Category Archives: C

Pugin

20 Thursday Nov 2025

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Sunday 26th August 2025 ko 11:00

West Lancashire League Division One

CROSTON SPORTS 0

LYTHAM TOWN 0

Att 371

Entry £3

Programme £2

We left the hotel in Blackpool and did a double-take- had some really tethered a horse on some rough ground by the car park? It takes all sorts I suppose, and I was about to watch my 5th, 6th and 7th games of the weekend. We headed to Chorley’s environs (now there’s a ground if you haven’t been!) and reached Croston to find an expertly marshalled parking system already in place.

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Moseley Shoals

16 Thursday Oct 2025

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Saturday 2nd August 2025 ko 15:00

Midland League Division Two

CADBURY ATHLETIC 2 (Malley 55p Mudie 66)

BOLDMERE SPORTS & SOCIAL FALCONS 2 (Wilson 8 Maddocks 75og)

Att 260 at Birmingham Moseley RUFC

Free Entry

Programme £2

It doesn’t take too much empathy to understand Cadbury Athletic’s problem. Their home is the utterly sublime Cadbury Recreation Ground in Bournville, a ground that every self-respecting football ground enthusiast ought to visit, but one they’ll never be able to improve so they could play Pyramid Football there. So every time they’ve been able to progress they’re had to groundshare.

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A Case Of Step 5

26 Friday Sep 2025

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Friday 25th July 2025 ko 19:45

United Counties League Premier Division South

COVENTRY UNITED 0

AYLESTONE PARK 1 (Samuels 70)

Att 490 at Butts Park Arena (Coventry RUFC)

Entry £7

Programme £2

I grabbed a seat at Butts Park Arena with plenty to think about. GroundhopUK have run events in the UCL for over 10 years, helped by the Peterborough & District League padding out the fixtures for the first few years, and the UCL’s footprint gradually drifting north. But we’re close to the end, and that does come with complications.

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Goats

06 Wednesday Aug 2025

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Saturday 24th May 2025 ko 14:00

East Berkshire League-Division One

CAVERSHAM UNITED 5 (Doran 14 23 49 Mole 78 Abery 90)

van Luk sent off 39 (violent conduct)

OLD WINDSOR RESERVES 1 (Spires 26)

George sent off 39 (violent conduct)

Att 22

Free Entry

If you take the A4074 from Wallingford towards Reading, you’ll pass by some lovely villages as you pass through west Oxfordshire into east Berkshire. I’ve documented the likes of Checkendon and Goring on here but my connections to the area go back far further back- to childhood in fact.

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Epic

31 Thursday Jul 2025

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Saturday 18th May ko 18:00

Championnat National 3 Groupe E

RACING CLUB DE CALAIS 3 (Merien 6 Sylla 14og Knockhaert 58)

STADE DE REIMS II 1 (Diadeie 47)

Att c500 at Stade de l’Épopée

Free Entry

I must admit, a trip to France wasn’t on my list of priorities for the end of the 24/25 football season, but sometimes a random conversation changes everything. Here the conversation was between Robyn and Chris Garrett (he’s a weatherman) at the hop game at Newquay. He’d spotted a fairly random game at Racing Club Calais on a Saturday evening making it straightforward enough to get there and back via the Channel Tunnel in a day.

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The Chicken And The Egg

21 Monday Jul 2025

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Saturday 10th May 2026 ko 15:00

Alex Horne’s Comedy Trophy

CHICKEN CITY 6 (Adam 18 Grant 29 75 Smith 79 Robins 35 90)

EGG UNITED 7 (Euman 6 Daly 14 Key 52 59 Baker 56 McQueen 77)

Egg won 4-4 on penalties 😉

Att 3,992 (all ticket-sold out) at Chesham United

Entry £12

Programme & Teamsheet £3

Now there are plenty of grounds you’d happily visit once, but very few you’d revisit time and time again, so when Chesham United volunteer Giles Stevenson suggested an end of season charity game, and one I could pair with the North Berkshire cup final that evening, Robyn and I jumped at the chance. And now I think of it, the suggestion came on March 1st, just after Giles handed Robyn a bunch of Daffodils as it was St David’s Day. The joke that Bristolian Robyn is basically Welsh is a long running joke. A joke you see….

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Icons

06 Sunday Jul 2025

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Monday 21st April 2025 ko 15:00

EFL Championship

CARDIFF CITY 1 (Salech 56)

OXFORD UNITED 1 (Brannagan 79)

Att 23,407 (3,095 away)

Entry £27

Programme £3.50

There really wasn’t a more appropriate game for Robyn and I. After the Peninsula Hop we’d broken the journey back to Oxford seeing family in Bristol, so hopping over the border to Cardiff for Robyn to tick off the Cardiff City Stadium and me to watch Oxford United just made sense!

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Caracas

08 Tuesday Apr 2025

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Friday 14th March 2025 ko 19:45

Lowland League

CUMBERNAULD COLTS 2 (Duncan 10og Ross 40)

BROXBURN ATHLETIC 0

Att 375 at Broadwood Stadium

Entry £6

Programme £2

It is always a brutal journey to the Scottish Hop but for me it’s great joy has been watching it’s evolution. From a conversation at Camelon Juniors in 2014, Jamie McQueen’s stirling work while at Whitehill Welfare, Chris Berezai’s marathon driving stints to meet the Lowland League, through to that first game at East Kilbride this event has never come with the huge history of the organised hop south of the border.

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Starship

08 Wednesday Jan 2025

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Tuesday 3rd December 2024 ko 19:45

Isthmian League Division One North

CAMBRIDGE CITY 0

WALTHAM ABBEY 1 (Hallett 80)

Att 442

Entry £10

Programme £3

“Say you don’t know me or recognize my face
Say you don’t care who goes to that kind of place
Knee deep in the hoopla, sinking in your fight
Too many runaways eating up the night.

Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don’t you remember?
We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll“

Starship “We built this City”

Songwriters: Dennis Lambert / Peter F. Wolf / Martin George Page / Bernard Taupin

My wife Robyn called it correctly, “Why do groundhoppers tend to dive straight for a new ground as soon as its open? Surely you should aim for the grounds that are facing demolition?” The case of Cambridge City was one that added up to both though!

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The Crows Arms

16 Monday Dec 2024

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Saturday 26th October 2024 ko 17:45

Southern Combination Premier Division

CROWBOROUGH ATHLETIC 2 (Forster 6 18)

HASSOCKS 1 (Funnell 4)

Att 413

Entry £7

Programme £2

I must admit I treated the Saturday evening game on the Sussex Hop with a certain amount of trepidation. It wasn’t that Crowborough might do badly, rather it was me considering the antonym of the maxim “Smaller clubs tend to make more of an effort.”

Please don’t see this as a dig at any one club, more a comment that the vast majority of clubs with a history at Southern, Isthmian or Northern Premier League level can cope with hosting a hop game’s crowd. The catch is by scaling up and no more the club does miss out on additional revenue and the hopper gets to swerve the burgers…. again!

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