The Szymanowski siblings - united in struggle (17th June, 2017)

One of those days again!

I wrote about Marianela and Alex Szymanowski and their struggle to reach the top tiers of football. You can read it on BarcaBlaugranes.com here.

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Non-league Incider: St Helens Town 3-0 Atherton Laburnum Rovers

Last game: 8th August: Dulwich Hamlet 2-1 East Thurrock United The previous day, I was blown away by my first ever football match experience. Dulwich Hamlet impressed me, but what impressed me more was the journey. The travel to the stadium was just as enjoyable as the football itself. I had caught the groundhopping bug. There were no games scheduled for the 9th of August. There was one, near Wigan, and all I had booked earlier was a refundable bus ticket from Manchester Airport leaving at quarter past midnight. I should have refunded it. This was a mistake. This whole day was a mistake. I was only slightly hungover from the previous night, but that was nothing compared to this feeling of loss - I couldn't handle the fact that there was a game happening. And I wasn't too far away. Just three hours and a bit. They'll fly by , I thought. I was in autopilot. Something within me made me get up, grab a bag, and get out the door. This wasn't me. I wasn't trave...

A new chapter in the Pride of Vallekas...

You might think that this is the second iteration of this blog. But, in a way, it isn't. During the second half of the 2014-15 season, I watched all the Rayo games and uploaded match reports to a Facebook page called the Pride of Vallekas. I then impulsively deleted that page, thinking I would never write again. Moral of the story: this is, in an informal sense, the third iteration of this blog. And never, ever, delete things. Umm....I'm deleting things. Again. I started writing about football in September 2015. Back Page Football were kind enough to allow me to contribute - and it propelled me to write about twice or thrice a month. It provided me with a platform to write for BarcaBlaugranes and VillarrealUSA, two blogs under SBNation, and guest post on many others. However, as I've said many times before, a lack of writing towards the end of 2016 frustrated me, and the mandate to write everyday was born impulsively on a Thursday morning more than a year ago. At ...

Non-league Incider: Cray Valley Paper Mills 4-4 Punjab United Gravesend

Last game: 9th August: St Helens Town 3-0 Atherton Laburnum Rovers After ripping up my groundhopping calendar, mostly because I was determined to avoid overnight travel, and partly due to other commitments, there was a period of time where non-league football took a backseat. But that period did not last long. Because of course it didn't. Secretly, I'd loved travelling over ten hours back-and-forth to watch some 10th division football. And this was 9th division football in London. When I had gone to East Dulwich exactly a week back , I had commented on how the amount of graffiti struck me as I watched from on board a southeastern train. I was going the exact same way, but much further this time - then I had stopped at Denmark Hill, now I would have to go six stations further. The graffiti I had thought was so emblematic of south London quickly disappeared, as did the tall buildings desperately cluttered together. We, and by we I mean me, were going to the suburb...

The Pride of Vallekas

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