Brutalist

26 Thursday Mar 2015

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Saturday 21st March 2015 ko 19.00

Lowland League

GALA FAIRYDEAN ROVERS 1 (Bonnar 49)

UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING 2 (Bonar 43 Geddes 90)

Att 323

Entry £5

Programme £2

The sun began to set and as the coach reached Galashiels I relaxed for the first time since we’d left Hilingdon 36 hours earlier. I knew everyone wanted to visit the iconic club of Gala, and in Graeme McIver I had a club contact who was competent to the point where Chris and I knew all we needed to do is let him get on with staging the game. That doesn’t happen very often, clubs at the level GroundhopUK organise hops for aren’t used to having 300-plus crowds so guidance is essential, to do otherwise is at best unfair, and at worst folly. Graeme simply needed to know how many tickets we’d sold and a rough idea of the likely attendance, and he was more than capable of doing the rest. Continue reading →

Battleground

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

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Saturday 21st March 2015 ko 15.30

Lowland League

SELKIRK 1 (See 58)

THE SPARTANS 1 (Brown 84)

Att 281

Entry £5

Programme £2

With so much riding on this hop I was nervous as the coach left Innerleithen for our middle game of the day. It’s that word “middle” that’s key, on any organised groundhop you tend to see, “Drift” where hoppers find an alternative games for the middle game on a Saturday when the competition for them is at its greatest. The solution is to schedule 4 games so that the hopper has to miss 2 hop games to go elsewhere but the geography and the lack of floodlights at Selkirk’s Yarrow Park made that impossible. Continue reading →

Border Reiver

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

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Saturday 21st March 2015 ko 12.00

Lowland League

VALE OF LEITHEN 0

PRESTON ATHLETIC 2 (Bruce 41 Roy 57)

Att 312

Entry £5

Programme £1.50

Badge £3

I suspect we all needed a good night’s sleep after Friday’s long journey, certainly the faces at breakfast looked refreshed, maybe the hotel bar hadn’t done as well from GroundhopUK as is usually the case! We left East Kilbride heading south down the M74 before striking out east along the beautiful Tweed valley.

We passed through Peebles, right past Peebles Rovers’ ground (isn’t it handy that the Lowland and East of Scotland Leagues share a fixture secretary?) before reaching the small town of Innerleithen. Continue reading →

The Game Changer

23 Monday Mar 2015

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Friday 20th March 2015 ko 19.45

Lowland League

EAST KILBRIDE 1 (McLeish 64)

WHITEHILL WELFARE 0

Att 491

Entry £5

Programme £2

Badge £3

In 1992 the Northern League’s Mike Amos invented the organised groundhop, a series of staggered kick-offs with transport between the fixtures. Phil Hiscox took the concept to the South-West and GroundhopUK’s Chris Berezai to Wales, but Scotland had never seen a groundhop. That wasn’t through lack of trying, we at GroundhopUK tried for the Highland League who told us variously that they didn’t need any extra crowds, and that we’ve never bring them, “More than 30 hoppers.” A region of the Juniors even told us we could hold a hop in their leagues but all the games would have to kick-off at 2.30 on a Saturday….

To be honest, we’d given up and when hoppers mentioned the idea we’d trot out one of the stories and shrug our shoulders. A shame, but that was life.

Continue reading →

The Army Game

23 Monday Mar 2015

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Wednesday 18th March 2015 ko 19.00

Inter Services Tournament/Carrington Cup

ARMY 4 (Sig Paddock 40 Pte Glass 63 LCpl Wilkinson 66 Spr Currie 82)

ROYAL AIR FORCE 0

Att 148 at Aldershot Military Stadium, Queens Avenue

Entry FREE

Programme and teamsheet FREE

I’m really not sure why I revisited this one, after all I watched a regimental cup game here 3 years ago. It certainly wasn’t because there was a programme issued, that’s a bonus nothing more. Certainly the standard of forces football is very good, the Army FA is treated as a County FA by the Football Association, and the stadium has presence, dominated by the 1,128 capacity stand, which could easily have double the seats it features now. I suspect what drew me back there is that the place does have a different feel than my normal destinations situated as it is in Aldershot’s Military Town. Continue reading →

The Execution of William Palmer

15 Sunday Mar 2015

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Wednesday 11th March 2015 ko 19.30

Staffordshire County Senior League Premier Division

BRERETON SOCIAL 2 (Fulton 36 Cowlishaw 85) Turner missed penalty 16

NORTON UNITED RESERVES 2 (Elliot 54 Davies 64) Mahmood sent off 16 (DOGSO)

Att 22

Entry FREE

No Programme

It’s the lot of the groundhopper that you miss out on some grounds, you spend a lot of time trying to visit grounds with the bulldozer looming, a process nicknamed the “Vulture Job,” but some you are destined never to visit, the hobby is one of very few where you spend your life wishing you were older! The Red Lion Ground was one of those, and when the previous incarnation folded in 2010 I thought I’d lost out. I even managed to avoid Burntwood Town’s one season stint here a couple of years ago! 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!

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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 →