’s links to its roots can be with City only recently returned after a period in exile in Northampton.

Continue reading →