Hop

In my efforts to find a diverting activity on an Easter Saturday evening I inadvertently stumbled into a groundhop event.

Groundhoppers have made a thing of attending football matches at as many different grounds and stadia as they can, with devotees racking up hundreds and thousands of visits. To facilitate the hobby, some of the leagues lower down the football pyramid co-operate by staggering kick-offs enabling people to hop between three or four matches in a day, and more when clustered over a weekend. This weekend's Easter hop actually started at one of my local clubs, Campion, on Thursday night and by the time I stumbled across them at Selby Town they were already onto their seventh game. The positive impact on attendances and money spent in the club house can bring a couple of thousand pounds into club coffers, which I'm sure is very welcome in the grassroots football world.

Selby were hosting Penistone Church in a Northern Counties East League (NCEL) Division One fixture, the league below the Thackley match I'd seen earlier in the week. This was the last but one regular season fixture, with Penistone having already secured a play-off spot and Selby comforable in mid-table. It proved to be a fairly even game with few clear chances. Selby took the lead in the first half, Penistone equalised in the second. 1-1 it ended.

For the match I elected to stand with my back to the sun  and out of this decision today's image was born. I couldn't quite pick between this one and one with an added linesman (extra) but ended up preferring the simplicity of the shadow selfie. The only unfortunate effect, as those familiar withThe Omen will know, is that we all stand to be decapitated in the morning :)

It was also good to see a bit of Selby between the station and the ground. Despite Brother #2 having once lived here for a number of years I never really got to look around the town. It's a relatively quick and cheap excursion by rail, so I'll be back on a day trip at some point to have a proper look around.

I suppose I'm on my own modest self-made Easter ground hop, this being my third match in five days with another lined up for Monday. I think I prefer the slow approach though. For myself, this was a paltry match seventy eight, at ground nineteen (of which two no longer exist).

I'd spent the bulk of the day with the kids. We did the Easter stuff in the morning as they'll be at their Mum's on Sunday and Monday before coming back to me for a mini-trip away next week. I suppose my renewed enthusiasm for getting out to football matches has emerged in my post-separation world of the past 20 months - it gets me out and about and beats kicking around the house on my own.