Plan C

14 Friday Mar 2014

Tags

Ceredigion League, Chris Berezai, Drefach Velindre, GroundhopUK, Johnny James, Llanybydder, Maesglas, Nant Bargod, Wales, Woollen Museum

Sunday 9th March 2014 ko 10.15

Ceredigion League Division One

BARGOD RANGERS 3 (Skinner 2 35 D Evans 76)

MAESGLAS 3 (J James 15 38 Irvine 29)

Att 238

Entry £3

Programme £1

Badge £3

Tea & A Welsh Cake £1

Hat £3

So picture the scene, I’m sat in my office at work and I’ve got Twitter on in the background. All of a sudden the following tweet pops up….

….and our Sunday morning game goes out of the window just under 3 weeks before the event. I knew Chris Berezai was at a business meeting in the north, so I spent a frantic few minutes looking at the Ceredigion website (and I’m thankful its detailed and up to date). It became clear that unless we were either going to run the hop a game short, or rejig all the other fixtures there was only one game open to us, Bargod vs Maesglas. We’d already postponed our visit to Saron as they’d played every 1st XI in their league, many hoppers won’t watch games involving reserves, and the only 1st XI Bargod had to meet was Maesglas. Continue reading →

Gwersyll Yr Urdd

13 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by laurencereade in C

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Ceredigion League, Crannog, Dylan Thomas, Edward Elgar, Gwersyll Yr Urdd, Hop, Llangrannog, Llanybydder

Saturday 9th March 2013 ko 10.30

Ceredigion League Division One

CRANNOG 6 (May 26 S Jones 35 Colvin 44 90 Forbes 59 Glover 85)

LLANYBYDDER 0

Att 134

Entry & Programme by Hop Ticket

Badge £3

Leaving Carmarthen the Groundhop coach headed north-east to Cardigan Bay. I felt as if I was heading out of English Wales into the heart Of Welsh Wales. A clue can be found as to where you are on the road signs, in English Wales the English version is first, in Welsh Wales the Cymraeg version comes first.

The coach reached Llangrannog around 5 minutes before kick-off, rather later than we’d wanted due to the driver using his own directions. It’s a small fishing village of around 900 inhabitants in Ceredigion, 9 miles south of New Quay, and you are definitely in Welsh Wales, just try to access the English version of the town’s website!

http://www.llangrannog.org.uk/index.htm

Crannog play just outside of the village, at Gwersyll Yr Urdd or to roughly translate The Youth Camp. It doesn’t lack facilities, with trampolines, and an artificial ski slope, as well as the coastal walks that inspired the likes of Edward Elgar and Dylan Thomas. It’s there to promote Welsh identity and healthy living, and as such the young person visiting would expect to speak Welsh throughout their stay. I was fortunate that with my total lack of Cymraeg everyone I spoke to was happy to speak English, although when I was setting up to distribute the 5 game programme packs I asked two young children to move slightly and they didn’t understand what I was saying! You live and learn!

For all of that I’ll remember Llangrannog and its friendly little football club most for the wonderful view behind one goal, of Cardigan Bay. Yes, there are similarities with my recent trip to Clovelly AFC, but this had the added sense of a club introducing itself to a group of people who previously hadn’t heard of Llangrannog, let alone a football team formed in 1984 and accepted into the Ceredigion League a mere 8 hours later! The club worked hard at its day with the bacon baps selling well and a young lady walking round the pitch making sure those who wanted a pin badge could buy one! Initially I was a little disappointed with the attendance but then I asked one of the ladies serving food how many spectators they normally got.

“About 10 on a good day,” she said, before adding, ” But often its just the three of us,” pointing at the other two ladies serving.

It proved to be a good steer on attendances throughout the weekend. Few groundhoppers saw anything other than all five games, so the differences in crowd numbers were down to clubs’ success in getting their own people to come and watch.

All present saw a one-sided encounter with the final score accurately reflecting Crannog’s dominance, although the visitors could point to two goals originating from unlucky ricochets. Overall I sensed that those who were watching Ceredigion League football for the first time were relieved on two levels. Firstly that the standard was better than they’d expected, and that the expected rain hadn’t materialised. In fact, I walked back to the coach trying not to admit to myself that the sun was shining; as organiser you mustn’t tempt fate.

Eisteddfod

11 Sunday Mar 2012

Posted by laurencereade in L

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

castell coaches, Cerdigion League, Daniel Thomas, Football, groundhopping, Josh Coombes, Lampeter, Llanybydder, Mark Rivers, Mid Wales Hop Up, Oliver McEnery

Friday 9th March 2012 ko 7.30pm

Ceredigion League Division One

LAMPETER TOWN 2 (Rivers 39 Coombes 90)

LLANYBYDDER 2 (McEnery 13 D Thomas 84)

Att 197

Entry & Programme by hop ticket

Badge £3

Cawl (Lamb stew) £3

For those of you who don’t know me, I should explain my involvement for the next 4 games. I’m Chris Berezai’s deputy at GroundhopUK and we’ve organised hops over England and Wales for many years. I also assist Kim Hedwall who organises the Swedish groundhop in June each year. The idea is to “Turbo-charge” groundhopping by staggering kick-offs so multiple games can be seen in a day. To attract the fans the clubs produce a programme, and lay on catering. In the case of the clubs on this hop, it turned a normal attendance of 20 , into 200 or so, producing a good payday for the clubs.

This hop was in fact a tidying up exercise to get visits to Aberaeron and UWA done. Both are Mid-Wales League sides, and we’ve done hops in that league on August Bank Holiday for the last 3 years, with another, the last this coming August. Trouble is neither of those two sides are able to play at that time, so an extra hop was needed. More pressingly Aberaeron will vacate their ground at the end of the season.

With 2 sides to visit, the day needed padding out. The original idea was to finish at Llanrhaedr, but when the visitors refused to a later kickoff we had real problems. We were fortunate that Dai Davies at the Ceredigion League (a feeder to the Mid-Wales League), grabbed at the idea, and after much to-ing and fro-ing, games were resheduled to give us a Friday night under lights at Lampeter and a late afternoon game at New Quay the next day. Accomodation was booked, Keith Regan at Castell Coaches (a legend and he knows it!) sorted us out a coach, and his expert driving services booked.

Friday turned out to be a very long day, albeit very rewarding. Fellow hoppers Craig and Lee met me in Oxford at 8am, and our first job was to head to Coleshill United for a ground inspection for September’s North Berkshire League hop (You’ll love the place!). Then it was over the Severn Bridge to meet Chris and his party at one of our old stamping grounds, Trefforest. Whilst the others enjoyed South Wales’ best real ale pub The Otley Arms, Chris and I drove to the western end of the the M4, Pont Abraham to meet journalist Chris Harte, who very kindly had collected the programmes for all 4 games. From there it was back along the M4 to another hopper Richard, who let us use his front room to put together 95 programme packs for those with prebooked tickets. From there it was back to Trefforest to pick up the others. From there just a short drive along the A470 to Caerphilly to Castell Coaches.

It’s always a pleasure to work with Keith and Castell, and he was in his usual ebullient form as he bypassed Friday afternoon traffic as we picked up 35 hoppers from Cardiff station, and headed north, via Merthyr Tydfil, to the west Wales town of Lampeter in double-quick time.

Make no mistake, you are in Welsh Wales here. On an extreme level, the Free Wales Army was founded here in 1963, by William Julian Cayo-Evan. A paramilitary Welsh Nationalist organisation, it fizzled out in the 1970’s. On a far less extreme level, the town is a centre for the Welsh language and culture, and is the UK’s smallest university town, University of Wales, Trinity Saint David adding around 1,000 on to the normal population of around 3,000. On a personal level, I very nearly went to university here, before choosing the brighter lights of London.

If things had worked out differently I may have visited Maes Y Felin over 20 years earlier, its very much the junior partner of the rugby union club running parallel to it. The rugby pitch is railed off, and there’s a large club house behind one goal. The football club makes do with a changing room block, and a rope for the pitch. The floodlights were an unusual sight for this league but gave us our Friday night game.

An under 18 game was in progress on the rugby ground and I was pleased to see our game gettiung a larger attendance. The rugby crowd looked a little nonplussed a the high attendance the football was getting!

The club made the most of their opportunity with a gazebo being erected, and a barbeque on an old circular saw fired up. A pot of Welsh Cawl (lamb stew) provided sustainance for Keith and I, followed by some Barra Brith (malted loaf). Programme packs were distributed and we were royally entertained as Lampeter entertained Llanybydder hailing from a mere 12 miles away.

Oliver McEnery’s free kick was a spectacular opening to the game, but Mark Rivers’ reponse was a fitting reposte. The two sides slugged it out in a highly entertaining, end to end match, with Daniel Thomas thinking he’d won it for Llanybydder only for Josh Coombes to fire home for a deserved equaliser deep into injury time.

It was a marvelous start to this mini-hop and it was a happy coach party that arrived the Hotel Gwesty Marine in Aberystwyth around an hour later. With around 40 hoppers staying a poster in the hotel lift amused me. It read, ” If the hotel bar is quiet we will be closing at 10.30pm.” They clearly didn’t know who they were dealing with, as we were still chatting and drinking at midnight! When you see some people so infrequently, you have to use every opportunity to catch up!

Many thanks for Craig Dabbs for the use of his photos