Category Archives: T

The Day Off

24 Wednesday May 2023

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Saturday 8th April 2023

11:00 Hellenic League Division 2 East

MORTIMER 2 (Gorman 22 Parfitt-Bowes 57)

CHINNOR 0

Att 209

14:30 Hellenic League Division 2 East

TAPLOW UNITED 2 (Eaves 35 Umbewa 38)

CHALFONT WASPS 2 (Drummond 45 Sava 76)

Pereira penalty saved 90

Att 140

17:30 Hellenic League Division 2 East

WOODCOTE FC 4 (Allen 19og Webber 28 Nowell 45 Downes 84)

FC BEACONSFIELD 0

Att 243

Entry & Programme for each game – £4

I suppose it had to happen at some point, I actually took a day off- from GroundhopUK at least! It had certainly been a while, to the point that I’d actually got married, separated, divorced, engaged, and married again during all those hops we’ve organised over the last 15-plus years. But the great beauty of GroundHopUK these days is that it isn’t just about Chris Berezai and I. Since the Bedfordshire League decided to spurn Craig Dabbs’ skills, kindness and hard work, he’s come on board- your loss Mr Francis, and now my wife Robyn deals with the social media too. There are also no end of folks that help us out, and there’s the various league officials to do some of the leg work too. Continue reading →

Bert

23 Sunday Apr 2023

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Saturday 18th March 2023 ko 17:00

Lowland League

TRANENT JUNIORS 1 (Reid 90)

BO’NESS UNITED 1 (Walker 49)

Att 607

Entry £8

Programme £3

So half-way through the event and in so many ways a statement of where the Scottish Hop is at. It’s easy to forget that the hop started as an exclusively Lowland League event in 2014 and didn’t take in an East of Scotland League game until Eyemouth 3 years later. I remember shrugging my shoulders as one or two prejudiced types scuttled off elsewhere as they thought the level would be beneath them. I’ve always been an advocate of going weird early, so found their actions odd, and allowed myself a wry smile when they ended up watching the East of Scotland League a couple of years later. Continue reading →

The Right People

11 Tuesday Apr 2023

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Friday 17th March 2023 ko 19:45

East of Scotland League Premier Division

TYNECASTLE 2 (Hamilton 5 77)

Blaney sent off 12 (dangerous play)

SAUCHIE JUNIORS 3 (Hutchison 23 secs Columbine 60 Morgan 67)

Hutchinson sent off 3 (foul & abusive)

Att 448

Entry £8

Programme £2

I was under pressure. I was driving my wife Robyn and Craig Dabbs up to Edinburgh as the GroundhopUK advance party. Our role was to collate the 6 sets of programmes for the weekend’s hop into ticket and programme packs for those who had bought prebooked tickets. For once the M6 behaved, but my clutch wasn’t, and despite a litre of clutch fluid bought from a lad in Halfords, Hamilton who seemed happy to have someone to talk to, the concern was would we get to Meggetland, then get round the grounds? Continue reading →

Zaja

13 Monday Mar 2023

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Saturday 18th February 2023 ko 19:00

Kategoria Superiore

PARTIZANI TIRANA 3 (Rrapajy 45 Da Silva 46 Hoti 71)

Gueye sent off 1 (dangerous play- VAR)

KF ERZENI 0

Att c 1,500 at Kompleksi Partizani

Entry- Complimentary (tickets in our stand was on sale of 1000 lek – roughly £7.69; opposite was 300 lek)

We’d got back from Vorë with more than enough time for a late lunch. We’d settled in the Tirana suburb of Kinostudio, Ditmar’s home and where the communists used to produce their propaganda films. Since those days the area has seen no little investment, and I suspect the bar we sat in had never known rule by Enver Hoxha.

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Shelter

13 Tuesday Dec 2022

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Saturday 15th October 2022 ko 15:00

Central Midlands League Cup 1st Round

TEVERSAL 1 (Fletcher 23)

Fletcher sent off 45 (2nd booking)

DERBY SINGH BROTHERS 1 (Lawrence 43p)

No extra time, Teversal won 5-4 on penalties

Att 33

Entry £3

Programme £1

As a groundhopper there are always occasional grounds that seem to pass you by. In the case of Teversal, I always imagined the Northern Counties East Hop would visit Carnarvon Street, but two things happened, first the club seemed sufficiently unhappy at the whole procedure neither league nor organisers dared to ask them, and then they got relegated back to the Central Midlands League, where ironically we could actually feature them now. I wonder; they’ve certainly got the ground! Continue reading →

Making It Work

08 Thursday Dec 2022

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Sunday 9th October 2022 

11:00 Southern Counties East League- Premier Division

RUSTHALL 4 (Fares 9 Clark 16 Gitiba 60 Baldwin78)

K SPORTS 2 (Holliday 27 Lewins 48)

Att 344

Entry £8

Programme £2

14:00 Southern Counties East League- Premier Division

TUNBRIDGE WELLS 1 (McCreadie 58)

LORDSWOOD 1 (Reid 32)

Att 518

Entry £8

Programme £2

Without a massive amount of evidence I felt supremely confident about the SCEFL Hop’s Sunday schedule. Part of it was that I felt I knew the clubs a little, I’s seen what a go-ahead club Rusthall are when I’d visited 9 years ago, and my visit to Tunbridge Wells  a year later gave me the impression that they were an Isthmian League club in waiting. Normally my internalised challenge to clubs I revisit on hops is to change my perception of them., here I wanted them to reinforce my view. There were a couple of snags with that though. 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!

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The Alliance

14 Friday Oct 2022

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Friday 26th August 2022 ko 18:30

South Wales Alliance Division 2

TONGWYNLAIS 1 (Older 59)

COGAN CORONATION 3 (Vilis 8 Preston 19 Taylor 72)

Att 234

Entry £3

Programme £2

I’m sure there are better analogies but for me the re-emergence of the Welsh Hop was my sign that the we were some way of putting the troubles of the pandemic behind us. With my many and varied connections to Wales I knew just how hard Coronavirus hit here, to the extent I knew the hop coach would be driven by someone new this time round. I thought of Steve Pitt who was lost to the virus during lockdown as the coach headed down the A470 from Treforest. Continue reading →

Jim

15 Wednesday Jun 2022

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Tuesday 26th April 2022 ko 18:30

Spartan South Midlands League Division Two

TOTTERNHOE 3 (Tizard 20 Woolaway 45 Perry 89)

RISBOROUGH RANGERS DEVELOPMENT 1 (Pekun 72)

Att 30

Free Entry

Once upon a time this was my favourite time of the season. Once the clocks go forward in Spring there’s the opportunity to take in a whole slew of midweek games at grounds without floodlights. Groundhoppers tend to refer to this as “Silly Season” which is a little pejorative if you’re involved at a club but is more a comment on what’s available mid week rather than any comment on the quality on offer. My issue with this time of year is more prosaic, however. Continue reading →

Pandy

18 Wednesday May 2022

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Saturday 2nd April 2022 ko 14:00

Bridgend & District League Open Cup 2nd Round

TONDU ROBINS 0

LLANHARRY 6 (Peete 3 Doughty 9 T Hamilton 12 Richards 50 Watts 67 Williams 79)

Att 27 at Pandy Park, Aberkenfig

Free Entry

It seems to me that if you want to find an interesting football match, all you really need to do is head to South Wales- there’s no end of them. The previous Saturday on the way back from Denaby Main we’d had a look at my options and this one rather jumped out, not least due to Tondu Robins’ long stint in the Welsh League. In the end it all added up to a lot more than that.

Continue reading →