2021/22 Update

Today, my 2021/22 season of groundhopping gets underway and with it will come the proper return of this blog. After covid halted the 2019/20 season, I was completely disengaged from groundhopping for a while, such that even when football briefly came back for the 2020/21 season I didn't feel comfortable travelling and only ticked off two new and very local grounds.

However, the outlook now is a lot brighter and I feel much more confident in travelling around and getting back groundhopping again. So, after two seasons disrupted by the pandemic, what are my groundhopping targets for this season (besides not losing a third season because of the pandemic)?

Given that I currently either have to rely on trains or request lifts to get anywhere, my scope for how many new grounds I can tick is more limited this season than it was during my three years of University. Furthermore, having missed the vast majority of Yaxley's matches at Step 4 so far, I want to go to more of our home matches this season rather than hopping every weekend. With that in mind, I'm aiming to tick 18 new grounds this season to hit 130 overall, with 6 or 7 of those likely to be Yaxley away games due to our shift to a new league. I'm sure I can probably manage a little bit more than that amount, but that seems a realistic target to set and one I'll be happy with.

To get that started, I'm doing two FA Cup matches this weekend, one today (Wellingborough Town vs Newmarket Town) and one tomorrow (Baldock Town vs Wembley, at Arlesey Town). Beyond that, I've got rough plans through to mid-September:

Next Saturday, I aim to tick either Whittlesey Athletic or Stilton United. Then, on Bank Holiday Monday at the end of the month, I hope to pay a visit to Hitchin Town at last. On the 11th of September, I hope to get a lift to one of four FA Vase 1st Qualifying Round matches on a quick shortlist I drew up. And on the 18th my plan is to use the train to go somewhere a fair bit further afield than the norm as a late birthday celebration, with a current shortlist of Harwich & Parkeston, Hastings United and North Ferriby (pending the latter two's potential FA Cup progression, as that is 2nd Qualifying Round weekend).

The only thing that might cause a shift in that early schedule is if Yaxley get through their FA Cup Preliminary Round tie in two weeks and are then drawn away at a new ground in the 1st Qualifying Round on the 4th of September. Beyond that, I haven't thought about much besides the fact that my first away league match at a new ground with Yaxley this season will come on the 23rd of October when we visit Histon.

While I've been drawing up all these plans, I've also been working on some new pages for my blog. These consist of tables covering every level of English football from the 92 all the way to Step 6 of non-league, allowing my readers and myself to keep track of how I'm progressing on completing leagues and also providing another way to find my blog entries than just scrolling through the full list on the "My Grounds" page. These pages will go live early next week, after I've written up and posted both of this weekend's blog entries.

I am also working on a Step 7+ page to go with the rest of these, but there's still a lot of research I need to do into ground names and worthwhile grounds in leagues sitting below Step 7 structures. I'm also still waiting on a couple of leagues to release their constitutions so I can see if those have any worthwhile grounds to add to the list ("worthwhile" meaning has some form of cover to work with). Once that page is live, I'll gladly welcome any suggestions of notable grounds I've missed as there's so much at that level that I'm bound to have missed a few gems.

Other than all of this, the only other change I'm going to be making to the blog is adding attendance figures to my entries going forward. As the vast majority of these will end up being guesswork on my part (i.e. unless clubs I visit post or announce official figures), I will always welcome corrections from the clubs I visit if I do get the attendance wrong. I may try and go back and retroactively add attendances to my old blog entries as well, but that will be dependent on me being able to find those numbers somewhere.

 

With all that being said, it's good to be back and I hope everyone enjoys reading my blog this season and beyond.