Tag Archives: Chris Berezai

Foley

27 Monday Mar 2023

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Saturday 4th March 2023 ko 13:00

North-West Counties League Division One South

FOLEY MEIR 0 

MAINE ROAD 1 (Keyworth 68)

Livesey (gk) sent off 13 (foul & abusive)

Att 303

Entry £6

Programme £1

For Saturday’s second game we headed to Stoke-on-Trent, for what was, for me at least, the most surprising visit on the hop. I’d visited Whitcombe Road back in 2010 when the club were still just Foley FC for a Staffordshire County League game. The ground was just as basic as it gets, albeit with a wonderful vista of Stoke from behind the near goal. I just couldn’t imagine that the club could get the place fit for pyramid football. I am wrong on occasion…. just ask my wife Robyn! Continue reading →

Cheer

06 Monday Feb 2023

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Saturday 24th December 2022 ko 14:00

Central Midlands League Division One North

BESSACARR 3 (Cooper 25 34 Tyers 77)

780 JLC 2 (Teal 7p Allison 88)

Att c65

Free Entry

Programme £2

Badge £2.50

Judging by the amount of groundhoppers at this one a lot of folk had the same conversation I’d had with Chris Garner. It went something like, “Do you fancy a game? Where? Yeah, but where?” 

For the record Bessacarr is a district of Doncaster, its where One Direction singer Louis Tomlinson is from. He of course famously turned out for Doncaster Rovers’s reserves, and while he didn’t actually play there, we did pass by the site of Doncaster Rovers old ground Belle Vue on the way to Cantley Park. Continue reading →

Making It Work

08 Thursday Dec 2022

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Sunday 9th October 2022 

11:00 Southern Counties East League- Premier Division

RUSTHALL 4 (Fares 9 Clark 16 Gitiba 60 Baldwin78)

K SPORTS 2 (Holliday 27 Lewins 48)

Att 344

Entry £8

Programme £2

14:00 Southern Counties East League- Premier Division

TUNBRIDGE WELLS 1 (McCreadie 58)

LORDSWOOD 1 (Reid 32)

Att 518

Entry £8

Programme £2

Without a massive amount of evidence I felt supremely confident about the SCEFL Hop’s Sunday schedule. Part of it was that I felt I knew the clubs a little, I’s seen what a go-ahead club Rusthall are when I’d visited 9 years ago, and my visit to Tunbridge Wells  a year later gave me the impression that they were an Isthmian League club in waiting. Normally my internalised challenge to clubs I revisit on hops is to change my perception of them., here I wanted them to reinforce my view. There were a couple of snags with that though. Continue reading →

Men of Kent

01 Thursday Dec 2022

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Saturday 8th October 2022

11:00 Southern Counties East League Division One

STAPLEHURST MONARCHS 1 (Osagie 74)

ROCHESTER UNITED 0

Att 331

Entry £6

Programme £2

15:00 Southern Counties East League Premier Division

BEARSTED 2 (Freeman 18 52)

FISHER 1 (Kationa 52)

Att 229

Entry/ Parking/ Programme £8

17.45 Southern Counties East League Division One

LARKFIELD & NEW HYTHE 2 (Burdon 13 West 30)

GREENWAYS 1 (Saxton 49)

Att 243

Entry £5

Programme £1

There could be no doubt as to how important the SCEFL saw the groundhop; they did as the South Wales Alliance did and placed an official on the coach, mainly to help with directions but to troubleshoot where needed. Having Barry Fenn around was a godsend, not just for what he was mandated to do, but for the little nuggets of knowledge he imparted on the way. Continue reading →

Kentish Man

23 Wednesday Nov 2022

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Friday 7th October 2022 ko 19:45

Southern Counties East League- Premier Division

PUNJAB UNITED 1 (Vines 70)

STANSFELD 1 (Friend 68)

Att 347

Entry £8

Programme £2

If you drill down to the roots of every hop GroundhopUK organises they all have a conversation with a league official with either Chris Berezai or I at their genesis. Scotland is one of mine, as was the Western Hop while Chris’ include Wales, and the Northern Counties East. But the SCEFL is different, because the conversation wasn’t Chris’ or mine, it was between league chairman Andy Short and my wife Robyn! Continue reading →

Rejiggery

28 Friday Oct 2022

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Monday 29th August 2022 

11:00 South Wales Alliance Division One

MAESTEG PARK 2 (Kingdon 26 Evans 42)

VALE UNITED 2 (Hanson 40 Jefferies 70)

Gauci sent off (DOGSO) 55

Jefferies missed penalty 60

Att 302

Entry £3

Programme £2

14:00 South Wales Alliance Division One

CANTON RANGERS 3 (Injai 32 Tegeltha 62 Power 68)

AFC BUTETOWN 2 (Abdulkaliq Yusuf 6 24)

Att 223

Entry £3

Programme £1

16:15 South Wales Alliance Division One

CLWB CYMRIC 4 (Withers 18 Hughes 60 Roberts 77 90)

GRANGE ALBION 0

Att 226

Entry £3

Programme £1

With this being a South Wales Alliance reunion hop we’d always planned on the Monday being the traditional “Cardiff Day.” With Canton Liberal and Canton Rangers having moved into adjacent grounds as part of the development behind the Cardiff International Sports Stadium. So it was an obvious move to make the first game at Liberal then stroll over to Rangers. There was only one issue with that idea though…. Continue reading →

Grasshoppers!

26 Wednesday Oct 2022

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Sunday 28th August 2022 ko

11:15 South Wales Alliance Premier Division

MERTHYR SAINTS 1 (Maia 37p)

ABER VALLEY 5 (Razimielski 6 45 65 James 22 Neville 83)

Att 302

Entry & Programme £5

14:00 South Wales Alliance Division One

ABERDARE TOWN 6 (Johnson 12p Jones 14 64 Olson 18 Thomas 22 Welsh 70)

AFC PENRHIWCEIBER 0

Turner missed penalty 90

Att 305

Entry £3

Programme £1

17:00 South Wales Alliance Division Two

NELSON CAVALIERS 0

CWMBACH ROYAL STARS 3 (Jones 19 J Price 43 L Price 66)

Att 254

Entry & Programme £4

In some ways Sunday was when the South Wales Alliance Hop really hit its stride. For one thing we had 3 superb grounds to visit this time, with all respect to Cardiff Cosmopolitan their 3G cage was unlikely to excite many! The other factor was having league chairman Phil Sweet on the coach, he’s a man of Merthyr so hearing his memories and knowledge of his home town put where were were and what we were watching right in perspective. Of course the hop and later myself had visited the Saints before, the hop seeing it as the very first club visited on the very first Welsh hop in August 2002. But there was a move to consider… Continue reading →

A Mixture

19 Wednesday Oct 2022

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Saturday 27th August 2022

11.15 South Wales Alliance Division Two

FAIRWATER 2 (Coles 30 Jefferies 69)

PENYGRAIG UNITED 3 (Tann 13 63 Langford 24)

Att 201

Entry £3

Programme £1

14:00 South Wales Alliance Division Two

CARDIFF COSMOPOLITAN 0

ST ALBANS 0

Att 109

Entry £3

Programme £2

17:00 South Wales Alliance Premier Division

BRIDGEND STREET 1 (Taylor 90+ 4)

CARDIFF CORINTHIANS 1 (Davies 78)

Att 264

Entry £4

Programme £1

Saturday on the Welsh Hop was a little unusual. For a start we normally make Bank Holiday Monday “Cardiff Day” but here we ended up having two days in the capital.  Now while a lot of that was due to the slightly unusual set of circumstances that saw us hopping the South Wales Alliance for a one-off reunion year. Like Tongwynlais the evening before Fairwater were one of the winners of the series of last season’s play-offs of the district leagues’ champions to get into the SWAL. Continue reading →

Sunday’s Revisits

23 Friday Sep 2022

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Sunday 31st July 2022

ko 12:00 United Counties League Premier Division North

LEICESTER NIRVANA 1 (Nelson 87p)

Nelson missed penalty 66

BELPER UNITED 0

Smyth penalty saved 78

Att 285

Entry £5

Programme £2

Ko 15:00 United Counties League Division One

ST ANDREWS 2 (Law 50 87)

WEST BRIDGFORD 1 (Stevens 67)

Att 290

Entry £5

Programme £1

After breakfast at the University of Nottingham we headed south to Leicester. I opted to take my car, with my wife Robyn helping Chris Berezai and Craig Dabbs it meant a quicker trip after the final game. I took quieter country roads, rather than the motorway and with crowds yesterday and crowds to come it was a treat to have a little time for reflection. Continue reading →

Swap

12 Monday Sep 2022

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Friday 29th July 2022 ko 19:45

United Counties League Premier Division South

LUTTERWORTH TOWN 3 (Wilson 22 32 Small 27p)

ROTHWELL CORINTHIANS 2 (Rzesteuck 57 Allen 88)

Att 320

Entry £6

Programme £2

For me the year 2022 has been about reconnecting with people that we’d been unable to meet during the pandemic. The catch has been those 2 years have seen manifest changes in all of us, so often what we’ve gone back to has been different to what we’d been used to back in 2020. The UCL Hop proved to be a case in point. Continue reading →