Patterns

16 Wednesday May 2018

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Saturday 14th April 2018 ko 11.00

FA Premier U18 League

SWANSEA CITY 0

LEICESTER CITY 0

Att 113 @ Landore Training Centre

Entry FREE

Teamsheet FREE

With the Welsh Spring Hop almost completely rejigged we left our hotel at Carmarthen a little earlier than usual. With the loss of the Carmarthenshire League’s fixtures I found myself feeling a pang of regret as the coach turned left out of the hotel and headed towards Pont Abraham and the M4. I remembered our 4 year stint in the Ceredigion League where we turned right and headed north; I don’t remember a club on those hops who didn’t host beautifully. It’s a shame we’ve completed the league and there’s no new grounds to visit. But that’s in the past sadly, and there was a trip to Swansea City’s training ground to ponder. Continue reading →

Everything Changes, Everything The Same

15 Tuesday May 2018

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Friday 13th April 2018 ko 19.30

Welsh League Division One

GOYTRE 1 (Leek 17)

LLANELLI TOWN 4 (Loveridge 15 45 90 C Jones 39) Vickers sent off 50 (dangerous play)

Att 151

Entry & Programme £5

For the last few years the Welsh Spring Hop has been based in West Wales, firstly in Ceredigion then for the last 2 events in Carmarthenshire. We’d had a few issues organising last year’s hop and this proved to even worse! In the end only the first and last games of the hop remained the same, visits to Goytre and Butetown and significantly neither of those clubs are in the Carmarthenshire League! The problems Chris Berezai faced were many and varied but can be neatly summed up as follows. Continue reading →

Milestone

11 Friday May 2018

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Wednesday 11th April 2018 ko 18.00

Oxford City FA League

HEADINGTON BUTCHERS 1 (Rowbotham 80)

DORCHESTER 3 (Kay 18 Brown 46 J Lyne 58)

Att 5 at Sandy Lane Sports Ground, Oxford

Free Entry

By far the most common question about groundhopping I get asked is how many grounds I’ve done. It’s an obvious one, but it’s also one with little meaning, after all it’s a figure that is only really relevant to myself. There is no award, thank God, to the groundhopper with the most grounds visited.  I used to celebrate each hundredth  ground I visited, 900 was the Cardiff City Stadium, and the thousandth was Newbridge (on Wye) Town.

Since then those milestones have felt less and less important, but there was an unintended consequence of Honiton Town’s game on the Easter Hop being moved to Exwick Villa, a ground I’d visited before. Continue reading →

The Organiser Entertains

10 Thursday May 2018

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Saturday 31st March 2018 ko 19.00

South West Peninsula League Division One West

PLYMOUTH MARJON 2 (Johnson 59 Parsonage 61) McIlvaney sent off (2nd booking) 54

MILLBROOK 3 (Shepherd 29 Chapman 67 Payne 68)

Att 293

All games hop ticket £25 (programmes not included)

Entry £3

Programme £1.50

Once again the scene changed as the cavalcade left Brixham and picked its way cross-country for the hop’s final destination of the University of St’s Mark and John in Plymouth. It hadn’t been the easiest of hops for organiser Phil Hiscox, mainly due to the weather so I felt his pain when the attendant at the primary school in Brixham where the coaches had parked up during the previous game had decided to go home leaving the gate locked.. Fortunately the lock was of the combination variety, and the attendant easily phoned, but I think just about everyone has had one of those days…. Continue reading →

Dilemma

03 Thursday May 2018

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Saturday 31st March ko 15.00

South West Peninsula League Divison One East

BRIXHAM AFC 1 (Parkin 59)

GALMPTON & ROSELANDS 0

Att 369

Hop Ticket (no programmes included) £25

Entry £3

Programme £1

The trip from Exminster to Brixham was the longest of this year’s Easter hop, just over an hour, and with no end of alternatives for the hoppers to go and visit, and still make it back to Plymouth for the Marjon game to close the hop. The fact that Robyn and I had already visited Brixham‘s Wall Park Road ground, and fairly recently too, gave us something of a dilemma. Continue reading →

The Hammer of Tours

30 Monday Apr 2018

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Saturday 31st March 2018 ko 11.00

South West Peninsula League Division One East

ST MARTINS 4 (Watson 5 90 Davies 62 Richards 81)

ALPHINGTON 0

Att 383

Entry £4

Programme £1

Finally, an organised hop in the UK in 2018 saw a day with pleasant weather. It seemed an almost entirely different journey from Paignton to Exeter than it had been during the rain-soaked preceding two days. Robyn and I headed to Exeter’s southernmost suburbs, to the almost subsumed village of Exminster, with the austere-looking form of the former Devon Mental Hospital overlooking proceedings. The building was designed by Charles Fowler who also designed the main Covent Garden market building, and is converted to housing, but the feeling of unease still persists about the place.  Continue reading →

Tiger Feet

26 Thursday Apr 2018

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Friday 30th March 2018 ko 19.00

South West Peninsula League Division One East

AXMINSTER TOWN 2 (Hurford 13 Dibling 21)

CREDITON TOWN 1 (Morish 32)

Att 306

Hop ticket £25 (programmes not included)

Entry £4

Programme £1.50

We left Exwick Villa, and Exeter’s suburbs and headed east. It was good that hop organiser Phil Hiscox had confirmed that the day’s final game was definitely on. The weather was dreadful, we passed Honiton and when we climbed into the southern foothills of the Blackdown Hills the torrential rain turned into sleet. Surely the game couldn’t still be on, could it? Continue reading →

Head Above Water

23 Monday Apr 2018

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Friday 30th March 2018 ko 15.00

South West Peninsula League Division One East

HONITON TOWN 0

ILFRACOMBE TOWN 1 (Montague 55)

Att 227 at Exwick Villa FC

Hop Ticket £25 (no programmes included)

Entry £3

Programme £1

On any organised hop there’s always a “Highlight” game, it’s the game that as organiser you know that your patrons will look at the hop’s fixtures, and think “That’s the one I really want.” It doesn’t have to be the best appointed ground, just the one that grabs people’s attention, and for this hop it was Honiton’s Mountbatten Park, if for no other reason than it’s Honiton’s first season in the Peninsula League and so the fewest number of hoppers would have visited before. Continue reading →

Reputations

22 Sunday Apr 2018

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Friday 30th March 2018 ko 11.30

South West Peninsula League Division One East

SIDMOUTH TOWN 3 (Davies 32 Knight 74 83)

BUDLEIGH SALTERTON 4 (Taylor 37 Antat 49 A Boere 54 White 78_

Att 336

Hop Ticket (programmes not included) £25

Entry £3

Programme £1.50

The alarm sounded at Robyn and I’s bed and breakfast, and I didn’t need to open the curtains to check the weather, I could hear the torrents hammering the cars parked outside. Whilst the Full English breakfast was superlative, we ate in near silence knowing that the weather was at best going make watching 3 matches in a day difficult and at worst curtail the fun early. It was a day to trust Phil Hiscox the event organiser, and take what was coming. Little did we know that their would be a whole series of problems beyond the organiser’s control.  Continue reading →

The Spur

19 Thursday Apr 2018

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Thursday 29th March 2018 k0 19.30

South West Peninsula League Division One East

NEWTON ABBOT SPURS 2 (O Aplin 13 Metters 51)

TEIGNMOUTH 1 (Ayre 18) 

Breslan sent off 83 (2nd booking 83)

Eves sent off 90 (2nd booking 90)

Att 318

All games Hop ticket £25 (entry only)

Entry £4

Programme £1

I was around half-way down the M5 heading for the South West Peninsula Hop and was debating whether to stop for a coffee. Robyn was, as normal, fast asleep in the passenger seat, so I delayed my stop for another service station; there are no lack of them in this part of the world. I spent the extra few minutes imagining what hop organiser and League General Secretary Phil Hiscox was doing at that moment. I knew what I’d been feeling on eve of the Easter Hop I’d helped organise the previous year but as the Thursday and Friday games in Devon proved, I didn’t succeed in coming remotely close. Continue reading →