Tag Archives: Premier League

The Path Less Trodden

15 Wednesday Jul 2015

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Friday 10th July 2015 ko 19.45

League of Ireland First Division

CABINTEELY 0

SHELBOURNE 1 (English 55)

Att 620

Entry €10

Programme €3

The previous day I’d spent a faintly boring few minutes strolling round the bookshop at the airport. These days the sport section is full of Premier League players’ ghost-written “auto”-biographies, and for the most part they follow a similar pattern. Usually a child is discovered by a club, then quickly graduates through the ranks, makes his first team debut, then fame and fortune follow. But what happens to those who for one reason or another don’t make it? Continue reading →

Comfortable

05 Monday Jan 2015

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Sunday 4th January 2015 ko 17.30
FA Cup 3rd Round

ARSENAL 2 (Mertesacker 20 Alexis Sanchez 82)

HULL CITY 0

Att 59,439

Entry, programme and teamsheet £89 (Club Level)

Now I know what you’ve thinking, he was at the Emirates Stadium on a week or two ago! And you’d be right, here’s the report, but 3 more tickets became available, and when have you ever known me to turn down a football match! That clearly goes double for young Oscar, my cousin’s son, so I do have something of a confession to make.

Continue reading →

Another World

05 Friday Dec 2014

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Wednesday 3rd December 2014 ko 19.45

Premier League

ARSENAL 1 (Alexis Sanchez 89)

SOUTHAMPTON 0

Att 60,025

Entry £38.50

Programme £3.50

If you are my regular reader, you are probably wondering why I was at the Emirates Stadium? My normal territory is non-league, watching semi-pro and amateur games with a £1 cup of tea and a rather bulky SLR camera.

A few weeks ago I attended a family wedding, and for once I spent an autumnal Saturday indoors! It was a wonderfully uplifting experience, and just before the cake-cutting my cousin Julia asked me a question that threw me a little; she said,

“You’re the football fanatic, how do I take my son Oscar to watch Arsenal?” Continue reading →

The Absolutely Blindingly Obvious

15 Wednesday Oct 2014

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Tuesday 7th October 2014 ko 19.00

Northern Premier League Premier Division

BARWELL 2 (Castle 18p Barlone 55)

ILKESTON 1 (Adams 11)

Att 176

Entry £10

Programme £2

The more you delve into the act of watching, “Football wherever it may be,” you soon end up with illogical statistics. Why would I watch more football in Sweden for example than I have in Scotland? But it’s the individual ground visits where the really strange quirks lie. Continue reading →

Led Zep

21 Wednesday May 2014

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Monday 19th May 2014 ko 18.30

Hertfordshire Senior County League, Senior Premier Division

CUFFLEY 0

STANDON & PUCKERIDGE 4 (Endacott 3 Stephen 16 James 47 Miller 51)

Att 41

Entry FREE

Programme NO

Tea 80p

I thought I knew North London and its suburbs, the villages with their war memorials and their church spires. God knows I spent 3 years living there, but every so often I visit somewhere that throws me.

At first Cuffley fitted my expectations, its a place of wealth, a popular place for Premier League footballers to buy property with easy access to the capital, and former Tesco CEO Sir Terry Leahy lives here. That said there is resistance locally to a Tesco Local opening here, and I do wonder if it did open, would Sir Terry shop there? But there’s more to the village than meets the eye, and it all starts with the football club…. Continue reading →

The Auld Fem Derby

03 Thursday Apr 2014

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Sunday 30th March 2014 ko 12.00

Scottish Women’s Premier League

RANGERS 2 (Sneddon 20p Mulvey 55)

CELTIC 1 (Jones 11)

Att 79 at Petershill Park, Glasgow (Petershill JFC)

Entry £4

No Programme

To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure how to approach this game. On one hand it was a women’s game, not known for being high profile in the UK, but it did involve Celtic and Rangers with all the sectarian idiocy that fixtures between the two clubs attracts. I pondered my attire, would that red Neilston scarf bought the previous day attract unwanted attention, would my SLR camera be allowed in, and would there be a sizeable police presence?

Continue reading →

Hope

25 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by in H, R, V

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Saturday 18th January 2014

14.00 Malta Premier League

RABAT AJAX 2 (Allopardi 61 Micallef 72)

TARXIEN RAINBOWS 6 (Barbosa 10 Pulo 29 77 82 Santos Silva 36 71)

Att c350

16.00 Malta Premier League

VITTORIOSA STARS 0

VALLETTA 4 (Nafti 26 Agius 28 Dos Santos 78 Nyang 84)

Att c350

At Hibernians Stadium, Paola

Entry €6 (both games)

No Programme

Teamsheet FREE

If you want to find out about what makes a country tick, give its public transport a try. With Andy headed to tick a ground on Gozo I decided to tick one of Malta’s most famous grounds Hibernians, very much in the hinterlands of the country’s capital Valletta.

The bus wended its way along the northern coast of the island, passing past the salt pans at the edge of St Paul’s Bay, then through the small villages due east. Hearing the Maltese language fascinated me. The structure is Semetic, or Arabic and its the only language of its type to have a western alphabet albeit with some adapted letters, there’s an H with an extra horizontal bar for example. However with Sicily only 50 miles north, the Italian influence is clear with large chunks of the language thrown into the linguistic melting pot, Grazie and Ciao being perhaps the most obvious. Continue reading →