Tag Archives: groundhopping

Roofer Madness

11 Thursday Feb 2021

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Saturday 19th January 2008 ko 15.00

Northern League Division One

JARROW ROOFING BOLDON COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION 4 (J Gibson 3 Tate 43 Hutchinson 70 Logan 74)

TOW LAW TOWN 0

Att 67

Entry £4

Programme £1

So if I were to tell you I watched Jarrow Roofing FC back in the day presumably you’d assume that  I was visiting Jarrow? And let’s face it, 99 times out of a 100 that logic would be correct, but Jarrow Roofing never did quite fit in.  The fact of the matter is that 13 years ago I was heading to Boldon Colliery near Sunderland, and yes and it may be only 3-and-a-half miles between the two places but the distance between the two wasn’t a matter of semantics.

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Brecknock

06 Saturday Feb 2021

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Sunday 18th February 2007 ko 14.00

Welsh League Division 3

YSTRADGYNLAIS 3 (Hopkins 37p Maggs 82 86)

CWMBRAN CELTIC 3 (Williamson 9 32 Cheedy 16)

Att 47

Entry & Programme £2

When I put together these articles, I tend to ask myself the same question and that’s “Why would someone visit here?” but in this case I think there are two more pressing things to answer! The first and please forgive the mauling of the Welsh language is “Ustra-Gun-Lice” the name means ‘Vale of the river Cynlais’ these days the River Tawe, which gives Abertawe, or Swansea its name. That tells you a little of your second question, the town is roughly 16 miles north west of Swansea.

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The Kings Arms

28 Thursday Jan 2021

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Wednesday 8th October 2008 ko 19.45

Midland Combination Premier Division

MEIR K.A. 4 (Baker 7 Mizkeil 15 Barrass 18 Coulston 66)

BROCTON 3 (Wylde 24 McLeod 37 McMahon 76)

Att 95 at Kings Park, Meir Heath

Entry £5

Programme £1

Memories are strange things- the two details I remember most about visiting Kings Park was that the Sat Nav failed completely just after collecting GroundhopUK’s Chris Berezai at Castle Donington, and the cover behind the goal at the ground once saw service at Alton Towers- it sheltered the platform at the miniature railway! Other than that I wonder how on earth we got there, this was before the days of reliable mobile data and maps, and yet somehow we made kickoff- maybe groundhopper sixth sense does exist. Continue reading →

Walfrid

26 Tuesday Jan 2021

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Sunday 11th May 2008 12.30

Scottish Premier League

CELTIC 2 (McManus 37 McDonald 87)

HIBERNIAN 0

Canning sent off (2nd Booking) 83

Murray sent off (DOGSO) 90

Att 58,515

Entry £26

Programme £2.50

Now you might find this hard to believe but this was actually something to do break up a journey home to Oxfordshire!  Watching a game at Wick Academy had become a mission, and so when I finally managed to get it done at the third attempt a day earlier I  sat in a cheap hotel in Perth contemplating a beast of journey home! It needed something to break up the drive back to Banbury, so a few days earlier I’d looked for a game on the way. I’m not sure why I hadn’t thought about Celtic, it certainly isn’t due to any sectarian thoughts, you’re reading the thoughts of the product of a Protestant father and a Catholic mother after all! Continue reading →

Racing Colours

19 Tuesday Jan 2021

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Saturday 26th December 2009 ko 15.00

Scottish Premier League

MOTHERWELL 1 (Jennings 39)

ST JOHNSTONE 3 (McDonald 55 58 71)

Att 4,140

Entry £22 

Programme £2.50

It wasn’t the most straightforward of Boxing Days. I was still with the ex-wife back in 2009 and we’d finally managed to cope with parental Christmas blackmail (“If you don’t spend Christmas Day with us we won’t bother celebrating it” – How could we be in two places at once??) by booking ourselves into a log cabin in the Lake District for Christmas week. Perhaps the familial gods saw what we did – we promptly got snowed in, and I needed a tow just to get the shopping home! In the end, I ended up parking up half-a-mile from the cabin just to allow myself transport while we were there. It also had the (un) intended benefit of allowing me to go to football!

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The Percy Point

11 Monday Jan 2021

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Saturday 24th January 2009 ko 11.00

Northern Alliance First Division

PERCY MAIN AMATEURS 2 (Betts 46 McEnaney 72)

GOSFORTH BOHEMIANS GARNETT 2 (Atkin 22 73)

Att 61

Entry £1

Programme 50p

If a small football club’s management is reading this and wants a one-off financial boost they could do worse than read this- with the one caveat being don’t try this if your club will be on an organised hop in the near future. Because even after 11 years after the event the adage still holds true- kick off at a weird time and do programme and you will attract groundhoppers. Continue reading →

The Bible Club

04 Monday Jan 2021

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Saturday 24th January 2009 ko 15.00

Scottish League Division One

QUEEN OF THE SOUTH 2 (Dobbie 10 Tosh 56p)

PARTICK THISTLE 2 (Doolan 17 Chaplain 77)

Att 2,811

Entry £15

Programme £2

Iain and I go back a mighty long way, back to the late 1990’s working for a high street bank with a CEO without a “Shred” of dignity, I met him once!. We didn’t meet in the most auspicious of ways, a 2 week business banking course at a golfing hotel just outside of Tewkesbury. I don’t play golf, and Iain couldn’t take his clubs on the plane down from Dumfries each week. We were bored, the hotel isolated, with an expensive bar, and the fruit machine was seeming set against us. We passed (somehow) despite another delegate having his room completely emptied by a burgler (save for a pair of underpants) on the final night, but we kept in contact.

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The Secret Santa

29 Tuesday Dec 2020

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Saturday 19th December 2020 ko 15.00

Hellenic League Division One East

LONG CRENDON 1 (Warwick 54)

WALLINGFORD TOWN 2 (Dean 43 Silkstone 85)

Att 36 at Oxford City FC

Entry £5

No Programme

You could say I was at this game because of Santa Claus! As you may know I’m part of a pub quiz team based at the Masons Arms in Oxford. Each Christmas we have a meal out at a local gastro-pub and exchange gifts in a “Secret Santa” arrangement. Covid of course had meant that meal out was impossible, but we decided to do the Secret Santa gift exchange, and I offered to play Santa for the afternoon and do the collections and deliveries from the doorsteps of our homes. The idea was afterwards to go and watch either of two Oxfordshire Senior League games. The first was Bicester-based Bure Park with Oxford Irish (based at Rose Hill Community Centre) as back-up. Both were 2pm kickoffs. 

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Portmanteau

27 Sunday Dec 2020

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Monday 14th December 2020 ko 19.45

Eastern Counties League Division One South

FRENFORD 2 (Forbes 4 Fairhead 88)

Heatley penalty saved 52

ATHLETIC NEWHAM 2 (Idemudia 9 Kone 90p)

Kone sent off 90 (2nd booking)

Att 87

Entry £4

Programme £1

Monday night football will always attract the groundhoppers, and a club new to Step 6 will do so still further. Here though there was the added thought of exactly which league I was watching. In 2018 the Eastern Senior was created as a Step 6 league to feed the Essex Senior as a joint venture between that league and the Eastern Counties. It seemed to me that the league became rapidly swallowed up by the Eastern Counties League, and has become their Division One South. Now I’m not that worried by the nomenclature, but does anyone have a definitive answer? Continue reading →

Returning Heroes

18 Friday Dec 2020

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Saturday 12th December 2020 ko 15.00

Southern Combination Premier Division

PEACEHAVEN & TELSCOMBE 2 (Benson 50 Webber 78)

STEYNING TOWN COMMUNITY 1 (Cousins 10)

Att 153

Entry £7

Programme online only

Lockdown #2 ended up lasting a couple of weeks longer than either Robyn or I planned, and the irony of both of us contracting Coronavirus during a lockdown isn’t lost on me. We were fortunate, very fortunate to contract only a mild strain of the disease and although we were pretty wiped out for a few days we quickly recovered, with fatigue being the last symptom to fade away. But that fact did influence where we went. I wanted to break up the driving a little, I wasn’t comfortable with the marathon stints I’ve taken on in the past. That brought an idea from the past into my head…. Continue reading →