Tag Archives: Football

The Power of 3000

07 Monday Aug 2017

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Saturday 29th July 2017 ko 19.45

United Counties League Division One

BOURNE TOWN 1 (Russell 90p)

RAUNDS TOWN 2 (Porter 36 Townsend 81)

Att 459

Entry £5

Programme £2 (poor for what it was)

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating how much Chris Berezai and I love it when there’s someone there to meet the hop coach, it takes any uncertainty out what adds up to GroundhopUK handing over a coachload of hoppers to another club for another couple of hours, even if a fair few immediately disappear to tick off a pub or pubs! Here Bourne did the greeting in spades with an official there to welcome each and everyone to Abbey Lawns before whisking Chris, coach driver Dwayne and I off to hospitality. But this wasn’t an evening about hospitality, this was an evening about redemption. Continue reading →

Beer Drinkers

04 Friday Aug 2017

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Saturday 29th July 2017 ko 13.45

Peterborough & District League Premier Division

MOULTON HARROX 3 (Parry 6 Watkin 26 Woods 42)

SUTTON BRIDGE UNITED 0

Att 280

Entry £4

Programme £1

You got a sense of divergence as the crowd left Holbeach. Some headed for Deeping, some for Fakenham and others March Town. The destinations all had one thing in common, they all were grounds at Step 6 or above, or putting it another way the kind of grounds that if we’d have made the hop an exclusively UCL event, would not have seen hoppers on anything like the scale that happened here. Whilst I understand their reasons, there is a point of view that doesn’t deal with life at Step 7 or below; it would have been lovely to have seen them try the delights of Moulton Harrox and Spalding Town, there were were strong reasons for optimism. Continue reading →

The Prime Meridian

01 Tuesday Aug 2017

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Saturday 29th July 2017 ko 10.45

United Counties League Premier Division

HOLBEACH UNITED 6 (Bird 14 53 Leckie 18 Jackson 56 Sanders 83 Davies 85)

SLEAFORD TOWN 0

Att 333

Entry £6

Programme £1.50

From our base in Peterborough coach driver Dwayne set sail north-east heading into East Anglia in general and more specifically the Fenlands. The topography flattened out considerably, Holbeach has a coastal suffix with good reason, it used to be only 2 miles from the sea, and it’s area South Holland, a good hint as to who drained the land!  Continue reading →

Twitching

26 Wednesday Jul 2017

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Tuesday 25th July 2017 ko 19.30

Preseason Friendly

HULL CITY 0

FC NANTES 0

Att 2,097 at Craven Park (Hull Kingston Rovers RLFC)

Entry £12

Programme £1.50

Every so often in groundhopping you get a game played at a one-off ground that the case is so compelling for going that you drop everything and go there. It is the footballing version of what twitching is to birdwatching, and yes, there were many groundhoppers at this game.  Continue reading →

Westland

20 Thursday Jul 2017

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Saturday 15th July 2017 ko 15.00

Preseason Friendly

YEOVIL TOWN 1 (Olomola 75)

BRISTOL CITY 3 (Reid 22 28 Magnusson 25)

Att 2,636 (883 away)

Entry £8

Programme £1

On occasion I get asked how I pick my games, and people are often surprised when I say that often they pick me! This one was a case in point, I was due to be in Minehead in the evening and my girlfriend Robyn is a Bristol City fan. Then there was the Martin McConachie factor to consider…

Continue reading →

The Great British Play-Off

13 Thursday Jul 2017

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Tuesday 11th July 2017 ko 18.45

Pre-season Friendly

PENN & TYLERS GREEN 0

WINDSOR FC 1 (Shafi 18)

Att c40

Entry £2

I reckon that in groundhopping circles Penn & Tylers Green have got an unnecessarily bad press. I know why, I remember the Hellenic Hop visiting quite a few of the grounds of Division 1 East at Step 6, and I know of a few southern-based hoppers that took some convincing that a trip to the Step 7 Central Midlands League Hop was a worthwhile exercise. I heard the comments, along the lines that if Division One East was little more than railed off fields than what must the level below be like? Continue reading →

Aerospace

12 Wednesday Jul 2017

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Saturday 8th July 2017 ko 14.30

Pre-season friendly

COSMOS UK 0

BROMLEY HEATH UNITED 6 (Nolan 15 20 62 Britton 62 Greenaway 72 Mitchelmore 80)

Att 6 at BAWA Club, Stanton Road, Filton, Bristol

Free Entry

The great advantage of an early kickoff was that it allowed a double with just about anything in Bristol. The only issue was that with family there, and a hop in the Western League, there isn’t much I hadn’t already paid a visit to. It needed me to travel to the Cosmos! Continue reading →

Near to the site that was

06 Thursday Jul 2017

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Tuesday 4th July 2017 ko 19.00

Preseason Friendly

LYNE F.C. 2 (Esperit 6 Holly 62)

COBHAM 3 (Ewam 37 Anderson 69 80) Davies missed penalty 12

Att c20

Entry FREE

It is the lot of the groundhopper that you look through the endless lists of fixtures, and  try to find something that interests, and you can get to. I’ll admit, I’d not heard of Lyne FC, I supposed they’d have to be in and around Surrey judging by Cobham being the opposition. I’m grateful to Lyne, they have both an excellent website and twitter feed, and it turned out there were no end of reasons to pay them a visit.  Continue reading →

Train Time

28 Wednesday Jun 2017

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Saturday 24th June 2017 ko 14.30

Pre-season Friendly

DENBIGH TOWN 4 (13p 73 77 86og)

C.P.D. LLANUWCHLLYN 2 (82 90)

Att 45 @ Ty Isa, Rhewl. (Rhewl FC)

Free Entry

And Llangollen Railway

Return ticket from Corwen East to Llangollen £15

It was a day of coincidences, another chance to watch a Welsh pre-season friendly in June, and another chance to double it up with a heritage steam train ride. This time the railway was full-sized, although the Llangollen Railway runs on tracks once part of the Ruabon to Barmouth line axed under Beeching. That route included the now Bala Lake Railway which we’d travelled on the previous week! Continue reading →

The Watertower

23 Friday Jun 2017

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Sunday 4th June 2017 ko 15.00

Division 5 Sydvästra Skåne

VELLINGE I.F. 7 (Marius Hansson 22 47 C Wreme 34 60 Kruse 43 Lindell 74 Krönström 90)

HUSIE F.F. 1 (Johannsson 66)

Att 68

Entry 40 sek

We began to make our way back to the Øresund Bridge and our flights from Kastrup airport. The 11th Swedish Hop’s final stop was Vellinge, whose claim to fame seems to be that it was once voted Sweden’s second best place to live, history doesn’t record who won though! The other thing Vellinge is famous for is it’s 40 metres tall, 400 million litre vatterntorn, or water tower. And if you weren’t completely au fait with what a huge concrete funnel is for, the clever Swedes have painted the thing in blue stripes! Continue reading →