• About this humble little website

Football: Wherever it may be

~ Laurence's football travels

Football: Wherever it may be

Tag Archives: Harefield United

The Other Pitch

11 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by laurencereade in K

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

England, Football, groundhopping, Harefield United, Kensington Borough, Middlesex FA ground, Rectory Park, Richard Pacquette

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 →

51.534156 -0.378935

Menagerie

25 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by laurencereade in H

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Football, goals, groundhopping, Harefield United, League, London Tigers, Spartan South Midlands

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 ko 7.45pm

Spartan South Midlands League Premier Cup 2nd Round

HAREFIELD UNITED 2 (Reader 42 Majeed 51)

LONDON TIGERS 0

Att 40

Entry & Programme £6

Tea £1

Back in May the move from Banbury to Oxford, involved a distance of a mere 31 miles, but it did alter massively my potential destinations for midweek gamea. This fixture is now only 40 miles from home!

Harefield is sometimes described as the nearest village to London, and it has an odd mix of village and suburbia about it. Its most famous for the hospital where Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub FRS, consultant cardiothoracic surgeon carried out the first live lobe lung transplant and went on to perform more transplants than any other surgeon in the world. By the end of the 1980s Harefield Hospital was the world’s leading transplant centre. A lesser known fact is that three Victoria Cross winners hail from the village.

Preston Park is on the right as you enter the village from Hillingdon, and is a good example of a lower division Isthmian ground. There’s a low seated stand, and opposite is a quirky covered enclosure; perhaps the reason why the club left the Isthmian on ground grading issues is because there’s no cover behind either goal.

It was a pleasant surprise to catch up with Pinner-based hopper Les Bull, and we both enjoyed the announcer trying to add razzmatazz to a cold damp game in front of 40 patrons. The visitors are a real “United Nations” team, having started out as a charity project to help disadvantaged children in Paddington. From there they entered the Middlesex League playing out of Kingsbury Town. When that club folded Tigers were allowed to take their place in the Spartan South Midlands League and became Kingsbury London Tigers. Now they’ve moved to the old Viking Greenford ground, and dropped the Kingsbury prefix although pitch problems have meant that as I write they’ve yet to play a home game!

While off the field the Tigers have problems, on this occasion they had a far simpler one, namely that in 90 minutes of play they failed to muster even one shot on target! Just one decent shot that hit the crossbar, during the second half, so it was left to the Hares’ striker Jack Reader to score one and set up Aban Majeed for the second, to settle a fairly forgetable game.

Some pretty pointless signage!

What happens when you ride a bike through wet concrete!


Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 6,296 other followers

Look for stuff here folks!

Blogroll

  • Damage In The Box Chris Powell’s travels across the UK and Europe. The artist must frequently seen in the pub 0
  • FA Cup Factfile Phil Annets on all things to do with the World’s greatest cup competition 10
  • Football Club History Database Want to know where a club finished in what league and in what year? Richard Rundle’s site is a veritable goldmine! 0
  • Football Hopper “Fast” Eddie McGeown’s erudite perambulations around the nation’s football grounds 0
  • Gibbo's 92 As Atherton Colleries’ programme editor puts it, ” The best trips are random, unplanned and spontaneous.” 0
  • Groundhopping.se Per-Gunnar Nilsson’s trips around his native Sweden, and into Europe 0
  • Grounds for concern The late Mishi Morath’s picture blog. Obviously no longer updated but still a wonderful archive. 0
  • Kate Shrewsday. A thousand thousand stories Not about football, but beautiful writing, Kate can make words dance. 0
  • Modus Hopper Random Graham Yapp’s travels 0
  • The 100 Grounds Club Shaun Smith’s groundhopping football blog. The original internet ground logging website. 0
  • The Football Traveller The bible for every groundhopper. Non-League fixtures magazine delivered weekly. Published and edited by Chris Bedford 0
  • The Intinerant Football Watcher Peter finds the grounds other hoppers cannot reach. Top bloke too! 0
  • The66POW Rob Waite’s travels 0

Your very own calendar!

August 2022
M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031  
« Jul    

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Football: Wherever it may be
    • Join 6,296 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Football: Wherever it may be
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...