Tag Archives: England

The Good

22 Wednesday May 2019

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Friday 19th April 2019

12.00 Hellenic League Premier Division

LONGLEVENS 2 (Welch 59 Malshanskij 62)

READING CITY 1 (Darboe 14)

Att 331

Entry £6

Programe £1

15.30 Hellenic League Premier Division

LYDNEY TOWN 2 (Thompson 59p Halford 83)

WINDSOR 0

Att 337

Entry £5

Programme £1

19.00 Hellenic League Division One West

NEWENT TOWN 0

CHELTENHAM SARACENS 1 (Barnard 54)

Att 369

Entry £5

Programme £1

Looking at it selfishly,  the Easter Hop moving from the North West Counties League to the Hellenic was a neat way of me swapping a probable 11 new ticks from 13 games to 11 re-visits. The Hellenic hinterland is my stamping ground, and so many of these clubs I know reasonably well, so for this weekend the pleasure was in the catching up rather than the process of accumulation. Look out for the click-throughs for the grounds as they were when I first visited them. In some cases the changes are remarkable.

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The Hellenic Western Side

19 Sunday May 2019

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Thursday 18th April 2019 ko 19.30

Hellenic League Division One West

ALMONDSBURY 3 (Sheppard 45 Lane 85 Bisp 87)

MALMESBURY VICTORIA 2 (Jones 6 Tranter 77)

Att 195

Entry £5

Programme £1

As I mentioned in the Barnton article the original plan for Easter was for GroundhopUK to be based in the North West Counties League. Conventional wisdom would be that they made a mistake in turning down Easter for their hop, but they got excellent crowds for their event in March, so perhaps they bucked that trend. If turning down Easter could be said to be their loss (and I’m not totally convinced), then the Hellenic certainly gained. By swapping the two events around the Hellenic got a prime groundhopping slot, and he chance for 13 clubs to host rather than the 7 we’d originally planned. Brian King at the Hellenic jumped at the chance of an expanded hop but we did create an oddity though, and that was Almondsbury hosting.

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Botany Bay

17 Friday May 2019

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Tuesday 16th April 2019 ko 18.15

Aylesbury & District League Premier Division

TETSWORTH 5 (Gant 3 85 Jones 12 Riley 18 Nawaz 23og)

ELMHURST 2 (Haider 32 Jabar 66)

Att c20

Entry FREE

If you’ve ever driven on the M40 between Thame and Stokenchurch, then you’ve been within a couple of hundred yards of Tetsworth. You can see the lorries thundering along the embankment from the pretty Oxfordshire village around 4 miles south of Thame on the old A40. Or perhaps car boot sales are your thing? If they are and you’re from the South-East then you’re probably attended one of the mammoth Sunday car boot sales held here. All of that does the village something of a disservice. Continue reading →

The Last Post

08 Wednesday May 2019

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Tuesday 2nd April 2019 ko 18.15

Banbury Charity Cup 2nd Round

BODICOTE SPORTS 3 (Reeves 37 81p Kiss 83)

CHASEWELL PARK 3 (Robertson 43p Beales 52 Harding 64)

Bodicote won 5-4 on penalties (No extra time)

Att c20

Entry FREE

In groundhopper parlance the last part of the season when the clocks go forward and clubs without floodlights can play evening fixtures is known as “Silly Season.” It sounds like a pejorative term, but isn’t meant to be, it refers to the ability to watch leagues you can’t do midweek in the winter. By reputation it evokes summer evenings, watching a game in pleasant rural surroundings in your shirtsleeves. I allowed myself a grim smile as the sleet lashed against my car’s windscreen as I headed the 20-or-so miles north.

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Progression

01 Friday Mar 2019

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Tuesday 26th February 2019 ko 19.45

Hellenic League Division One East

WALLINGFORD TOWN 2 (Williams 81 Silkstone 90) Silkstone missed penalty 90

ABINGDON TOWN 2 (James 40 Smith 51)

Att 45

Entry & Programme £5

If you’re from my part of the world a trip to Wally is one of life’s pleasures, even down to childhood trips passing by here and seeing the sign for adjacent Crowmarsh Gifford “amended” to Crowmarsh McGiffordish- don’t ask me why, I don’t know either! Wallingford is a pretty market town in that part of North Berkshire than since 1974 is now in Oxfordshire. The town was one of the last Royalist bastions to fall at the end of the English Civil War, with Oliver Cromwell taking revenge for their resistance by having the castle slighted in 1652 Continue reading →

The Other Pitch

11 Monday Feb 2019

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Monday 28th January 2019 ko 20.00

Middlesex Premier Cup- Quarter Final

KENSINGTON BOROUGH 0

HAREFIELD UNITED 6 (Clifton 9 Pacquette 30 49 Farhall 73 82 Shaw 90)

Att 47 at Pitch 1, Middlesex FA Ground, Rectory Park, Northolt

Entry & Programme £5*

I’d had no intention of returning to Northolt so soon. I’d paid the Middlesex FA Ground a visit soon after it opened last July, and while it does precisely what the local FA needs it to, I wasn’t exactly prioritising a trip to a caged 3G pitch facility whether or not you categorise ticking of the “other” pitch as a new ground. But then Talksport’s Tony Incenzo spotted this fixture, and what else was I going to do on a Monday? Continue reading →

Adur

30 Wednesday Jan 2019

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Tuesday 8th January 2019 ko 19.45

Southern Combination Division One

SOUTHWICK 0 

SELSEY 2 (Coates 55 Miller 77) Jefkins sent off 38 (2nd booking)

Att 35

Entry £5

Programme £1

I’m not sure how I managed to miss this place. 35 years ago I regularly used to visit my aunt in Hove (actually) and since she owned a beach hut in Shoreham we regularly took the train from Hove and given that the line runs behind Old Barn Way, I must have passed here many many times. Somehow I managed to contrive to miss Southwick’s home, but I can assure you, that wouldn’t happen on a train now! Continue reading →

Roxonian

09 Wednesday Jan 2019

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Tuesday 18th December 2018 ko 19.45

Southern League- Premier Division South

HARROW BOROUGH 2 (Kearney 11 87)

BEACONSFIELD TOWN 1 (Morgan 4)

Att 127

Entry £10

Programme £2

In the great unwritten book of groundhopping tactics, the idea of using 3G pitches as insurance against bad weather is fairly well entrenched. It seems, unfortunately, to have replaced the rule of having a knowledge of well-draining pitches for those times. I was navigating my way around a rain-lashed M25, when I got notification that my intended destination- Sittingbourne, was postponed. It was time to consider my options, and simply going home wasn’t one of them! Continue reading →

The Surprise

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

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Tuesday 4th December 2018 ko 19.30

Leicestershire Senior Cup 2nd Round

NORTH KILWORTH SPORTS 2 (D Laywood 51 90)

KIRBY MUXLOE RESERVES 0

Att 23

Free Entry

These days, I tend to get the most satisfaction from those “Ticks” that are unexpected. Once you push past four figures of grounds visited, your opportunities for easily reached floodlit new grounds rapidly diminish. I’d been keeping an on Cosby-based Saffron Dynamo for a while, the Leicestershire Senior League doesn’t schedule that many midweek fixtures, but when I checked their fixture for this date, I was disappointed to see the game postponed due to a floodlight fault. But I scanned down, and… “Who are North Kilworth?”  Continue reading →

Second Impressions

27 Thursday Dec 2018

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Saturday 24th November 2018 ko 13.30
Eastern Counties League- Division One North

HARLESTON TOWN 4 (Roberts 3 Stone 21 Imrie 69 Delaney 88)

FELIXSTOWE & WALTON UNITED RESERVES 2 (Lee 27 Hillyard 27)

Att c100

Entry & Programme £5

We turned right in to Harleston’s leisure centre car park from Wilderness Lane, and spotted two sets of players warming up on an unrailed pitch. Our collective hearts sank a little, I do like going back to basics every so often, try Headington Butchers for example, but I couldn’t even see a set of goals! Harleston are new to Step 6 for this season having won the Anglian Combination. With the Eastern Counties League expanding into 3 divisions for this year new clubs have been given 3 years to bring their grounds up to standard, but this looked extreme!

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