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Derby County v Middlesbrough, Thursday 1st January 2026, 3pm

January 2, 2026

Well, that’s another year done. 2025 started slowly for me as I was in Saudi Arabia for most of the first couple of months, but once I returned to the UK at the end of February, I was able to start seeing a bit more football. I went to ninety matches in 2025, spread over eleven countries and seventy-four stadiums of which sixty-three were new grounds for me. I got to see the Boro play on twenty-five occasions.

I think my football year highlight was seeing the Boro rattle in four first half goals at Hull. I actually laughed out loud when the fourth went in. A visit to Millmoor for a Doncaster Belles game some forty years on from my last time there watching Bruce Rioch’s Boro was an enjoyable trip down memory lane. It was good to get around some of the lower-tier Swedish grounds in the summer and watching the Saudi Clasico in the King Abdullah Sports City Stadium was a perfect way to bring my Saudi time to an end. Ticking off the San Siro might just be worth a mention too.

It was a good year for gigs. I managed to get to forty, despite it all tailing off in the last two to three months of the year. I only saw Sea Power three times in 2025, but two of them were at Krankenhaus which really is a joy to attend. John Bramwell topped the frequency list with five shows. I now know his between song patter better than he does. I also saw Boo Hewerdine three times with his best gig coming as his Hotel Art guise in Glasgow. Honorable mentions for The Molotovs, Mike Monroe, Sparks, David Cronenberg’s Wife and Edwyn Collins. Seeing Darts forty-seven years on from the last time I saw them was an interesting experience, but I think I’ve lost the taste for doo-wop revivalists. No Weller or Bragg gigs for the first year in a while.

Jen and I got out for a walk in 2025 more frequently than we’d managed in the previous couple of years, finally finishing the Cleveland Way thirteen years after starting it and then making a solid start to the Yorkshire Wolds Way. We managed twenty-three hikes in total which isn’t too bad, but I’d like to step it up in 2026.

And so to 2026 and a New Years Day fixture against Derby. It’s eighteen years since I last bothered going to Pride Park but I’m enjoying the Boro’s season and so I thought I might as well nip down there. I’m also trying to rack up enough priority points to have a chance of going to Wrexham in the final game of the season, so every match helps.

It’s an easy two-and-a-half-hour drive south and I was able to park roadside about twenty minutes in the right direction for a swift post-match getaway. The Boro end had sold out, and the stadium looked full. It was good to see hardly any seats lost to segregation with just a double line of hi-viz stewards separating the fans.

Pride Park has the same main stand with a horseshoe design as the Riverside, although Derby went ahead and filled in the corners during the initial construction phase. I think their use of one of those corners for boxes and a scoreboard is an improvement on the Riverside set up. They’ve also put rail seating behind one goal and in the away section.

One of the downsides of a sold-out section is that you can’t move if you don’t like the people around you. I was surrounded by a combination of old blokes planning their next day out at a Tommy Robinson march and some of the most negative dickheads around.

They were adamant that all of our players were fucking bellends. Our tactics were shite and our recruitment was shite. All of this absolute shiteness had to be constantly pointed out just in case there was any doubt in the minds of anyone within earshot. Life in its entirety was shite. It was difficult to see what pleasure any of them hoped to obtain by attending. Or by existing. What made it bearable was that the most negative dickhead had a high pitched squeaky voice. It was as if he was alternating his sniffs of coke with inhaling from a helium balloon.

The match followed the recent pattern of us dominating, missing an early chance or two that would likely have led to a win, before conceding and then failing to break down ten men sat deep. All we need is for one of those chances to go in. The defeat dropped us down to third with Ipswich moving past us. Maybe a new striker or two in January will take us back to winning ways.

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Brigg Town v Doncaster City, Saturday 6th December 2025, 3pm

December 21, 2025

One of the reasons that I’d decided to head down to Humberside for the Hull game was that it would allow Jen and I to walk a little more of the Yorkshire Wolds Way. It took us thirteen years to complete the Cleveland Way and I’d quite like to finish this one whilst I’m still in my sixties.

We walked on both the Saturday and the Sunday, completing a section between Welton and South Cave in both directions. With the walks in and out to the trail it was getting on for seventeen miles in total. There wasn’t much in the way of wildlife, so the highlight was feeding a robin with ginger nuts.

The Boro playing on the Friday night gave me the opportunity to take in a post-walk match on the Saturday afternoon. I drove South across the Humber Bridge to Brigg for a tenth-tier fixture between Brigg Town and Doncaster City in Division One of the Northern Counties East league.

Before paying my six quid admission I got talking to a bloke in the car park. He had a few interesting stories of his football travels and he also told me that Brigg Town are the seventh oldest English club and that their Hawthorns ground dates back to 1959. It had been refurbished this year to provide a new clubhouse and a 4G pitch.

I spent my change from a tenner on a programme and raffle tickets, then queued for pie, chips and gravy. There was a long covered stand along one side and a smaller covered stand on the new clubhouse side. The facilities looked really good for tier ten, certainly when compared to the equivalent Second Division Northern League grounds.

Most people just leaned on the perimeter fence around the pitch and the dog highlight was some sort of spaniel/poodle cross in a wooly winter jacket.

There was plenty to occupy the crowd in the first half with Brigg taking the lead from a close range header some fifteen minutes into the game and just after the floodlights had been switched on. The home advantage didn’t last long as a mix up between the Brigg keeper, who was wearing goggles, and one of his defenders, allowed a Doncaster striker to steal the ball and finish easily.

Brigg soon restored their lead from a speculative ball into the box that seemed to evade everyone. The was a lot of niggle between the sides which escalated just before the break with two yellows for dissent in quick succession for one of the Doncaster coaching team. On receiving his red card he trudged off towards the dressing room but then thought better of it, doubled back and made for the bar instead.

The drama continued in the second half as Brigg gradually took control. A throw in that went deep into the box was headed towards goal. The Doncaster keeper was slow to react as it looped over him and dropped just beneath the bar. Brigg scored a fourth from the spot with around twenty minutes remaining to extend their lead to four-one. The Doncaster players weren’t happy about the decision and one of them ended up in the sin bin.

Being temporarily down to ten men didn’t seem to disadvantage Doncaster and by the time the miscreant was allowed to return, they had scored twice to bring it back to four-three. Both goals were decent, the latter being scored directly from a corner. Once back to full strength, Doncaster pushed for an equalizer. Despite a generous amount of added time they didn’t manage it though and Brigg took the points.

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Bridlington Town v Mossley AFC, Saturday 6th September 2025, 3pm

September 9, 2025

I wasn’t a cool kid. I’ve never been cool as an adult either, not even in that ‘so uncool that you actually are cool’ kind of way. As a thirteen year old and when my cool mates were listening to punk and new-wave, I was listening to The Beatles, Mott The Hoople and Darts. Yes, Darts, a doo-wop revival combo.

They were the first band that I ever saw live. Possibly because The Beatles and Mott The Hoople had already broken up. It was at Middlesbrough Town Hall in June 1978 and, as it was half-term, I even popped along to Debenham’s in Stockton for a signing session earlier in the day. The nine Darts members signed my album and singles and didn’t complain when I rejoined the queue and got them to sign a paper bag as well.

Forty-seven years and three months later, Jen and I went along to Cottingham Civic Hall where I saw Darts for a second time. They played all the songs I’d liked as a thirteen-year-old. Four of the nine who had signed my Debenham’s bag were on stage, two others were dead and three had moved on from their doo-wop revival days. It went well. I doubt I’ll see them for a third time, but it was an enjoyable evening of uncool nostalgia.

Cottingham is close to the start of the Yorkshire Wolds Way and as we were staying in the area we took the opportunity to begin yet another of the National Trails. We recently finished the Cleveland Way, a mere thirteen years after starting it, and currently have Hadrian’s Wall and the West Highland Way in progress.

We set off from Hessle and over the course of two days covered fourteen miles walking to Welton and back. The wildlife highlight was a vole that was so fat to be virtually round. I’ve no idea if they hibernate, but if they do, it looked ready.

There were plenty of options to see a game in the eleventh tier Humber Premier League, but instead I chose to drive forty minutes north to Bridlington for a First Qualifying Round tie in the FA Trophy. Bridlington Town of the eighth-tier Northern Premier East Division were taking on Mossley AFC, who play in the equivalent West Division.

The East Division is the league that most Northern League teams are allocated to if they achieve promotion, so I was interested in seeing the relative strengths of the teams. It’s no more than a rough guide though, especially since Bridlington are second in their division, whilst Mossley are towards the bottom end of theirs.

I’d read that there was plenty of parking at the ground, but a quick circuit of the car park suggested that we’d arrived too late. There were plenty of spaces in the nearby streets though and we were soon in the turnstile queue for the Mounting Systems Stadium.

It was nine quid admission and, whilst most of the 455 attendees were already inside, there were plenty of seats in the main covered stand.

In addition to a covered stand that ran the entire length of one side of the pitch, there was also a covered standing area behind one goal and a kind of bus stop structure opposite the main stand. Brid, as their supporters seem to refer to them, had a small group of ultras with a drum, whilst Mossley were supported by around forty fans at the far end.

At half-time I queued for a baked potato at the opposite end and was joined by the Mossley fans who had switched locations to stand behind the goal that their team were now attacking. That sort of flexibility is one of the things that I enjoy about football at this level.

Football-wise, Brid took the lead within the first minute of the game. I wondered if we might expect a rout, but the contest was fairly even after that. The early goal was enough though as the home side held on despite nine minutes of frantic added time efforts from visitors.

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Askam Utd v Crooklands Casuals, Saturday 23rd August 2025, 11am

September 5, 2025

The August Bank Holiday weekend is rapidly becoming associated, for me at least, with Sea Power’s Krankenhaus Festival. This will be the fifth one that they’ve held at Muncaster Castle and Jen and I have been to them all. The first one, back in 2019, had fewer than four hundred attendees and probably many of them were gatecrashers who had been alerted to the complete lack of security.

This year the capacity had reached fifteen hundred and that’s as high as I’d like it to go. Part of its charm is the lack of crowds and, whilst I appreciate the need for it to at least break even, it was very full inside the barn for the higher profile bands.

Despite the increased capacity, the festival was still a success. Hamish Hawk was very well received, as he had been last time he appeared. I can’t really understand how he isn’t bigger. There was a short performance from Stewart Lee, prior to him introducing The Nightingales. I wondered if he might struggle a bit as most of his humour relies on slow burning build ups and looping back to previous references. I needn’t have worried, as he nailed it.

The highlight though was Sea Power. It always is. For their Friday night performance, I started off a few feet from the stage, but it got too hot and after being clonked on the head by a surprisingly heavy wooden owl that was being dangled from a fishing rod, I moved to the colder air outside the barn and watched the rest of the set from there.

We stayed offsite, in a small place near Santon Bridge. It was ideal for a Sunday morning walk along a Forestry Commission path to Mitterdale. We didn’t see much in the way of wildlife other than a few sheep and I’m not sure that they count. As you’d expect, the views were great. When the path became boggy, we called it a day and turned around, but the six-mile stroll with plenty of ascent was worth doing.

Unsurprisingly, I took in a football game. I’d originally planned to head up to Whitehaven, but their 3pm kick-off would have meant missing Hamish Hawk. For an alternative I found a game that was kicking off at 11am as part of a groundhopping weekend. It was at Askham and involved an hour-long drive down some country lanes that were barely wide enough for one car, never mind two.

It was a fiver to get in and that included a programme and a team sheet, something that a lot of groundhoppers regard as essential to their experience.

Inclusion on a groundhopper tour significantly boosted the attendance. There were close to four hundred people there, mostly blokes on their own and of a similar age to me. The club had pulled out all of the stops to provide facilities and hopefully make a few bob from the day.

There was a small stall with Askam merchandise, including shirts that were presumably last season’s match kits. Further along, someone had two full tables of pin badges. He also had replicas of the Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup trophies. Selfies could be taken with the trophies at a pound a pop. An outdoor bar sold cans of beer and soft drinks but I resisted all of the spending opportunities until I reached the food stall where I spent my cash on a bacon and egg roll instead.

The Duddon Road ground doesn’t have any stands or seating, although there were a few picnic tables along one side of the pitch. There are houses along two sides of the pitch and some picturesque views of the sea behind one goal and the hills behind the touchline with the picnic tables.

It was a grass pitch and after the summer that we’ve had was mainly yellow and in need of some rain. It would have benefitted from some levelling too, with one section in particular sloping upwards towards the corner flag.

The fixture was in the twelfth-tier Division One of the West Lancashire League. According to the programme, Askam hadn’t been doing too well so far this season, but they had most of the early possession and better chances.

Crocklands took the lead against the run of play a quarter of an hour in, when a third effort was driven home after the keeper had beaten out the previous two attempts at goal.

Askam stepped up the pace in the second half but despite the pressure couldn’t force an equalizer. Most of the crowd moved on to Dalton for their second game of a three match Saturday itinerary, whilst I headed back up the road to Muncaster with sufficient time in hand for Hamish Hawk’s afternoon set.

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Middlesbrough v Deportivo de La Coruna, Saturday 2nd August 2025, 3pm

August 8, 2025

There’s just a week to go until the proper season starts for the Boro. That means it’s time for the traditional ‘big name’ friendly at home. Good as that is though, the fixture against Deportivo de La Coruna wasn’t the highlight of my weekend. Not at all.

Twelve years after logging our first section of the Cleveland Way, Jen and I finally finished it off. We walked a total of eleven miles from Filey Brigg to Cayton Bay and back, which meant that we fully completed the trail in both directions on the same hike.

It’s nice to do these walks with a dog and as Henry is still recovering from his knee surgery, we borrowed Soph’s other dog, Millie. She’s an seven-month-old Labrador and whilst Jen and I covered just the minimum distance necessary, she ran back and forward for at least twice the mileage.

The second-best weekend activity was the match. Tom had mentioned that he and his mate Jones were going in hospitality for forty-eight quid. That seemed like a good deal to me and so Harry and I joined them.

We were in the Host and Stay Lounge, which is usually close to two hundred and fifty pounds a pop, although I think for regular games you get a lot more than the burger and chips that we were given.

It made for an interesting change though. There was table service, and we had one of the booth tables that allowed us to look out towards the fan zone and see other fans arriving.

Having a big table also made it easy to spread out the fold-out poster in the programme and identify ourselves in the photograph of the Boro end at Ibrox a week earlier.

Our padded seats were just to the right of the Director’s Box. The Boro were pretty much full strength from those available, with the exception of Rav van den Berg and Hayden Hackney. The dutchman was nowhere to be seen as he tries for a move back home, but Hackney was on the bench after deciding to gamble on securing a Premier League move by turning down Championship Ipswich.

I think he has made the right call, but if his transfer doesn’t happen until late on deadline day, we might find it too late to replace him in this window.

We did ok with Tommy Conway scoring twice, the second after a good run from wing-back Sammy Silvera. In between those efforts, Deportivo scored twice themselves and the resulting draw meant that we were still awaiting our first win under Rob Edwards. Hopefully we are saving that for Swansea on Saturday.

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Hartlepool United v Middlesbrough, Wednesday 30th July 2025, 7pm

August 2, 2025

It’s not often that I get to Hartlepool, but this was my second visit within a month. The previous time Jen and I had taken a walk along the England Coastal Path. We started at St Hilda’s church, quickly passing a pub with outdoor karaoke next to the Andy Capp statue. We continued northwards as far as Steetly Pier before retracing our steps.

We paused at the cemetery that has the graves of those killed in the World War One naval shelling, with the highlight of the six-mile walk being a seagull flying past us with a mouse firmly clasped in its beak.

This visit was to watch the Boro at the Victoria Ground, or as it is now known, the Suit Direct Stadium. It’s thirty-nine years since I last saw a game there, back in ’86 for the Boro’s first game after coming out of liquidation. Ayresome Park didn’t have the safety certificate and so Hartlepool very kindly lent us their ground.

My memories of that game are sketchy. I remember turning my ankle on the wasteland going in and I’m fairly sure I watched from the terracing along one side of the pitch. Probably the side facing the tunnel. We went two up and could have clinched the win when someone, possibly Archie Stephens, maybe Gary Hamilton, rattled the crossbar from distance. Port Vale hit back though, and we had to settle for a two all draw.

There was no wasteland to negotiate this time as we parked near to the stadium and followed the road around to the entrance for the Victoria Park Lounge. I’d opted for a hospitality ticket mainly so that I could watch the match sitting down. For thirty-eight quid a pop, Jen and I got padded seats behind the dugouts, curry and rice before the game and a welcome drink. Not bad at all.

There were around two thousand Boro fans attending. We had the standing section behind the goal to our left and the seated stand to my right. There was a small group of vocal Hartlepool fans in the corner of the stand opposite, but otherwise the home crowd were fairly quiet.

Boro had picked a young, inexperienced side, so much so that there were players I’d never heard of. Fringe players Forss, Barlaser, Hamilton and Gilbert were given a run out, but none of them made a pressing case for a first team starting spot.

It was goalless at half-time when we returned to the lounge for a coffee. Hartlepool scored first after the restart, but Boro equalized through Sonny Finch running at the Hartlepool defence and finishing well. A draw was a fair reflection of the evening’s action.

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Glasgow Rangers v Middlesbrough, Saturday 26th July 2025, 2pm

July 30, 2025

The Boro’s pre-season friendly with Rangers certainly caught the attention of the Boro fanbase with around seven thousand tickets sold for the trip to Ibrox. I looked at accommodation in the city but it seemed so expensive that I initially assumed that it must have been a weekend when both Oasis and Taylor Swift were in town.

My Plan B was to stay north of Glasgow and combine the trip with walking a little further along the West Highland Way. The hotel that we booked in Drymen was having a Murder Mystery Night and so we joined in. I doubt I’d make a detective as I strongly suspected a couple who were there as punters, just like us. It’s lucky I didn’t rugby tackle them to the ground to make a citizen’s arrest. Jen identified the murderer easily enough, reasoning that ‘it’s usually the wife’.                                                                     

We only had time on the Saturday for a short pre-match walk, but we covered the section between Dumdoyne and Arlehaven in both directions. It was just six miles in total, but it’s enough to keep the progress of the trail ticking over and it’s good to spend a morning out in the countryside.

We passed a distillery that I may visit on a future trip but didn’t see much wildlife. I’d been hoping for deer but had to settle for a robin.

In the afternoon I drove to Ibrox. It’s a stadium that I’d last visited in the summer of ’85. On that occasion my friend Craig and I had travelled up to Edinburgh to see some lads that we had recently met on holiday in France. They were Hearts fans and we went with them to Glasgow to see their team get beat 3-1.

It looks as if there have been some renovations in the past forty years as the few memories that I have of the inside of the ground bear little semblance to what I could see from the lower section of the Broomloan Stand.

Tom and Harry had made the journey north too, but I missed them before the game. As they were in the upper tier I couldn’t meet up with them during the game either.

I was pleased to see Sol Brynn in goal for us. If he is going to be our first team keeper this season, he needs to establish himself as soon as possible. Possible departures Hayden Hackney and Rav van der Berg were missing, supposedly with minor injuries, or perhaps after a phone call from an agent.

The game was more physical than a lot of our players were used to and we struggled to ‘win’ free kicks by going to ground after minimal contact. I’m ok with that. Law McCabe adjusted quite quickly and seemed to relish the opportunity to get stuck in. I’m hoping that when Hackney does go, that he’ll get a decent run alongside Morris.

We went one up from a corner early on and added a second just after half-time. Rangers then made ten subs at once and with a much stronger team brought it back to two each. We were happy to take the draw by the end.

I finally caught up with Harry and Tom for a chat outside before heading back to Drymen with the intention of a further chunk of the West Highland Way the next day.

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Stanway Rovers v Walsham-le-Willows, Thursday 17th July 2025, 7.45pm

July 18, 2025

I had some university stuff going on in Colchester, so Jen and I stayed down there for three nights. I don’t really know much about the place other than the Romans rocked up there a while ago. Football-wise, they’ve got a team in the lower reaches of the Football League and I’ve a vague recollection that they once beat Leeds in the Cup. Probably not long after the Romans had gone home.

We stayed on a boat, which was enjoyable. It looked to be permanently moored, which meant that the shower and power worked better than the boat we’d stayed on recently in London. It was interesting to watch the ducks extracting whatever they dig for in the mud as the tides went out.

We went for a wander around a nature reserve, Fingringhoe Wick. Apparently, the name originates from the geography of the area and the protruding pieces of land rather than it being a place where Romans would engage with sex workers.

There were multiple bird hides, some of which were occupied by blokes with cameras big enough to photograph birds before they’d even migrated to the UK. I was hoping for some seals, but didn’t see any.

We’d been told that there were adders at the reserve, but we didn’t see any of them either. We did spot a deer but it quickly legged it. The highlight was probably two squirrels fighting. They grappled in trees until one fell out and the other would jump down to continue the punch up. All it needed for the full bar room brawl experience was for one of them to smash a chair over the other’s head.

Insects were easier to photograph and we got some snaps of butterflies and something that looked like a dragonfly.

On the Thursday evening I drove to the nearby Hawthorns ground, home of Stanway Rovers. They’ve just been promoted to the eighth-tier Isthmian League North. Their opponents were Walsham-le-Willows, a ninth-tier Sussex team that plays in the Premier Division of the Eastern Counties League.

I hadn’t really had much interest in pre-season friendlies in the past, but this year I’ve come to appreciate the way in which it helps gauge the respective strengths of leagues. Providing, of course, that teams take it seriously. So far, that seems to have been the case.

It was a fiver to get in and I wandered around to one of the three four-row shipping container stands on the far side. It looked as if more containers had been used to form the outer wall behind one of the goals and by retaining a section of the container roof it provided cover that was somewhere between a stand and a walkway. As long as the rain came down absolutely vertically, it would probably do its job.

Dog of the day was in the stand next to me. I overheard its owner explaining that it was a cross between a Jack Russell and an American Rat Terrier. Apparently rat terriers can be quite muscular, but this dog just looked like a taller Jack Russell. Ideal, I suppose, for catching rats that are a little above ground level.

The pitch was in poor condition for this time of year, although the lack of rain won’t have helped. It wasn’t level either, with a hump in the centre of the pitch and a corner with an incline up to the corner flag. It looked like something that a bloke with an excavator and a few tonnes of topsoil could have fixed within a week.

The game was tight early on, before Stanway scored two goals in the run up to half-time. The second one was a gem, with the striker flicking it over the advancing keeper’s head with a prolonged contact between ball and foot that would have graced a freestyling competition. I celebrated with a burger that had received extensive online praise, but in reality, was just a burger.

I’d been expecting the floodlights to come on at half-time, but we were an hour or so into the game before anyone turned them on. By that time, it was pretty dark, the sort of gloom that you’d happily play in as a kid, but in the knowledge that it was rapidly approaching ‘next goal the winner’ territory.

Both sides had their chances in what had been a competitive game but there was no further score until we reached the ninety-minute mark. Some slack marking from the visitors allowed Stanway to add a third from a tap in after the keeper had made a decent stop from the initial effort.

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CD Ronda v Atletico Benamiel CD, Saturday 26th April 2025, 6.15pm

May 3, 2025

Ronda is a pleasant place to stay. It’s busy with busloads of tourists coming in each day from Malaga, but if you can avoid getting caught up in the middle of thirty Germans all following a lady holding a flag on a stick, it’s fine for a stroll about.

Fine that is until the power all goes off. At the time, we’d assumed that it was a local issue, probably caused by high winds. Eight hours later when the first brief restoration of the phone signal occurred, we learned that it was an international issue covering all of Spain and Portugal, plus a bit of France.

I think we take connectivity for granted these days, but twenty hours without electricity where all you could buy was whatever a darkened corner shop might sell you for cash and a complete lack of online updates or even the ability to make an old school telephone call, soon gave an insight into how quickly society might break down if a power outage went on for a few days.

We had limited food in the dead fridge and forty euros in my wallet. I’d let the car get low in fuel though and there wouldn’t have been enough in the tank to get us to our next destination of Seville if we’d been travelling that day. Whilst I’m not going to turn into one of those ‘prepper’ folks, I’m mindful of the possibility of a repeat occurrence and will try to be better prepared. Or at least until it’s all forgotten.

The game that we went to in Ronda, was a couple of days before the outage. It was only a twenty-five-minute walk from where we were staying and so Jen and I didn’t need to use the car. That’s a real benefit when street parking is at a premium and you’ve bagged a handy spot.

The game was Ronda’s final home game of the season, and they were hoping for a big crowd. A van with loudspeakers had been driving around town all morning, advertising free admission. A few hundred people turned up, but I’ve no idea how many spectators usually attend. Some of them looked unfamiliar with their surroundings and what they should be doing, so maybe the marketing worked.

It was a critical game for Ronda, who were sat in the fourth and final play-off spot of the seventh-tier Andalusian First Division. Atletico Benemiel had nothing to play for, sitting in the middle of that eight team section in the table, sandwiched between the four play-off spots and the four relegation positions.

Ronda went a goal up midway through the first half, before Benamiel equalised ten minutes later. It seemed to matter more to the visitors, who picked up multiple bookings and had a fella sent off for instigating a hullabaloo just before the final whistle. For the record, a hullabaloo ranks higher than argy-bargy, which itself is a step up from hand-bags.

The home players slumped to the floor at the end, with the two dropped points meaning that with just one game remaining, their play-off ambitions were no longer in their own hands. Pretty much as I imagined that the Boro players might have done after their similar home draw with Norwich earlier that afternoon. Still, we go again, as the coaches say, and for both Ronda and Boro, there’s hope that it might all work out fine in their respective final fixtures.

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UD Ronda B v CD Athletic Coin B, Saturday 26th April 2025, 10am

May 2, 2025

Jen had a conference to attend in Seville and as I can work from anywhere that I fancy, we decided to have a couple of weeks in Spain. We started off in Ronda, which is a picturesque town above a valley. On the Saturday morning, we took a walk down the hill with the intention of being able to view the town from below. It didn’t quite work as we ended up on the side of town without the spectacular cliffs, but I suppose it meant that we saw some views that don’t make it on to the postcards.

Something that we did see though was a horse exercising. A bloke had taken it from a stable and walked it to a nearby field. He let it off and it galloped around on the grass by itself whilst he smoked a fag and scrolled through his phone. If the horse ever learns the way to the field by itself then I suspect that the fella may well be out of a job.

Our hike didn’t really work out well as we realised we had taken a path that led only to someone’s front door. On retracing our steps, we learned that we were now on the other side of Ronda, close to the supermarket that we’d called into on arrival. Jen pointed out some floodlights nearby and since we were unlikely to ever reach the cliffs that we’d intended to, we revised our route and headed for what I’d hoped to be a stadium.

As we got close I heard a few shouts and the sound of a whistle. Result. There’s nothing like stumbling across a bonus game. My pleasure dimmed a little when I realised that it was actually the New Sports City stadium which is where we intended to watch a seventh-tier game that evening.

We saw some of the action from the woods outside and realised that it was a youth game. Some digging around online revealed that it was an under fifteen fixture. These are termed Cadete B games in Spain with Cadete A being the next age group up, under sixteen.

One of the Ronda clubs, UD, were taking on Athletic Coin in a regional game. It was three euros to get in, which seemed steep to me for a kids fixture. Most of the crowd were parents and younger kids, who were there for their own games and training sessions, straight after the current match.

Our arrival was at around the hour mark and the score was level at one each at that point. We saw a couple of away goals from Coin as they took the points. It’s always nice to have a sit down for half an hour on a hike and when you can spend that time watching football even better. Stumbling across a bonus game also meant that we’d have no difficulty in finding the stadium when we returned that evening for the senior fixture.

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