Tag Archives: Ceredigion League

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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Wherever Life Takes You

28 Friday Mar 2014

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A few days ago I was asked to write a piece for the United Counties League Facebook page. Given that we’re organising a groundhop for them in August I thought I’m delve a little into groundhopping culture. I  occasionally get asked what’s the most far-flung and unusual ground I’ve ever visited and I’ve got a good tale to tell on that… This isn’t my usual offering but I hope you enjoy it.

 

We took the groundhop to West Wales a few weeks ago, for 5 games in the Ceredigion League. We at GroundhopUK were really happy with how it went, attendances were 20% up on 2013, and the clubs did a marvellous job, making a tidy sum on varied catering, and newsy, interesting programmes.

But I’m not going to talk about that, you’ll all see how that’s done thing coming August, this is a tale from one of my more far-flung travels.

The first game on Sunday was at Bargod Rangers, in the pretty village of Drefach Velindre, near Newcastle Emlyn, and I got volunteered to speak to the local press. The cub reporter asked me what my most bizarre ground visited is, and I told them it was Zweigen Kanazawa in the Japanese 3rd Division.

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Whatever happened to Goronwy Jones?

16 Sunday Mar 2014

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Sunday 9th March 2014 ko 13.00

Ceredigion League Division Two

FFOSTRASOL WANDERERS 2 (A Bowen 57 C Griffiths 88)

DEWI STARS 2 (Andrew Jones 45 Owens 90)

Att 166

Entry £3

Programme £1

Badge £3

It seemed such a long time ago when Keith drove the coach past Troedyrhiw (Troy-dur-roo) Park on the way back from New Quay and the entire coach turned to their left and gawped at the beautiful ground in rural West Wales. It’s fair to say it helped push us into towards making the Ceredigion League a regular fixture.

The main stand (and you don’t get to say that very often in this league) is a classic piece of influence. Ffostrasol played at Builth Wells and liked their stand, so in 1978 built their own version. It’s a vision of lichen covered concrete, corrugated iron, and plank seating and there wasn’t a single one of the 166 present that didn’t immediately fall in love with it! Perhaps its the process of nature gradually claiming everything back to itself that appeals. Continue reading →

Plan C

14 Friday Mar 2014

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Sunday 9th March 2014 ko 10.15

Ceredigion League Division One

BARGOD RANGERS 3 (Skinner 2 35 D Evans 76)

MAESGLAS 3 (J James 15 38 Irvine 29)

Att 238

Entry £3

Programme £1

Badge £3

Tea & A Welsh Cake £1

Hat £3

So picture the scene, I’m sat in my office at work and I’ve got Twitter on in the background. All of a sudden the following tweet pops up….

Llanybydder

….and our Sunday morning game goes out of the window just under 3 weeks before the event. I knew Chris Berezai was at a business meeting in the north, so I spent a frantic few minutes looking at the Ceredigion website (and I’m thankful its detailed and up to date). It became clear that unless we were either going to run the hop a game short, or rejig all the other fixtures there was only one game open to us, Bargod vs Maesglas. We’d already postponed our visit to Saron as they’d played every 1st XI in their league, many hoppers won’t watch games involving reserves, and the only 1st XI Bargod had to meet was Maesglas. Continue reading →

Menu

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

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Saturday 8th March 2013 k0 16.00

Ceredigion League Division Two

CILGERRAN ROVERS 1 (K Phillips 66)

LLANON 0

Att 226

Entry £3

Programme £1

Badge £3

Beer £2.75

Cheese £4

Hat £5

Food – All of it!

I have a mate Graeme who has an unusual hobby, he collects Chinese takeaway menus. Other than that and the groundhopping he’s quite a well-adjusted chap he’s a schoolteacher, but if you’re in a car and you pass the takeaway, your journey will be paused for him to dash out and collect another one for his collection. Being a groundhopper helps his cause and other hoppers collect for him, so he’s got menus from places such as Hungary, the USA and Malta but I think the centrepiece of his collection ought to be a British takeaway menu from China! Continue reading →