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Guilty Pleasures

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  Dove Holes - Double Winners Sometimes this great sport of ours can make you feel that you’re a user, no great friend to anyone, a bit of a football slut if you like. A visit to the Hope Valley League can make you feel like that. That’s with no disrespect intended to the HVL. You see, watching your side regularly, reduces the chances to visit the local amateur leagues. When your side is away there’s always another game to go to, check up on your clubs rivals perhaps, whilst keeping an eye on the important game involving your club. There’s always something else more pressing, visiting one of the local pro or semi-pro clubs in other leagues, or worse, attending a family event. That is, until the end of the season when most football is done and all that’s left is the amateur leagues that you’ve neglected for so long. So, here I am making my first visit to Baslow, just 15 miles away.   Baslow Sports Field Despite the league being so close this is only my 2 nd game at this level. Th
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Our Friends in the North

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  Warm Welcome. Now that the end of the season is here, for the majority of the leagues, I thought I’d mention my first competitive game of the season. There’s very few Northern League grounds I’ve ticked off, in fact Mike Amos, former Northern League Chairman, once told me my extremely low number of Northern League grounds visited was “piss poor” for someone who calls himself a “groundhopper”. He was right, there isn’t many I’ve been to so in order to add to the total I decided to go up to Tow Law Town for their opening game of the season. The Northern League were one of the first competitions to get underway this season, starting on Friday 28 th July, it was the following day when I visited the wonderful Ironworks Ground. When telling my north-east based work colleagues I intended going to Tow Law they mentioned I’d need my “big coat”, “Tow Law has its own climate” they said. It seems to be what it’s most famous so, big coat in the boot, hat and gloves in the camera bag I set off
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Winter Warmers

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Cold Evenings at County Cup Ties. Action from Shirebrook Town v South Normanton. More and more I find myself saying “I’m not the right age for.....” and then insert the latest thing I feel I shouldn’t be doing. Gardening was probably the first, circa 1990. Then there was the time, just a couple of years ago, when I did a cartoon styli slip on an icy car park and fell horizontally on my back. The latest is midweek winter football, as I stand at the side of the pitch taking photos wondering if it’s warmer anywhere else in the ground and thinking “I’m not the right age for this”. Considering this thought has been in my head every time I’ve attended a midweek game in the cold this season I’ve managed 13 midweek games since the beginning of November. I never was very good at taking advice. A few of these cold evening games have been in the Derbyshire Senior Cup, which is a competition I really like. As with all the senior cups throughout the country, it’s played in deepest winter so the
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