Tag Archives: Lowland League

Culinary Delights

21 Thursday Oct 2021

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Saturday 2nd October 2021 ko 14:00

Lowland League

BONNYRIGG ROSE 2 (Turner 17 Young 59)

DALBEATTIE STAR 1 (Todd 46)

Att 517

Entry £9

Programme £2

Teamsheet FREE

Pie- Doner kebab & chilli sauce

The beauty of the Saturday on this edition of the Scottish Hop was that none of the 4 grounds were more than a couple of miles from the next. It seemed as soon as we’d left Dalkeith we’d arrived at Bonnyrigg and with all due respect to the other clubs we visited this weekend, this was the club I’d anticipated visiting the most. Continue reading →

The Delay

08 Friday Oct 2021

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Friday 1st October 2021 ko 19.45

Lowland League

BO’NESS UNITED 3 (Flynn 31 Jacobs 42 Locke 68)

CIVIL SERVICE STROLLERS 1 (Cole 43)

Att 507

Entry £7

Programme £1

Pie – Scotch or Macaroni

It is a historical point that the first hop to be cancelled due to the pandemic was the Scottish Hop and the first one back could so easily have been this one, delayed for 18 months!  While I loved what we did and will do in the Witney & District League this is altogether a different animal. But you would have thought that simply taking the same event, with the same host clubs (albeit with the Friday and Sunday games transposed) and restaging it after the break would be easy enough to do wouldn’t you? And you’d be wrong! Continue reading →

Turning the Bull

11 Tuesday Apr 2017

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Saturday 25th March 2017 ko 19.00

Lowland League

HAWICK ROYAL ALBERT 2 (Hunter 14 Mitchell 58) Jack sent off 80 (2nd booking)

EAST STIRLINGSHIRE 4 (Rodgers 36 80 Glasgow 76 Sludden 90)

Att 287

Entry £5

Programme £1

After 2 highly enjoyable games at Eyemouth and Coldstream my warm forehead told me I’d caught the sun. I quietly gave thanks for the fine weather, but making our way via Kelso I was amazed to see a gritting lorry coming the other way! Now I know the temperature can drop rapidly north of the border, and in the end I was glad I retrieved my coat from the boot. Continue reading →

Deuce

09 Sunday Apr 2017

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Friday 24th March 2017 ko 19.45

Lowland League

PRESTON ATHLETIC 0 Cowan sent off (DOGSO) 53

CUMBERNAULD COLTS 2 (Brown 25 82)

Att 263

Entry £5

Programme £2

If there was ever a game I wanted to take place it was this one. On last year’s Scottish Hop Preston had seen their game called off late in the day due to a supposedly waterlogged pitch. My abiding memory of the piece was the gap in the car park where once the referee’s car once stood, he’d made a sharp exit, and club secretary Lesley Birrell in tears. We eventually ran the coaches to Civil Service Strollers (We’re still waiting for the programmes from them!) but that was no consolation to the Prestonpans club.

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Strive

20 Sunday Mar 2016

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Sunday 13th March 2016 ko 12.00

Lowland League

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY 3 (Evans 7 89 Guthrie 14)

SELKIRK 2 (King 19 O’Connor 86)

Att 294

Entry £5

Programme £2

One thing to appreciate about the hop hotel in East Kilbride is that after 2 years they’d learned to cope with two coachloads of hoppers. At breakfast the plates were piled high, as we ate in anticipation of a long trip south after this game. Soon enough, it was time to head east back to Edinburgh and with all due respect to our hosts, probably the least anticipated venue on the hop. Of course, as ever, I’d got it all completely wrong! Continue reading →

Regain

17 Thursday Mar 2016

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Saturday 12th March 2016 ko 20.00

Lowland League

EDINBURGH CITY 1 (Paterson 68)

EAST KILBRIDE 1 (Hastings 24)

Att 418

Entry £5

Programme £2

Of the six grounds on this years Lowland League Hop, this one was the one I was looking forward to the most. That sense was heightened when we travelled the short distance from Ainslie Park, and as the sun set, and we travelled slowly along the A1 London Road, the towering floodlights seemed to beckon us in. The sense of history seeped from the concrete buttresses too…. Continue reading →

Reading Matters

14 Monday Mar 2016

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Saturday 12th March 2016 ko 11.00

Lowland League

WHITEHILL WELFARE 3 (Muir 17 Connolly 28 Devlin 76) Williams missed penalty 81

GALA FAIRYDEAN ROVERS 0 Gibson sent off 47 (violent conduct)

Att 324

Entry £5

Programme £2

If there was one club I’d wanted to visit on the Lowland Hop’s run it was Rosewell’s Whitehill Welfare. The roots of this hop, and the organised hop in Scotland lie with a tip I’d had at a Camelon Juniors game, and a subsequent phone call with Welfare’s Jamie McQueen. He put the idea to his committee who then got the league committee involved, and the rest is history! So if there was one club I really didn’t want to have a problem it was Whitehill…… Continue reading →

Grand Day Out

29 Sunday Mar 2015

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Sunday 22nd March 2015 ko 15.00

Lowland League

THREAVE ROVERS 2 (Struthers 7 Donley 43) Miller sent of 87 (violent conduct)

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY 3 (Daniels-Yeoman 12 Aitken 61 Ward 81)

Att 462

Entry £5

Programme £1.50

Here’s a first for you, has a groundhop every visited a club named after a tea rooms? The club is named after the café in Castle Douglas where it was formed in 1953. The tea rooms in turn were named after Threave Castle, and Threave is derived from the Welsh term “Tref,” meaning homestead. Perhaps that’s why we used two Welsh coaches for the weekend! Continue reading →

Brutalist

26 Thursday Mar 2015

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Saturday 21st March 2015 ko 19.00

Lowland League

GALA FAIRYDEAN ROVERS 1 (Bonnar 49)

UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING 2 (Bonar 43 Geddes 90)

Att 323

Entry £5

Programme £2

The sun began to set and as the coach reached Galashiels I relaxed for the first time since we’d left Hilingdon 36 hours earlier. I knew everyone wanted to visit the iconic club of Gala, and in Graeme McIver I had a club contact who was competent to the point where Chris and I knew all we needed to do is let him get on with staging the game. That doesn’t happen very often, clubs at the level GroundhopUK organise hops for aren’t used to having 300-plus crowds so guidance is essential, to do otherwise is at best unfair, and at worst folly. Graeme simply needed to know how many tickets we’d sold and a rough idea of the likely attendance, and he was more than capable of doing the rest. Continue reading →

Battleground

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

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Saturday 21st March 2015 ko 15.30

Lowland League

SELKIRK 1 (See 58)

THE SPARTANS 1 (Brown 84)

Att 281

Entry £5

Programme £2

With so much riding on this hop I was nervous as the coach left Innerleithen for our middle game of the day. It’s that word “middle” that’s key, on any organised groundhop you tend to see, “Drift” where hoppers find an alternative games for the middle game on a Saturday when the competition for them is at its greatest. The solution is to schedule 4 games so that the hopper has to miss 2 hop games to go elsewhere but the geography and the lack of floodlights at Selkirk’s Yarrow Park made that impossible. Continue reading →