Tag Archives: Wales

Locomotive

06 Sunday Sep 2015

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Sunday 30th August 2015 ko 11.30

Welsh Alliance Division One

LLANBERIS 1 (Parry 68)

PWLLHELI 1 (M Jones 76) C Jones sent off 83 (violent conduct)

Att 333

Entry £4

Programme £1

I remember the moment when Chris Berezai made the decision he needed a deputy. We were on a Hellenic Hop at Abingdon Town when his back seized up. He struggled through the rest of the event, and a few days later I got a phone call, and the rest as they say is history. From then on we’ve acted more as a joint effort rather than me simply order-taking. I wasn’t born to follow, but Llanberis proved to be rather different for a while. Continue reading →

Renaissance

04 Friday Sep 2015

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Saturday 25th August 2015 ko 19.45

Welsh Alliance Division One

LLANGEFNI TOWN 4 (Evans 57 A Hughes 63 I Jones 74 S Jones 78)

LLANFAIRPWLL 0

Att 409 (Welsh Hop Record)

Entry £4

Programme £1

It felt like we were reaching the 285 yards bit of a marathon as we reached Cae Bob Parry, in the market town of Anglesey, Llangefni. We were grateful the ground has floodlights, a relic of the club’s solitary season in the Welsh Premier, back in the 2007/8 season, but here’s the thing, we were due to visit here on Saturday of the first Welsh Alliance Hop back in 2013. Continue reading →

Oh I do like to be…

03 Thursday Sep 2015

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Saturday 29th August 2015 ko 16.45

Welsh Alliance Division One

TREARDDUR BAY UNITED 4 (Murphy 6 A Thomas 17 28 C Williams 47)

ST ASAPH CITY 3 (J Jones 47 86 Johns 74)

Att 304

Entry £4

Programme £1

Badge £3

From our first two games in agricultural Anglesey, the third saw a complete change of locale. We headed north-west and on to Anglesey’s smaller brother Island, Holy Island. Its best known for the port town of Holyhead, and the ferry over to Ireland, but just west of there is the holiday village of Trearddur Bay. Continue reading →

Glancing Forward

03 Thursday Sep 2015

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Saturday 29th August 2015 ko 13.30

Welsh Alliance Division 2

LLANERCHYMEDD 3 (J Jones 5 M Jones 29 48)

BLAENAU AMATEURS 2 (Bradley 35 45)

Att 317

Entry £3

Programme £1

Badge £3

As I was about to complete the crowd count back at Amlwch I spotted a lone figure looking nervously from outside the ground (I didn’t count him!). He was speaking to an Amlwch committeeman so I downed tools for a minute. It turned out to be to the Llanerchymedd manager getting a sneak preview of what was heading his way! Continue reading →

Logistics

03 Thursday Sep 2015

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Saturday 28th August 2015 ko 10.45

Welsh Alliance Division Two

AMLWCH TOWN 1 (Grffiths 44) Byast sent off 90 (2nd booking)

NANTLLE VALE 2 (A Hughes 2 S Williams 40) E Jones sent off 81 (2nd booking)

Att 318

Entry £3

Programme £1

Badge £3

When you organise a groundhop, after you’ve agreed the event with the league your next move is to pick a base, where you’ll run the coaches from and site your accommodation. There are some hard and fast rules with hotels and the like, parking must be free, there has to be room for the coach, and the breakfasts need to be of the cooked variety! Universities tend to be good for us, having single ensuite rooms is perfect for us, and the University of Chester’s accommodation is first-class, but it has meant we’ve needed to plan a little more. Continue reading →

Lost In Translation

01 Tuesday Sep 2015

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Friday 28th August 2015 ko 18.30

Welsh Alliance Division Two

MOCHDRE SPORTS 1 (Owen 67)

PRESTATYN SPORTS 0

Att 313

Entry £3

Programme £1

Badge £3

GroundhopUK’s roots lie with the Welsh hop, back 13 years ago when Chris Berezai put together a one-day event for the Welsh League. My, how the baby has grown as we distributed 130-or-so programme packs and room keys at Chester University and waited for our two coaches to take us to the first game of a 4 day, 11 game extravaganza in the Welsh Alliance. Continue reading →

Gorge

27 Monday Jul 2015

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Saturday 25th July 2015 ko 14.30

Pre-Season Friendly

CLYDACH WASPS 0

NEWPORT YMCA 5 (28, 32, 66, 78, 81)

Att 24

Entry FREE

No Programme

If I were to scroll back through my football watching, 10 years ago I simply wouldn’t have watched this. It seems to me the lot of the new groundhopper is that the potential enormity of the hobby leads to the pursuer making rules to limit the sheer volume of possibilities on any given Saturday. Some of the popular ones include, “I don’t do fields,” ” I must have a programme,” and ” I won’t do below (names a division)”

Now the trouble with any hard-and-fast rule is that as soon as you make it, someone will immediate find an equally hard-and-fast exception to it. And the Clydach Wasps are a classic example of this. Continue reading →

Together, Stronger

22 Monday Jun 2015

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Saturday 13th June 2015 ko 15.00

South Wales FA Play-Off Final

STM SPORTS 4 (Reffell 12 Graham 48 Worsley 57 84)

PONTLOTTYN AFC 1 (Colbourne 32)

Att c600 at Cardiff City Stadium

Entry £3

Programme £1

Groundhopping and the amateur game go back a long way, back to the days of 4-game Saturdays in the South Wales Amateur League, and those hops only ended when we finally ran of clubs to visit! Back then we all wondered why there was the odd position of two leagues, the Amateur Leaguer and the Senior League occupying the same footprint and the same level, the fifth tier? Continue reading →

The Point

14 Saturday Mar 2015

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Sunday 8th March 2015 ko 14.30

Ceredigion League Division One

LLANBOIDY 3 (James 25 33 37)

MAESGLAS 3 (Roche 17 Harman 43 75p)

Att 219

Entry £3

Programme £1

Badge £3

The great advantage of being stood next door to league secretary Aled Davies at Pencader was that he’d been in near constant contact with Llanboidy, and confirmed there were no issues with the weather, in fact it was blue skies all around! It had stopped raining for the last ten minutes at Pencader, but when I returned to the car and put the postcode for Cae Dandre into the satnav I wondered if I’d got the correct address!

There are no lack of Carmarthenshire clubs in the Ceredigion League, but Llanboidy is right on the border with Pembrokeshire! The village lies on the Welsh side but close to the Landsker Line, where supposedly the first language spoken changes from Welsh to English. Continue reading →

The legend of Emlyn Wyvern

13 Friday Mar 2015

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Saturday 7th March 2015 ko 19.30

Ceredigion League Division One

NEWCASTLE EMYLN 2 (Almond 33 Jake Harris 67)

NEW QUAY 0

Att 194

Entry £3

Programme £1

Badge £3

The irony of this being the only time that the Ceredigion Hop could stage a Saturday night game with only three games left on the entire 4 year run was not lost on me. The hoppers’ cavalcade travelled south from Aberaeron and encountered a Police speed trap at Ffostrasol.

Twenty or so brake lights flashed in succession, and I was tempted to stop and comment to the sole policeman that if the local constabulary wanted to make money from the groundhop, we at GroundhopUK would have been happy for them to have a stall to sell goodies at any of our games. Perhaps it was our insistence that stall-holders have a full ticket for the entire event that was the problem? Continue reading →