Category Archives: H

All Killer, No Filler

23 Sunday Aug 2015

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Friday 14th August 2015 ko 19.45

FA Cup Extra Preliminary Round

HODDESDON TOWN 4 (Summers 38 43 67 Wade 90)

SAWBRIDGEWORTH TOWN 0

Att 216

Entry £6

Programme £1

In groundhoppers’ circles football grounds and clubs get known for certain characteristics. For example there’s the stand at Treharris, the Chinese pagoda at the Olympic Stadium, Stockholm, but Hoddesdon Town gets talked about in hushed tones for one reason, the programme. Continue reading →

Types

06 Thursday Aug 2015

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Friday 31st July 2015 ko 19.45

United Counties League Premier Division

HARBOROUGH TOWN 1 (Wright 2)

YAXLEY 3 (Cotton 9 Gearing 48 82)

Att 313

Entry £6

Programme £1

Badge £3

The more organised hops I help organise the more I feel I can see how the future of the organised hop will pan out. On one hand it would be easy for Chris Berezai and I to simply organise events in leagues we’re interested in. With around 3,000 grounds visited between us that would see lower level leagues featuring, along the lines of the Ceredigion or North Berkshire Leagues, but we both feel that we owe it to those with far lower ground counts to organise events at Step 5 and 6. Continue reading →

Fine Margins

31 Sunday May 2015

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Saturday 30th May 2015 ko 14.00

Scottish Junior FA, West Region Superleague Premier Division

HURLFORD UNTED 2 (C Robertson 59 Donnelly 77)

SHOTTS BON ACCORD 1 (McCrum 90)

Att 144

Entry £5

Programme (reissue from 6/12/14) £1 (original price £1.50)

 In Scotland below the professional ranks there’s two visions of how non-league could look. On one hand there’s the new Scottish pyramid with the Lowland and Highland league champions playing off for the right to play off against the Scottish League’s bottom side for the final place in the league. On the other there’s the Juniors, not aged-based, more an alternative FA, with the North, East and West Regions ploughing their separate furrows, save for the Junior Cup. Continue reading →

Pickin’ ’em

20 Wednesday May 2015

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Saturday 16th May 2015 ko 14.30

Essex Olympian League- Premier Division

HAROLD WOOD ATHLETIC 4 (Tolan 45p Ziepe 68 Suchley 73 Foley 86) WADHAM LODGE 1 (Holt 6)

Att 212

Entry FREE

Teamsheet FREE

When the games start to run out what do you look for? The pretty ground? The game with something on it? I even know one hopper whom eschewed this one as there wasn’t a programme on sale! He wasn’t the only one who put the paper-based souvenir before the match, the club put up notices advertising the lack of a programme, and the strap-line on their website told the same story. You could only imagine the number of phone calls they’d taken…. Continue reading →

The Men From The Pru

03 Sunday May 2015

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Wednesday 29th April 2015 ko 18.00

Thames Valley Premier League- Premier Division

HIGHMOOR IBIS RESERVES 3 (Chowdhary 45 86 Reid 60)

MARLOW UNITED 5 (Mason 10 Nichol 14 Flint 56 Thomas 68 71)

Att 19

Entry FREE

No Programme

Many moons ago I paid a visit to Reading Town’s home in Scours Lane in Tilehurst. I endured a dreadful 0-0 draw vs Hartley Wintney and so bad was the game that I became very aware that there was another game going on next door at the Sports Club. I didn’t switch allegiances, even though the cheers indicated that a goal or two was scored, but when I returned to my flat in Henley-on-Thames, I asked my father-in-law who played there. Continue reading →

Through The Round Window

26 Sunday Apr 2015

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Monday 20th April 2015 ko 18.30

Hampshire Premier League- Senior Division

HAMBLE CLUB 4 (Shrimpton 11 Thomson 32 Cox 53 Bull 76)

WINCHESTER CASTLE 0

Att 36

Entry FREE

No Programme

I have a feeling that many will look at my photos of the Shell Mex ground in Hamble-le-Rice and suggest that the new champions’ home isn’t up to much. Yes, the players change in Portakabins, and the tea bar is housed in another. There’s no cover, no hard standing, and the nets behind the goals are a feat of Heath Robinson-style engineering. All of this is true, but pay attention to these pictures carefully, because when you visit, the place will look nothing like this. Continue reading →

Finally

15 Sunday Mar 2015

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Tuesday 10th March 2015 ko 19.45

Wessex League Division One

HYTHE & DIBDEN 3 (De’Ath 7 Stacey 27 Burch 79 (!))

ROMSEY TOWN 2 (Parker 2 Prince 90) Andrews sent off (DOGSO) 26

Att 45

Entry £4

Programme £1

When you encounter the hoppers with huge (thousands) of grounds visited they always have exactly the same problem, finding a new ground to visit midweek when the game has to be floodlit. With, in simple terms, only the top 6 levels of non-league football being lit any time you see a club in those levels move grounds, you tend to see a lot of the senior hoppers congregate!

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Opportunities

12 Thursday Feb 2015

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Tuesday 10th February 2015 ko 19.30

Western League Division One

HENGROVE ATHLETIC 1 (E Saunders 42)

WARMINSTER TOWN 2 (Lapham 25 54)

Att c40

Entry £5

No Programme

Tea-in-a-mug £1

I have spent far too much of my life sitting in traffic in that dead zone of Bristol that sits between the end of the M32 and Bristol Temple Meads station. The latter, Brunel’s great monument to the Industrial Revolution in general and the Great Western Railway specifically, marks the point where the Central Business District starts to give way to housing then off towards suburbia. Once suburbia ends, that’s where you’ll find Hengrove Athletic.

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Turkish Delight

06 Friday Feb 2015

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Saturday 29th May 2010 ko 18.45

London Turkish League Invitation Cup Semi-Final

GONYELI 2 (Cagin 64 Yagas 86)
AKINCILAR 2 (Turkman 45 McKenzie 70)

Att 155

@ Coles Park, Tottenham (Haringey Borough FC)

Entry FREE
Tournament Brochure FREE
Raffle £2

For this look back into the archives sees one of the more bizarre games I’ve ever seen, and roots of it all lie in a traffic jam.

I’d had a day watching Bethnal Green A, followed by a shoot-out for the Essex Olympian League title at Buckhurst Hill, but then groundhopping sage Brian Buck let me know there was the possibility of a third game, at Haringey Borough. With Swindon Town having just lost a play-off final at Wembley, I reasoned that the traffic on the North Circular would be dreadful, so the only reasonable course of action was to go and watch a game of football. Haringey’s ground has the distinction of being in White Hart Lane, while their more famous neighbours Tottenham Hotspur do not, their stadium being in Tottenham High Road.
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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.

Continue reading →