It's Going To Happen!

I need more badges!

Welcome to Hopping Around Hampshire!

Background: I'm a Pompey fan. Scratch that, I'm a Pompey nut, or at least, I have been for a long time. I've been attending matches at Fratton Park since the age of five. However, during their stay in the Premiership, something changed. I became more and more disengaged. Whether it was the lack of identification with the mercenary millionaires that represented the club on and off the field of play; whether it was the constant moving of kick-off times by TV, meaning I had to reorganise my life around Sky TV schedules over and over again; whether it was the - yes, whisper it - boring, predictable football in the Premiership (six 0-0 draws in seven home matches at one point - 0-0 draws usually played between two teams of enormous uncaring automatons); whether it was the sheer unaffordability (season tickets at £600 for only 19 matches!)...I don't know. It was a mixture of all of the above, I suspect.

To cut a long story short, I stopped going to Fratton Park. And most weeks, I didn't miss it.

However, lately, the urge to return to football has come back. Saturday afternoons sat in front of Ceefax were getting a little dull. So, over Christmas 2010, I decided to go to a match. Not Pompey this time, but in the town where I grew up, Havant. As it happens, the match I went to (Havant & Waterlooville v Dorchester Town) was called off. But as I sat in the car park at Westleigh Park, watching all the people coming and going in the drizzle, I hatched a plan...

The plan was to visit all the senior football grounds in Hampshire, taking in a match at each (by "senior", I mean every club at Wessex League level and above). Hence, the birth of this blog. This will be a record of all my trips to each of these grounds over the next few years (and yes, I'd love to "do" the whole lot in one season, but I do have other commitments!). I shall post match reports, photos and other details. I hope that others find it (a) mildly diverting or (b) useful for planning their own trips to these grounds.

There are currently 42 clubs in Hampshire at Wessex League level and above. I shall list them all in my second post, and then the match reports will begin!