The Point

14 Saturday Mar 2015

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Sunday 8th March 2015 ko 14.30

Ceredigion League Division One

LLANBOIDY 3 (James 25 33 37)

MAESGLAS 3 (Roche 17 Harman 43 75p)

Att 219

Entry £3

Programme £1

Badge £3

The great advantage of being stood next door to league secretary Aled Davies at Pencader was that he’d been in near constant contact with Llanboidy, and confirmed there were no issues with the weather, in fact it was blue skies all around! It had stopped raining for the last ten minutes at Pencader, but when I returned to the car and put the postcode for Cae Dandre into the satnav I wondered if I’d got the correct address!

There are no lack of Carmarthenshire clubs in the Ceredigion League, but Llanboidy is right on the border with Pembrokeshire! The village lies on the Welsh side but close to the Landsker Line, where supposedly the first language spoken changes from Welsh to English. Continue reading →

Contingencies

13 Friday Mar 2015

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Sunday 8th March 2015 ko 11.00

Ceredigion League Division 2

PENCADER 7 (Sears 22 A Hazelby 35 65 73 Taw 37 83 Morgan 85)

FFOSTRASOL WANDERERS 3 (Rumble 9 C Davies 53 Befan 77)

Att 188

Entry £3

Programme £1

Badge £3

When you get bad weather on a groundhop the whole nature of the event changes. You accept that you’ll see less locals, and those hoppers who tend to dip in out of an event disappear too. You end up testing commitment, and back in Carmarthen I looked nervously out between the curtains of my hotel room window. It couldn’t be that bad could it? I stepped outside after my breakfast and confirmed the worst, it was hammering it down with rain.

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The legend of Emlyn Wyvern

13 Friday Mar 2015

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Saturday 7th March 2015 ko 19.30

Ceredigion League Division One

NEWCASTLE EMYLN 2 (Almond 33 Jake Harris 67)

NEW QUAY 0

Att 194

Entry £3

Programme £1

Badge £3

The irony of this being the only time that the Ceredigion Hop could stage a Saturday night game with only three games left on the entire 4 year run was not lost on me. The hoppers’ cavalcade travelled south from Aberaeron and encountered a Police speed trap at Ffostrasol.

Twenty or so brake lights flashed in succession, and I was tempted to stop and comment to the sole policeman that if the local constabulary wanted to make money from the groundhop, we at GroundhopUK would have been happy for them to have a stall to sell goodies at any of our games. Perhaps it was our insistence that stall-holders have a full ticket for the entire event that was the problem? Continue reading →

Second Helpings

12 Thursday Mar 2015

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Saturday 7th March 2015 ko 16.00

Mid Wales League Division One

ABERAERON TOWN 1 (James 43)

PENRHYNCOCH 1 (Nyhus 7 James 17)

Att 240

Entry £4

Programme £1

Of course the roots of the Ceredigion Hop lie with the August Hop’s 3-year stint in the Mid-Wales League. After it was all over we had 2 sides that couldn’t play on August Bank Holiday so to visit U.W.A. and Aberaeron  a “Hop-up” was organised to visit them. We wanted a Friday evening fixture so we approached Lampeter, and then the late Dai Davies at the league offered us New Quay too! We enjoyed the two Ceredigion League games so much we returned for the next 3 years!

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The Blazer Rule

12 Thursday Mar 2015

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Saturday 7th March 2015 ko 13.15

Ceredigion League Division One

FELINFACH 1 (Taylor 63)

BARGOD RANGERS 1 (Terry 14)

Att 245

Entry £3

Programme £1

Badge £3

Many years ago we at GroundhopUK organised a hop, and only one person on the committee of the league turned up to support the event. On one hand it didn’t really matter, the main thing the league does with a groundhop is schedule the fixtures, but it rankled with us to the extent that we didn’t organise another hop in that league. If you don’t have the league firmly behind you, in the long term you don’t have a hop.

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Chapel

09 Monday Mar 2015

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Saturday 7th March 2015 ko 10.15

Ceredigion League Division Two

DEWI STARS 6 (Owens 16 23 29 37 W Williams 74 Thomas 87)

S.D.U.C. 1 (Kennedy 45)

Att 174

Entry £3

Programme £1

Badge £3

When you organise the final hop of a league’s run, you always have the difficulty of putting together a schedule with clubs that aren’t necessarily ideally placed geographically. To add to that we had the necessity to put the Dewi Stars on the Saturday as the playing field is owned by the chapel in Llanddewi Brefi, and they objected to the club playing on a Sunday. Yes, that’s right, Llanddewi Brefi of “Little Britain” fame, and as I demolished an early breakfast in Carmarthen my aim for my visit was to dispel the notion of “Only Gay in the village” however funny Matt Lucas’ sketches were.

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The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Organiser

09 Monday Mar 2015

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Friday 6th March 2015 ko 19.30

Welsh League Division One

BRITON FERRY LLANSAWEL 3 (Cockings 10 Jones 60 D Hudson 73)

GARDEN VILLAGE 0 Vickers sent off 85 (2nd booking)

Att 258

Special GroundhopUK package (Entry, buffet, programme and talk on club) £10

Normal Entry £4

Programme £1

The very worst bit of being a groundhop organiser is the trip down to your base for the weekend, in this case Carmarthen. You know you’ve done all the preparation, the league is 100% behind you, the host clubs are ready, and the gazebos are being erected as you drive along the M4. You know that local journalist Chris Harte has all the programmes and badges for the event stored in his library. You’ve covered every base you can, but still the nagging doubt is always there, what could go wrong, and what will go wrong, yes something will, you are dealing with people not robots after all. Yes, its a lonely drive down, even if you’ve got (as I did) passengers. Continue reading →

Countywide

05 Thursday Mar 2015

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Wednesday 4th March 2015 ko 19.30

Staffordshire County Senior League Division One

LEEK C.S.O.B. 4 (Bown 3 Pointon 46 57 83)

KEELE UNIVERSITY 0

Att 62

Entry FREE

Teamsheet FREE

Tea 50p

We really should start with the obvious, it’s County School Old Boys! From a groundhopper’s perspective they were the North West Counties League club that shared at Leek Town. Most hoppers don’t seem to be interested in a ground’s second club, so for many years they sailed under many people’s radar, mine included.

All that changed with their resignation from the NWCL at the end of last season. They took their reserves place in the second tier of the Staffs County League, and moved to Pointon Park, in Cheddleton, some 4 miles south of Leek. That is where its starts getting interesting. Continue reading →

Dark Times

02 Monday Mar 2015

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Tuesday 12th February 2008 ko 19.45

Northern Premier League Division One North

ROSSENDALE UNITED 0

BAMBER BRIDGE 1 (Salmon 36)

Att 146

Entry £7

Programme £1.50

A week or two I told the sad story of Mile Oak Rovers & Youth and how gut-wrenching it was to be at their final ever game. This tale also ends with the club’s extinction but the reason for the club’s demise proved to be more complicated.

Rossendale is a borough in Lancashire, consisting of a clutch of mill villages in the Blackburn and Burnley area. In this quitessentially footballing hotbed the club played in Dark Lane, Newchurch, near Rawtenstall. They were formed in 1898 and worked their way through the Lancashire Combination, the Cheshire League, and into the North-West Counties League. Continue reading →

Vital Signs

01 Sunday Mar 2015

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Saturday 28th February 2015 ko 14.30

Anglian Combination Division Two

BECCLES CAXTON 3 (Gorbould 18 Hume 42 Scriven 64)

WELLS TOWN 5 (Brewster 9secs 85 Harrison 55 Moss 68 78)

Att 9

Entry & Programme £2

As you clock up the ground visits, you soon pick up on the clubs that are in crisis. There’s the vital signs you see the absence of, the club taking a series of beatings, the quick turnover of players, the down-at-heel feel of the ground. You turn up, you commiserate, you watch the game, and you leave with a heavy heart.

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