Tag Archives: Swedish hop

The Deer

22 Monday Jul 2024

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Saturday 15th June 2024 ko 10:00

Stockholm Youth League P2007A

SOLLENTUNA FK NORD 1 (Sheko 89)

URSVIK IK 14 (Mermer 6 Adam 10 Mohamed 10 30 64 Sörenson 37 59 76 83 Altgenug 53 66 Sjöman 75 79 84)

Att 30, 2 dogs and a deer at Edsbergs Sportfält 3, Sollentuna

Free Entry

The Swedish Hop’s cost of £320 included bed and breakfast for two nights, all transport in Sweden, together with entry fees for all games, and a goodie bag!

In the long history of the Swedish Hop the Saturday and Sunday morning games tended to be in the lowest tiers, normally divisions 6 and 7. With us never being able to attract the levels of groundhoppers that would allow us to get local associations to move kick-off times, we’ve always taken in what games we can, whenever we can.

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The Dome

21 Sunday Jul 2024

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Friday 14th June 2024 ko 20:00

Division 4 Stockholm Mellersta

SICKLA IF 2 (Rosell 40 Marsden 80)

RINKEBY UNITED 2 (Rawufa 57 Jobe 88)

Att 88 at Nacka IP2

Free Entry

The Swedish Hop’s cost of £320 included bed and breakfast for two nights, all transport in Sweden, together with entry fees for all games, and a goodie bag!

The tram from Sickla Kaj wended its way to Solna, and I used the time to reflect on how the Swedish Hop has changed everything for me since that day in 2007 when the plane landed at Skavsta and the very first Swedish Hop watched Nyköping BIS that evening. That was my first ever game abroad, and it was organiser Kim Hedwall that got me there. Since then, I’ve watched football in 28 countries, so I’ve got a lot to thank him for. He started me off, and without that start so much that’s wonderful would never have happened. It is possible that I’d never have met Robyn. Infamously we met on Twitter and what attracted me to her was my tales of footballing travel. As I said, I owe Kim and Sweden a lot.

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The Canal Plan

13 Thursday Jul 2023

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Saturday 3rd June 2023 ko 16:00

Ettan Norra

HAMMARBY TALANG FF 0

STOCKHOLM INTERNAZIONALE 1 (Rashidi 90)

Att 324 at Kanalplan/ Hammarby IP

Entry 100 sek (approx. £7.20)

The Swedish Hop’s cost of £450 included bed and breakfast for two nights, all transport in Sweden, together with entry fees and programmes for all games.

Just about every Swedish Hop we’ve run in the Stockholm area over the 16 years has been based around a ground that either Kim Hedwall or I or the both of us has previously visited and wanted to take folks to. Normally Kim picks the ground, we watch a game and without actually saying it he says, “What do you think of this?” Continue reading →

The Lake

05 Wednesday Jul 2023

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Saturday 3rd June 2023 ko 13:00

Ettan Norra

SOLLENTUNA FK 1 (Dejene 57)

NORDIC UNITED 2 (Shhab 51 60)

Att 116

Entry by donation

The Swedish Hop’s cost of £450 included bed and breakfast for two nights, all transport in Sweden, together with entry fees and programmes for all games.

The start of Saturday morning on the Swedish Hop was a bit of a mystery to me. We were based in a quite superlative hotel more or less adjacent to Sollentuna railway station, with a game at Sollentunavallen, no more than half a mile away at 13:00, so why was the Swedish Hop party all in reception at 9:30 and ready to go? Continue reading →

The 14th Edition

04 Tuesday Jul 2023

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Friday 2nd June 2023 ko 20:00

Division 2 Södra Svealand

RÅGSVEDS IF 0

IFK HANINGE 1 (Ghozzi 60)

Att 139 at Hagsätra IP

Entry 75 sek (approx. £5.45)

The Swedish Hop’s cost of £450 included bed and breakfast for two nights, all transport in Sweden, together with entry fees and programmes for all games.  

When in June 2019 the 13th Swedish Hop finished in the little Skåne village of Holmeja, Robyn and I were engaged, the Swedish Hop had run for 13 consecutive years, and organiser Kim Hedwall, Robyn and I pondered how we’d factor in the 14th edition around our wedding! Obviously, a few things got in the way. Continue reading →

Friendship

17 Friday Apr 2020

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With the football season over prematurely due to the Coronavirus Pandemic I’m in the unusual position of actually having this blog up to date! So to keep the content coming, and for something to do, I’ll do some old grounds and games where there’s a story to tell.

Saturday 18th June 2011 ko 10.15

Division 6A Stockholm

ÅKERSBERGA 2 (Marcus 2 (Marcus Eriksson 56 66)

Dennis Wik sent off (2nd booking)

F.C.PLAVI TEAM 2 (Todorov 27 Makoimovic 88)

Att 52

In the 4 years that had passed since the Swedish Hop had made its debut in Nyköping so much had changed. For a start we’d more or less made a base for ourselves in Stockholm and had started picking out the unexplored gems in Stockholms Lan – Stockholm County. Organiser Kim Hedwall had realised that Interbus, who supplied the coach and Thomas the driver also did the coaches for many of Stockholm’s professional sports clubs. So with ice hockey being out of season we spent this weekend being ferried around in the Djurgården’s ice hockey team coach. Continue reading →

New Ground

14 Tuesday Apr 2020

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With the football season over prematurely due to the Coronavirus Pandemic I’m in the unusual position of actually having this blog up to date! So to keep the content coming, and for something to do, I’ll do some old grounds and games where there’s a story to tell.

Friday 15th June 2007 ko 19.30

Division 2 Östra Svealand

NYKÖPINGS B.I.S. 5 (Holmström 39 53 Stensson 64 M Funes 71 Lundgren 85)

AKROPOLIS I.F. 3 (Allyn 64 88 Birras 90)

Att 226

These days there are no lack of “Foreign Hops” aimed primarily at UK-based groundhoppers. Off the top of my head, there’s been ones in Germany, Switzerland, Romania and the Covid-19 pandemic saw one scheduled in Denmark cancelled. The attraction is clear, see football in a new country but have the logistics organised by someone with local expertise. Continue reading →

Making Friends Wherever We Go

02 Friday Aug 2019

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Sunday 9th June 2019 ko 15.00

Division 7 Södra Skåne

HOLMEJA IS 1 (Rosefors 8)

ONSLUNDA IF 1 (Orfawi 36p) L Axelsson sent off (2nd Booking)

Att 69

The Swedish Hop’s cost of £285 included all entry fees, programmes, coach travel, 2 bridge tolls on the Øresund Bridge and 2 nights’ bed and breakfast at the Clarion Magasinet Hotel in Trelleborg.

From Lilla Beddinge the coach headed north, which seemed a little counter-intuitive for a “South” division. Such I suppose are the vagaries of life in the bottom division in Skåne. The irony was despite this game being the last on the 13th annual Swedish Hop, we were close to the wrong airport, Holmeja is close to Malmö airport but the party were all destined to depart from Kastrup in Copenhagen. Continue reading →

My Happy Place

29 Monday Jul 2019

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Sunday 9th June 2019 ko 12.00

Division 6 Sydvästra Skåne

LILLA BEDDINGE 4 (Olsson 4 Klinterberg-Nickmål 46 Bassini 54 Vinqvist 85)

KORPEN MALMÖ 1 (Szeregnyi 52)

Att 69

The Swedish Hop’s cost of £285 included all entry fees, programmes, coach travel, 2 bridge tolls on the Øresund Bridge and 2 nights’ bed and breakfast at the Clarion Magasinet Hotel in Trelleborg.

Sunday morning dawned, with the weather perfect and the meatballs for breakfast seemed especially good. Even the slight hangovers evident in several of the party didn’t seem in proportion with the amount of beer we’d consumed in the Tre Lyktor the night before. And for all of that I found my sense of melancholy difficult to shift. Continue reading →

The Canal Jumpers

24 Wednesday Jul 2019

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Saturday 8th June 2019 ko 17.00

Division 6A Sydvästra Skåne

SKANÖR/FALSTERBO IF 3 (Persson 22 Lindell 48 54)

BOSNISKA FK BEHAR 3 (V. Khoshawi Essa Essa 45 Bektasevic 67 Pajovic 74)

Att 70

The Swedish Hop’s cost of £285 included all entry fees, programmes, coach travel, 2 bridge tolls on the Øresund Bridge and 2 nights’ bed and breakfast at the Clarion Magasinet Hotel in Trelleborg.

The final game of the day saw us head over the Falsterbo canal over the isthmus on to what amounts to a man-made island. The canal is short, only around 1.6km and was built in 1941. With Denmark under German occupation and with them having mined extensively the usual shipping route outside Falsterbonäset, a canal was needed to allow ships to pass through the isthmus of what’s now the island of Näset and shorten the travel from the Baltic to the Øresund strait. Continue reading →