Italy U19 v Serbia U19, Monday 29th June 2026, 4pm

July 17, 2026

The second game of our Wales trip was in Caernarfon, which is around an hour and a half’s drive further into Wales from Wrexham. We extended that journey time by stopping off at Erddig, on the outskirts of Wrexham, to have a wander around a seventeenth century country house and its gardens.

I liked the house and it gave me a few ideas for smartening up ours. They had photos and biographies of the staff from a hundred and fifty years ago on the walls, which is unusual as the focus is invariably on the owners and their family.

In the garden we approached a pond and were met by around twenty carp who had clearly confused our arrival with whoever usually feeds them. I had no snacks in my pockets, so we had to leave them disappointed.

The game was at The Oval, Caernarfon. Unlike its cricket counterpart it’s a small venue with a capacity of just three thousand. It dates back to the 1880’s and is the current home of Welsh Premier League club, Caernarfon Town.

There was a lengthy queue to get into the UEFA U19 fixture between Italy and Serbia. It wasn’t a game that I’d expected to be well attended given the teams and kick-off time, but it probably wasn’t far off being full.

I had a chat with a Caernarfon fan, who told me that his team had been playing elsewhere last season whilst the ground was upgraded. We were sat in the Wyn Davies stand behind the goal, which was new, as were the dugouts and a standing area behind them. The scoreboard also looked to be a recent addition, and the re-laid pitch was as good as those at the World Cup.

The old main stand where the local fella usually sat had been reserved for FIFA officials and media.

There wasn’t much in the way of snacks with most kids around me getting pot noodles. There was a bilingual menu at the food cabin but interestingly there is no Welsh equivalent of pot noodle. I settled for a Snickers.

The first half was fairly even with the teams separated only by an early Italian penalty

Play was end to end after the restart as both teams tried to make something happen. Italy clinched the points with quarter of an hour to go when their striker who had just been booked for a dive broke free and, with the keeper backpedaling, stroked the ball home.

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Wales U19 v Spain U19, Sunday 28th June 2026, 6pm

July 17, 2026

When I return from the World Cup, it usually brings that season to a close. There will be a small gap and then the pre-season friendlies kick in. However, I’d noticed that the UEFA U19 European Championship was taking place in Wales and so Jen and I thought that we’d head to the Principality for a couple of nights.

The evening before we set off, we saw Tom Joshua in the Old Courthouse at Boro Town Hall. He hasn’t played live much in recent years but put on a very good show in an ideal venue for a gig of that size and type.

The first game of the U19 Euros was in Wrexham and on the drive down we stopped off at a National Trust House, Dunham Massey. It has deer, ducks and an ice cream shop. An ‘on-loan’ Rembrandt was given a big build up and it was fine but I preferred someone else’s painting of a fat dog.

I’d booked us into a Premier Inn at Wrexham as it was very close to the Racecourse ground. It was a short walk to the pub outside of the stadium and I popped in pre-match to watch Ben Stokes slogging in his final test innings

This would be my first visit to Wrexham’s ground. I’d hoped to watch the Boro there last season, but the work to the stand behind the goal had reduced capacity and I didn’t have enough priority points to buy one of the thousand or so available tickets.

Tickets for this game were easier to get and I’d ordered one for, I think, a tenner online. Only one stand was open and it was congested in the walkways and around the food huts. There were long queues, which seemed to be caused by card machines needing three or four attempts to process payment.

I’d been hoping for some local options such as Welsh rarebit or laver bread, but the nearest I could get was a lava pie. Or rather, a molten lava pie. By the time my payment went through, I’d already half-finished the coke I’d ordered with it.

The game was Wales v Spain in the UEFA U19 Championships. There were only eight teams in the finals and presumably Wales had qualified by being the hosts. I started off in the centre of the stand but then moved at half-time to the far end where I was able to check on the progress of the new stand to my left. It looked a long way back from the pitch, but maybe they are going to move the pitch towards it.

The crowd was around three and a half thousand, with a lot of kids attending, some possibly for their first ever match. Many of them had more interest in the wordsearch that was part of the fixtures card that had been handed out than the game.

It wasn’t much of a contest on the pitch. Spain were streets ahead of the hosts and went four-nil up early on. They then coasted for the rest of the game and an eventual seven-nil victory. There didn’t seem to be much going on in Wrexham on a Sunday evening, so we settled for a few drinks afterwards in the Premier Inn bar.

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Sigma FC v St. Catharines Roma Wolves, Sunday 21st June 2026, 4pm

July 16, 2026

Travel days can sometimes be a bit of a nuisance, particularly if your flight home departs late evening. Paul and I checked out of our Toronto apartment with around ten hours to go before we had to be at the airport but fortunately Niagara Falls wasn’t too far away and so we went to have a look at that.

I’d been before, back in 1988. On that occasion I’d approached Niagara from the American side and then crossed the bridge into Canada. My then wife and I had taken a ride on one of those Maid of the Mist boats that sail close enough to the falls for you to be drenched with the spray. It was all a lot dryer this time as Paul and I got no closer than the path that runs alongside the road, well above the falls. It was still a spectacular sight.

The best part of the travel day though was that on the drive back to the airport we got to take in another football game at the Tim Horton Field in Hamilton. This game was a fixture in the Ontario Premier League, which sounds quite grand. but it is the third-tier of Canadian football and the players are semi-professional.

Hamilton is only around an hour from Toronto and is probably a commuter town, but it all seemed quiet and run down. We called into a bar for wings and ribs and whilst everyone was friendly enough, it had the air of a town with not much going on.

The game was free to get into and only one of the stands was open. The stadium holds twenty-two thousand and whilst it might be full when hosting the Hamilton Wild Cats in their Canadian Football fixtures, there were only around a hundred people watching Sigma take on St Catherines Roma Wolves in the more traditional version of the game.

I often think that local clubs at the lower levels miss a trick by not scheduling friendlies in cities where World Cup games are taking place. With so many fans in town, you’d likely get four-figure crowds watching Sunday League level fixtures. This game took a bit of getting to from Toronto, but I noticed another thirty-eight groundhoppers, mostly German, had clocked in to the futbology app.

It was a hard watch at times as the pitch was primarily marked for Canadian football which is a variant on American football. I had no idea of the existence of the Canadian rules. The main differences between the two codes is that in Canada there is an extra player on each side, but only three ‘downs’ instead of four in the US. The markings and the uprights caused some confusion to me when watching, but the players seemed to cope with it ok.

The standard was poor, but I think it was early season and the sides were still trying to gel. Sigma took the points with a single first half goal and we headed back to the airport having had the bonus of a travel day game and a second Canadian stadium tick.

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Germany v Ivory Coast, Saturday 20th June 2026, 4pm

July 14, 2026

Paul and I had three days in Toronto between the two World Cup games that we were attending and we got to see a fair bit of the city. We visited the Distillery District, which might develop into somewhere interesting in time, but at the moment seems a bit ‘Disneyfied’.

We also visited a few bars in the downtown area and some near to where we were staying an hour or so’s walk away. Everyone was very welcoming and we had good conversations with locals and travelling fans. The highlight was probably the bar where we watched Canada put six past Qatar to the delight of their supporters.

Our second game kicked off at 4pm and we chose to walk it from our place in the Riverdale area. We passed a hotel where the Ivory Coast team were getting on the team coach and then the Fan Park, which seemed quieter than when we’d been there three days earlier.

As we neared the BMO Stadium, there were a lot of fans wearing the shirts of both teams, with the Germans outnumbering those from Ivory Coast.

Security was much less onerous than at the last few World Cups and we weren’t required to prove our identity. Once inside we collected a beer from the hospitality building and had a wander around. Whilst we had it easy with food and drink, there were long queues in the areas outside. I looked as if anyone buying a beer would need to immediately rejoin the twenty-yard queue in anticipation of their next one. It was the same with the hot dogs.

Our seats were close to the half-way line again and a little nearer the pitch. For a while I wondered if we would have to stand to watch the game, but eventually everyone sat down. I’m accepting of the fact that when I’m behind the goal at the Boro or at an away game, everyone will stand throughout. I’m less understanding when I’m in the posh seats.

At half-time I joined the queue at the merchandise stall in the concourse and bought a soft toy mascot for the latest grandson. He also ended up with the mini football that was handed out at the end.

At that mid-way stage Germany were a goal down and looking poor, but they made some subs and got back into the game. They drew level with around twenty minutes to go and then pinched a winner in added time. The assist for that second goal was by a lad called Nmecha. His name seemed familiar and when I googled him it turned out that his brother had a loan spell at the Boro under Woodgate. Small world.

The conclusion of the second game brought the World Cup part of our trip to an end. Both Kingston and Toronto were enjoyable places to visit and, despite the efforts of FIFA to make life difficult and expensive for fans, everyone seemed to be having a good time. Of course they were, it’s a World Cup and there is always a good time to be had.

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Ghana v Panama, Wednesday 17th June 2026, 7pm

July 13, 2026

Paul and I have been going to the World Cup ever since we discovered how enjoyable it was in Germany twenty years ago. Neither of us had much desire to visit the US at this time and so our options were Mexico or Canada. Whilst Mexico would have been good, and remains on the list for the future, we opted for Canada. It was a good choice.

We had tickets for two games in Toronto and headed out a few days before the first one for a short stay in nearby Kingston. It’s a very pleasant town with sufficient bars for us to mix things up as we watched around three games each day on the telly. Some were packed with football fans, others less so.

We went for a couple of walks whilst we were at Kingston including a wander around the Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area. Paul spotted a snake which made its escape into the undergrowth before I noticed it. I’d been hoping for a bear or two, but the best we saw was a chipmunk that filled its face with seeds intended for birds and a turtle that was crossing the road. I helped it on its way.

I managed to pick up a tick, which I discovered embedded in the back of my leg three days later in Toronto. I think it was probably dead by then due to the amount of alcohol that I’d been putting away. I bought some tweezers and removed most of it, but I think that some of its head remains lodged in my left calf.

Our first live game in Toronto was Ghana against Panama. BMO Field was easy enough to get to from where we were staying, but we had the added complication of wanting to watch the England game that kicked off three hours earlier. Fortunately, the Fan Park was only fifteen minutes away from the ground and so we watched the England match from there.

Usually, the Fan Parks are free to get into. This one did have a free section, but those tickets were long gone. That meant paying sixty-five quid each to watch the win over Croatia on the big screen in a different section of the park. The admission charge meant that it was a quieter than usual atmosphere, at least in our section anyway. It was well organized though, with clean toilets and no queues at the bar. I can live with that.

After the England game we followed the crowds to the stadium. We arrived at one of the corners and could see the behind the goal seating that had been added to increase the ground capacity to around forty-five thousand. The additional seventeen thousand seats are only temporary and will be removed after the World Cup, but they looked solid enough to me.

Our tickets were in hospitality and that meant we got beer and snacks included. The official beer was Michelob Ultra, which is drinkable if cold enough. I collected plenty of aluminium souvenir cups. Our seats were just to the right of the half-way line and gave us a decent view. I chatted to the woman on my left who had bought a package of tickets for all six Toronto games. She didn’t really seem to know much about football but was clearly enjoying the World Cup being in her home city.

The game featured the other two teams in England’s group, Ghana and Panama. Both teams had good representation in the crowd, but with a lot of the game played in the rain those in the uncovered temporary stands behind the goal probably didn’t enjoy it as much as they might have done.

There weren’t many real chances in a close contest, but Ghana nicked the points late in added time from a close-range tap in. We headed back inside to take advantage of the beer and snacks until the crowd thinned out.

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Filey Town Veterans v Madly United, Friday 5th June 2026, 6.30pm

June 24, 2026

On the back of the previous weekend’s triple crown of a gig, a walk and a match, I managed to do it again. It’s hard in June as the FA isn’t keen on football taking place, so, World Cup apart, it tends to be games organized for some charitable purpose, or veteran fixtures. Gigs are easy enough this time of year though and June is ideal for going for a walk.

The hike was another section of the Yorkshire Wolds Way. We picked up the trail at Towthorpe Corner, which is ideal for parking the car. It looks like the sort of place that would be frequented by doggers after dark but is peaceful enough mid-morning.

We had Henry with us and he managed the nine mile out and back route to Newburnholme pretty well. Most of the path was through fields occupied by sheep and cows, so he was on the lead most of the time, but he still managed to roll in some cow shit to earn himself a bath.

The gig was Stanley Brinks and Freschard at The Waiting Room in Eaglescliffe. They are French, lo-fi and anti-folk. It may be a combination that isn’t overly popular as they began their set with only around a dozen people in the room. The attendance grew as the evening went on, peaking, I think, at twenty-three.

I enjoyed it. They are pretty prolific with more than one hundred albums between them. We bought the two latest ones that they had with them and there’s another imminent release.

The football game was the first of the weekend activities. It was at Filey Town’s Clarence Drive ground on the Friday evening. We’d decided to stay over so that we could have an easy start the next morning to our Yorkshire Wold Way walk. It took only twenty minutes or so for me to wander over from our Airbnb to the ground.

It was free to get in and there was a clubhouse selling food and drink. I didn’t bother with either as we were planning on heading out after the game.

I had a chat with the manager of the visiting team. The team had grown out of social meetings for men with mental health or addiction issues. They had started playing five-a-side games and that had led to this fixture, their first ever eleven-a-side game.

There was a real mix of ability and age in the Madly United side. The manager, who was kitted out in case he was needed, was sixty-two. Some of the players on the pitch looked to be close to his age. A couple of his team might well have played at a decent level and had a good touch.

Filey were understandably more organized and were clearly used to playing with each other. Most of their players looked like they had achieved veteran status fairly recently.

Filey quickly went four up but Madly pulled a couple back before half time. The second half was tighter until Filey rattled in three late goals for a seven-two victory. I doubt the result mattered too much to Madly and hopefully meeting up and playing football will continue to make the lives of their players that little bit easier.

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Manchester Corinthians v Tintwhistle Athletic, Saturday 30th May 2026, 3pm

June 15, 2026

Some weekends are better than others. I think that any weekend where I can fit in a gig, a walk and a sporting event has to be one of the better ones. Sort of a triple crown, I suppose. This was one of those weekends with a gig in Sheffield, another stretch of the Yorkshire Wolds Way and then a cup final over near Manchester, albeit not in that order.

The gig was at Mary Street Live in Sheffield. It’s a small venue that holds around fifty people and seems more like a storeroom than a concert venue. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it might be used for stabling horses when there isn’t a music event on. It had a can bar, which was very welcome, but no air-con, which was less so. Other than Jen and I, the crowd seemed to be mostly friends and family of the bands. Everyone nipped outside to cool down at any lull in proceedings.

We were there to see the headliners, David Cronenberg’s Wife, who were very good and somehow had managed to get a grand piano on stage. The support acts were ok too, despite it being the first ever show for one of them.

The walk was the following day, six miles along the Yorkshire Wolds Way between North Newbald and Arass, then back again to fill in a gap between sections we had already done. There wasn’t much in the way of wildlife other than a decomposing rat and a grounded bird too young to fly.

We’d recently had a young crow in the back garden that couldn’t get more than two feet off the ground. I put a few worms out for it, but its parents were watching and I think it took its food from them instead. Two days later it was gone, either by flying well enough to clear the wall or by being carried away by a fox or hawk. There were no feathers left behind, so hopefully it was under its own steam.

And the other part of the triple crown? That was the Gilgryst Cup Final featuring Manchester Corinthians and Tintwhistle United of the eleventh tier Manchester League Premier Division. It was played at Ewan Fields which is currently the home ground of Hyde United and in the past one hundred and forty years since it opened has hosted the reserve teams on both Man City and United, as well as the American Football team, Manchester Falcons.

It was five quid admission and with few other football options available at this time of year I wasn’t surprised to see that the almost three hundred and fifty strong crowd included a fair representation from the groundhopping community. I started off in the main stand. Others were drinking in the standing terraced area to my right, whilst many stood behind the dugouts on the far side.

Corinthians were the stronger team in the first half and they opened the scoring as we approached the quarter of the hour mark. A ball was threaded through into the box and the striker controlled it well before cutting it back across the keeper into the far corner.

At half-time I queued for some food. Hot dogs were popular, but I went for a cheeseburger. I’ve been asked to give a little more detail about the matchday food so I can reveal that it was ok. It was initially handed over without onions, but when I pointed this out, they added them. Other than that, I remember little about it, so the best I can say is that it was unremarkable and edible. They should put that on their posters.

Corinthians continued to dominate in the second half. I switched to the opposite side of the stadium where I was able to listen to their manager constantly berating his players about their need to “switch on”. Maybe it worked as twenty minutes into the second half they switched on long enough to add a second with an unchallenged header from a cross swung in from deep on the right.

As we entered added time and with the game effectively over, the Tintwhistle keeper flattened an attacker chasing a through ball. After some consultation with the lino, the ref sent him off, maybe it was DOGSO, perhaps serious foul play. Either way, both the challenge and the subsequent decision all seemed a bit unnecessary to me at that stage.

The keeper didn’t join the queue for a medal at the end. I didn’t realise that punishing red carded miscreants by denying them a role in the post-match ceremony was still a thing. Perhaps it isn’t and he just didn’t care with it being a loser’s medal anyway. Regardless, it was a decent final and a good weekend.

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Middlesbrough v Hull City, Saturday 23rd May 2026, 3.30pm

June 2, 2026

This was a game that I wasn’t expecting to happen. I thought that it should, without a doubt, as the only real sanction for cheating in a knockout scenario has to be that the cheating club is disqualified and the other side progresses. Nobody questions expulsion if, say, a team fields an ineligible player, even if it is only for a few seconds. What’s the difference? Other than this was the more serious breach by pre-meditated rule-breaking rather than an unfortunate administrative oversight?

Nevertheless, something being the right course of action is no guarantee that it will happen. We saw West Ham spared a relegation-triggering points deduction a few years ago over fielding Tevez and his mate as it was deemed unfair to their fans. With Southampton having sold their allocation of tickets and with such a short time between the hearing and the final, I expected similar weasel words.

But no. The Disciplinary Committee came up trumps and then held their nerve in the appeal three days before the game. With such short notice and a need to get Tom, Harry and Amelia there, I decided just to drive there and back in the day. It was easy enough, despite an aircon failure that meant we had to travel some of the way with all four windows down. We paid nine quid to park on someone’s drive near Canon Park tube, although with no street restrictions in place, we could just have easily left the car on the road outside of their house for free.

The tube journey in and the walk down Wembley Way was all friendly enough. There’s no real rivalry between the Boro and Hull and, if we weren’t to prevail, most Boro fans would be happy to see former players Matt Crooks, Paddy McNair and Ryan Giles make the Premier League.

We spent an hour or so in the Fanzone outside in the sunshine before making our way around to the Boro end of the ground. Whilst we were all in the lower tier, I hadn’t been able to get all four seats together.  I took the one further towards the centre, whilst the other three were slightly higher up in the corner. It was an impressive turnout. All thirty-six thousand tickets in our allocation sold in the two days available.

The performance on the pitch wasn’t quite as impressive. We dominated in terms of territory and possession, but as so often happens we failed to take our chances. Or rather we failed to create many chances. On a day when the heat slowed the tempo down to walking pace, a single goal was always likely to be sufficient. Unfortunately, it went to Hull late in added time.

Despite the disappointment, it has been an enjoyable season, with some of the best football I’ve seen us play. I’m hoping that Hellberg can get the players in that suit the way he wants to set the team up and give it another real go after the summer.

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Ripon City Reserves v Cliffe, Saturday 16th May 2026, 2pm

June 1, 2026

This game came about because I needed to pick Jen up from York and Ripon is pretty much on the way. We had plans to walk some more of the Yorkshire Wolds Way the following day, so the logical thing would have been to have stayed over somewhere. That idea was thwarted though by us having Saturday night tickets for Stewart Lee for The Globe. He was very good, as ever.

Next day we drove down to North Newbald for a section of the trail notable only for sheep. Just as well that we didn’t take the dog.

The match was at Mallorie Park, which I understand might be scheduled for demolition. It was the final fixture of the season in Second Division of the York Football League, so that’s tier 13. Ripon City Reserves were at home to Cliffe.

It was free to get in and when I called into the clubhouse for a pre-match snack, they sold me a pork pie for a quid that I think might have been left over from a function earlier in the day. They had the Hearts v Celtic clash on the telly and whilst I’d hoped that Hearts would get over the line, I think we all knew how it would pan out.

I took a seat in the wooden four row covered stand. Most of the people around me were players from Ripon’s first team who had played their match that morning and were celebrating their own end of season. There were a couple of wags and a dog that might have been wearing a Cliffe kit. Other than that, it was the usual mix of family, friends and one or two groundhoppers suffering from the reduction in choice of fixtures.

Cliffe were the better side and rattled in four goals without reply in the first half. They added another soon after the restart. There was some excitement on the hour when Ripon pulled one back with a low shot into the corner that prompted a cry of “Come on boys, we can win this”. It wasn’t to be though as Cliffe added another three for a seven-one away win.

In the final throes of the game, Cliffe sent their keeper up for a corner in the hope of adding an eighth. Their ambition was neither rewarded nor punished with the corner sailing out on the full as the ref blew to bring the season to an end.

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Middlesbrough v Southampton, Saturday 9th May 2026, 12.30pm

May 11, 2026

So, the play-offs. I had a bit of arseing about to do beforehand with the car, so Harry and I didn’t get down to the Riverside until about half an hour before kick-off. That meant that we missed the dramatic arrival of the Boro team bus where our fans greeted the team with flares. There were still kids setting them off when we got there, presumably to avoid being arrested for taking them into the ground.

We met up with Tom and Jordan in the fan zone. Tom had averted the need to queue for beer by bringing his own, so we had a pre-match tin of Madri out of his carrier bag. There had been a bit of a mix up with Jordan’s ticket, but as I still had access to an extra one from the third ticket that we’d had last season, Jordan used mine and I went into the West Stand.

Most of the pre-match chat was over the likely consequences of Southampton cheating by sneaking into our training session. Potential punishments suggested ranged from kicking them out of the play-offs to levelling their stadium for car parking. It really was an outrageous thing to do and all I can assume is that the EFL are waiting to see if we eliminate them on the pitch before imposing their sanction.

What is certain is that Gibbo won’t let this go until he considers that justice has been done. Just ask Liverpool about their pursuit of Zeige, or Derby about pipping us to the play-offs with their financial cheating.

First half was all Boro. Despite their illegal advance knowledge of our set up and tactics, Southampton were on the ropes. We came close to breaking the deadlock a few times, with Tommy Conway’s shot against the inside of the post providing the best opportunity.  We don’t really have the strength in depth though and as our first eleven tired, they came more into it.

It finished goalless. I’m ok with that as we generally do better away from home. Presumably there will be no more cheating from Southampton, so we should go into the return leg at St Mary’s without the disadvantage of them knowing our plans. That’s if their stadium hasn’t been levelled by then.

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