Untarnished

27 Monday Jan 2014

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Monday 20th January 2014 ko 20.15

Malta Youth League Section E

SWIEQI UNITED 3 (Grech 20 53 56p)

MTARFA 0

Att 27

At Pembroke Athleta Ground, Pembroke

Entry €2.50

Andy and I found a street café on Sliema waterfront and contemplated life overlooking the azure bay with its views of Valletta. Life wasn’t bad, we’d got a free upgrade at our new hotel, the view from the balcony was spectacular, and there wasn’t a nervous pensioner in sight! Behind us the ferry over to Valletta chugged happily for a mere €1.50 each way.

It was soon time to catch the bus around the coast to Pembroke, Malta’s newest town. It, and adjoining Sweiqi are the most affluent part of the Island. The town is named after Robert Henry Herbert,  the 12th Earl of Pembroke and British Secretary at War in 1859. Continue reading →

Dereliction

26 Sunday Jan 2014

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Monday 20th January 2014

Empire Stadium, Gżira

Monday morning saw us swap the north-east of Malta for Sliema just over the bay from the capital Valletta. It was altogether more urbane than the zoo-like hotel with the nervous pensioners we’d left behind.

The real bonus was the views over the bay of Valletta, and the proximity of so much of interest to visit, but our first destination was a site that has been derelict for over 30 years, and it was just a few stops on the bus along the bay. Continue reading →

Charity

26 Sunday Jan 2014

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Sunday 15th January 2014

13.00 Gozo League Division One

XEWKIJE TIGERS 5 (R Buttigieg 20 54 Shields 31 Portelli 52 Camilleri 72)

ORATORY YOUTHS 0

Att c300

15.00 Gozo League Division One

VICTORIA HOTSPURS 1 (Nanapere 41)

SK VICTORIA WANDERERS 1 (Nwankwo 29)

Att c600

At Gozo National Stadium, Xewkije

Entry €4 (both games)

No Programmes

Team Sheet FREE

Coffee 50c

Gozo is the second largest of the Maltese Islands, and is easily reached by ferry from the port of Ċirkewwa. The crossing takes around 45 minutes and costs €5.65 return. It’s an odd system, the only tickets available are returns and they are only sold from the port of Mġarr on the Gozitan side. It reminded me of trips over the Severn Bridge!

On the ride over we passed the only other inhabited island in the Maltese archipelago Comino. That has a population of only 4 permanent inhabitants so the possibilities for football are rather limited! Continue reading →

Hope

25 Saturday Jan 2014

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Saturday 18th January 2014

14.00 Malta Premier League

RABAT AJAX 2 (Allopardi 61 Micallef 72)

TARXIEN RAINBOWS 6 (Barbosa 10 Pulo 29 77 82 Santos Silva 36 71)

Att c350

16.00 Malta Premier League

VITTORIOSA STARS 0

VALLETTA 4 (Nafti 26 Agius 28 Dos Santos 78 Nyang 84)

Att c350

At Hibernians Stadium, Paola

Entry €6 (both games)

No Programme

Teamsheet FREE

If you want to find out about what makes a country tick, give its public transport a try. With Andy headed to tick a ground on Gozo I decided to tick one of Malta’s most famous grounds Hibernians, very much in the hinterlands of the country’s capital Valletta.

The bus wended its way along the northern coast of the island, passing past the salt pans at the edge of St Paul’s Bay, then through the small villages due east. Hearing the Maltese language fascinated me. The structure is Semetic, or Arabic and its the only language of its type to have a western alphabet albeit with some adapted letters, there’s an H with an extra horizontal bar for example. However with Sicily only 50 miles north, the Italian influence is clear with large chunks of the language thrown into the linguistic melting pot, Grazie and Ciao being perhaps the most obvious. Continue reading →

Faith

24 Friday Jan 2014

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Friday 18th January 2014 ko 20.15

Malta Youth League Section B

ST VEMERA LIGHTENINGS 0

SABBAR ST PATRICKS 8 (J C Cesare 2p 19 20 Fava 39 41 50 Diacono 43 Vello 60)

Att 13

At Sirens Stadium (Sirens FC), St Paul’s Bay

Entry €2.50

No Programme

So dear reader, if you’re the kind of person who absolutely has to have a programme with every game you attend, or hates artificial pitches, or won’t watch a game unless the home side is the ground’s owner or anchor tenant, then I have a feeling that much of the next 6 articles are going to make you wince. But this is Malta, and they do things very differently here, and for the most logical of reasons. Continue reading →

UFO

16 Thursday Jan 2014

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Tuesday 14th January 2014 ko 19.45

Cambridgeshire Invitation Cup Quarter-Final

WISBECH TOWN 1 (White 45)

CAMBRIDGE REGIONAL COLLEGE 2 (Hogan 28 Hurst 87)

Att 101

Entry £5

Programme FREE

Sausage & Chips £1.50

Tea £1

It’s odd how everything changes at Peterborough. The lands flatten and for the most part the roads become single carriageway. You’re now in East Anglia, this is arable country, and a lot of it reclaimed land at that. Continue reading →

Life on Coventry Street

12 Sunday Jan 2014

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Saturday 11th January 2014 ko 15.00

League 2

OXFORD UNITED 0

PORTSMOUTH 0

Att 8,443 (2,365 away)

Entry S/T

Programme £3 (incl Oxford Mail)

If you look at a standard London Monopoly board and find the Water Works, you’ll find that one of the adjoining properties is Coventry Street. Given that Oxford United’s ground is close to Thames Water’s treatment works, that fact seems apposite for United, especially as the property is coloured yellow…. Continue reading →

Circles

12 Sunday Jan 2014

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A week or two ago I was asked by the United Counties League Facebook page to write a guest article. It quite deliberately doesn’t mention the Peterborough & District League, who are also involved in August’s hop, after all it was for a purely UCL audience!

I’m a groundhopper, there I’ve said it, and the United Counties League and I go back to October 2003. I’d just moved to Banbury, and saw that Woodford United were at home to Stewarts & Lloyds. The ground was a devil to find, it helped when the lights were switched on, and I watched S & L triumph once their regular goalkeeper arrived and was substituted on! The people were friendly, and the barbeque tasted as good as it smelled!

I must have enjoyed myself, Continue reading →

The Letter G

05 Sunday Jan 2014

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Saturday 4th January 2013 ko 15.00

North-West Counties League Division One

WIDNES VIKINGS 3 (Tollitt 49 McEvatt 85 87)

IRLAM 1 (Mooney 11)

Att 71

Entry £5

Programme £1.50

When the rain is this bad it’s no bad thing to have a guarantee that the game will be on! That said, it was notable that as soon as I reached Stoke, the rain stopped and the North-West Counties League was one of very few leagues that saw the majority of its scheduled games take place. However the fact that Halton Stadium has a 3G artificial pitch took the worry out of travelling. In any case I do have a soft spot for the NWCL, not least after Atherton Colleries helped us at GroundhopUK by coping with over 100 hoppers at short notice when we had a postponement on a hop we were organising. Continue reading →

Fold

05 Sunday Jan 2014

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Wednesday 1st January 2013 ko 15.00

Conference North

STALYBRIDGE CELTIC 0

ALTRINCHAM 5 (Clee 6 Moult 18 Leather 31 Perry 50 Reeves 58)

Att 684

Entry £12

Programme £2

Teamsheet FREE

Badge £3.50

As a groundhopper sometimes the weather dictates everything. This was very much a case of sitting in Lee’s Warwickshire front room with a coffee and trawling Twitter, comparing it to our respective wants lists. Even that task requires an element of subtlety, how do you interpret no news, even the term “Confident,” is open to interpretation! Continue reading →