Here we go again!

Seriously considered taking it easier this season but you know how things tend to work out…. As I only need 30 odd grounds to complete the top nine levels of English football, that’s swayed me to eschew cost and transport issues and go for it!

Starting today at Northallerton to complete Northern Division One.

There will be the odd Step 6 and non-English ground chucked in for good measure no doubt.

So here we go again!

2021/2 Mid-Term Report

Tardy work on my behalf to be writing this now, given that the season is several months old, but TBH I didn’t expect to be seeing so much non-league footy, given how the last two seasons have panned out.

So I can report steady progress, given that my trip to London yesterday (Dec 4) was my 21st new ground of the season, and I currently have another 45 scheduled between now and the end of April. I’ve even managed to fit in a few games watching UCL table-toppers Long Eaton United, albeit just a short walk from my gaff. Of course my future plans depend very much on Virus control measures, not to mention what the Winter’s weather has in store, so all could yet go belly up.

Needless to say overseas trips are currently off the menu, which means the last 3 Irish league grounds will have to wait, as well as the dozen or so Dutch League grounds left for me to ‘Do’.

It’s deffo ‘Staycation Hopping’ for me this season…

So what has 2020/21 got in store….?

Who’d have thought that my trip to Haughmond (ground number 1002!) in mid-March would be my last footy fixture for nigh on six months? It’s been a strange half-year or so in which I’ve greedily banked all the cash that I would ordinarily have spent on relentless ground-hopping, but sadly watched my waistline grow due to the inactivity. Even a recent 15-mile jaunt round Dovedale hasn’t helped to stem that spread!

So what of this new season, and can I be arsed to get up at 4.30 every Saturday morning to make my obligatory rail or coach trip ‘darn sarf’?

Looks like my self-isolating car will be ‘order of the day’ for the foreseeable future, with target grounds being those with enough capacity to grant me entry without having to stand within twenty yards of anybody else.

I’ve got plane tickets and digs booked for my annual trip to Nuremberg in November, but if there’s any footy to be had it’s likely to be in the local lower leagues.

So what hopes for 2021?  Trips to Netherlands & poss Germany in February & April are on the cards, but a lot depends on what happens in the meantime. Until then I’ll just have to work on that waistline!

Broadbridge Heath – Saturday 11th January 2020 (991)

Conscious of their ‘global warming’ responsibilities in using biodegradable corner flags, the blues were always ready to employ ‘green’ alternatives….

Wow, my first post for over a year! Truth is I’ve been lying low, desperate to avoid being sucked into that whole Brexit shenanigans, during which many of my friends and acquaintances felt obliged to offer up their own views on the debacle – courtesy of social media comments and re-tweets – despite me not actually asking for them. What’s that old saying… ‘avoid bringing up religion or politics in conversation if you want to maintain a friendship?’- sound advice indeed! But now all that seems on the way to being done and dusted – and the amateur politicians seem to have scurried for cover – let me dare to mention two other ‘flavours-of-the-month’ – plant-based ‘vegan’ food and non-alcoholic beers.

Most of you will know that I like a tipple, and I consciously avoid eating meat, and thus the original purpose of this Blog was to highlight the profound lack of good beer and veggy-friendly food at football grounds. When I started writing, around 15 years ago, and despite being ‘veggie’ for some 20 years, it was still difficult to hunt down my kind of food and drink in take-aways, let alone the nation’s footy stadia. Well Gregg’s seem to have changed the ‘tucker’ situation overnight! By launching the ‘Vegan’ sausage roll they’ve spawned another ‘Me Too’ movement as every High Street fast-food chain worth its salt has scrambled onto the table with its very own ‘Vegan’ delight, even if some haven’t quite got it spot-on (reportedly one high-profile company is cooking its plant-based burger on the same hot plate as its meatier counterpart – whoops!)

So what’s all this got to do with footy, I hear the odd one of you ask. Well, primarily because I’m starting this day at the Gregg’s branch in Victoria Coach Station, sampling their latest delight, the ‘Vegan Steak Bake’ – and it’s not three bad! I was not overly fond of their veggie sausage roll, I must confess, but this steak bake is a very different animal (or not, so to speak).

Another reason I’ve not been so active on this blog relates to its other main purpose – highlighting the availability of good beer in and around football grounds. The odd health scare and a nasty habit of overdoing it a bit on my overseas jaunts has meant I’m limiting my alcohol intake these days, and as such I’m not frequenting as many pubs on my UK away-days as I used to. But having been a good boy over Christmas – partly aided and abetted by a case of very tasty low and no-alcohol dark beers courtesy of the ‘Dry Drinker’ mail order company (thanks wifey!) – I’m up for a bevvy today and where better place to start than the Albion Tap. It’s in Horsham in West Sussex, a couple of hundred yards from the town’s railway station, and kind of en-route to my target ground for the day, that of Southern Combination Premier Division outfit, Broadbridge Heath.

Despite appearing as if it’s been part of the town’s drinking scene for a century or more, this impressive pub was only created out of a former coffee bar in 2016. As I step inside I’m greeted by a giant whiteboard detailing what’s on cask (6) and keg (10) today, ranging from a 2.8%abv cask light IPA, to a thunderous 10.6%abv keg Imperial Stout. Tempting, but so is the 4.2% Black Cherry Mild from local brewery, Kissingate, and I am royally rewarded for my selection. In truth, there were seven Horsham hostelries on CAMRA’s WhatPub website which appealed to me, but for my second drink I decide to call in at the Kings Arms on the edge of the town centre. This used to be the ‘tap’ house for the King & Barnes brewery which was sadly closed and then unceremoniously demolished earlier this century. However, the former head brewer is still active and one of his own beers, Firebird Heritage, is on handpump, alongside one from Dark Star and a couple from the local Brolly Brewery.

Unfortunately, the Heritage is not up to much. Billed as gluten-free, I’m not really sure what to expect and it certainly doesn’t seem to fit the descriptive of a ‘full malt flavour’. In truth, its probably end-of-barrelish and I ought to have alerted the barman to that fact. Maybe next time……

I set out on a 2-mile walk to the west of the town centre into the suburb of Broadbridge Heath, home of the eponymous football club. Their new ground is situated at the rear of a complex which includes a Tesco superstore, and an old athletics stadium which was the former home of said club before they relocated to the more-or-less adjacent Countryside Park earlier this season. The new home benefits from an excellent playing surface overlooked by a modern, capacious clubhouse, and sports a compact but comfortable seated ‘flat-pack’ stand on the opposite halfway line, with an even smaller covered terrace stand behind one goal. I’ve some time on my hands before kick-off and so settle into the clubhouse with the match programme, keeping an eye on the footy on the TV. There’s no real ale on the bar, but there are bottles of Greene King beers plus – somewhat surprisingly – Cruzcampo (Spain) and Leffe Blond (Belgium) in the fridge. I’m tempted by the latter but decide not to over-indulge today, restricting myself simply to educating the barman to the fact that the Leffe (“We don’t sell many of those”) is actually a beer, not a lager, and at 6.6%abv should be treated with some respect! There are some cheese & onion rolls on the bar, optimistically priced at £2.50, but nothing of any interest at the snack hatch.

The home side currently reside towards the wrong end of their Step 5 division table, but with today’s visitors Crawley Down Gatwick not exactly setting the pace much higher up, a win for the hosts looks eminently possible, particularly when they take the lead some quarter of an hour in, albeit with an O.G. The Zumba class in the Leisure centre on the opposite side of the pitch tends to catch the wandering eye during the quieter moments, but the game really comes to life after the break with a firmly headed equalizer and thereafter the writing is on the wall for the Heath. CDG look increasingly the stronger outfit and settle it with two goals in the last 25 minutes.

And so as I approach ground number 1,000 (which should be by the end of February, postponements notwithstanding) I can look back at a time when I was 300 grounds and counting and see if any progress is being made with the fayre on offer to (primarily) non-league football punters. And I have to say no. The greasy burger or hot dog still reigns supreme, chips are an occasional (and not particularly healthy) option, and if I want a soup it’s packet. A beer in the bar – well, there’s probably a one-in-three chance of something British (I don’t count Smoothflow!) and one-in-ten of it being local. And as for a non-alcoholic brew – forget it! Somewhere out there will be the Ultimate Match Day Experience. I’ll just have to keep looking……

Programme: £1 on the gate. 28 pages. Big on statistics.

Floodlights: 8 pylons

Club Shop – nothing evident

Toilets – in the clubhouse

Birdlife: eerily quiet. not even a parakeet. I’ve seen loads this year, but clearly they don’t venture into this part of Sussex

Kop Choir: No

Away fans: a few in the stand

Another season comes and goes….

Well that went quickly!

2018/19 has officially finished for me, and yes I know there are still playoffs in higher divisions, and that some hoppers will be scrambling around looking for ‘Summer Leagues’ played on park pitches and cowfields by mainly pub teams and watched by 5 blokes and a disinterested dog, but not for me. I like my ‘close’ season just the way it should be.

But as I look back on another 70 new grounds over the past 10 months or so, I will start my planning towards 2019/20 and the real possibility that I might clear all the way down to Level 9 as well as make further inroads into Level 10. Completing the top 10 levels of the English league structure is still very much my aim, despite overseas distractions and a need to do more in Wales.

Plus of course, there is that 1,000th ground looming large, which I reckon should happen around March 2020. Should I make it a cracker, or just take it in my stride? Something to ponder over the next few months.

And maybe I’ll even find time to post the odd report or two, as I approach official retirement age.

Hebburn Town – Saturday 5th January 2019 (919)

“With local expectations running high, the match officials prepare for a speedy getaway just in case things cut up rough….”

It’s F.A. Vase 4th Round day, and what better to be at than a tie at a Northern League ground. After all, of the 14 Step 5 leagues in the UK, clubs from this particular one have won this trophy an inordinate amount of times in its recent history – 8 victories in the last 10 years in fact, plus three losing finalists to boot.

Having decided some weeks back to target Tyneside on this day, I’ve come up trumps as Hebburn Town are at home to Shepshed Dynamo, a Leicestershire club based just a few miles from where I was born. I remember them in their Leicestershire Senior League days, when they were known as Albion, before a local businessmen took over the club, saddled it with the Charterhouse suffix, and took them to within sniffing distance of the Football League. Heady days!

Around the same time a pal and I had latched on to fellow Senior League side Friar Lane Old Boys, who were making a name for themselves in the recently-established Vase – they were semi-finalists two years running – and it was clear this competition was capturing the imagination, with crowds at FLOB’s Knighton Lane East home well into 4 figures at what was essentially a 50-men-and-a-dog kind of ground.

Taking advantage of early booking and split rail fares – 6 tickets for a return journey, same seat on the same train – it’s just a £25 day out for me (more than £100 if bought at the station) and I arrive in Newcastle just before 11.00am armed with a map of some of the local pubs. First port-of-call is the nearest Gregg’s, to run the rule over the newly-launched ‘Vegan’ sausage roll, created in Newcastle, apparently. I get the last one on display, so they must be popular, and although just lukewarm that’s red-hot by Gregg’s usual standards (well it is!)

I kill time before midday opening by wandering down by the river, and am amused to watch a diving bird of some type (probably a cormorant) which emerges from the depths with a sizeable eel wriggling furiously within its beak. It quickly realises it’s bitten off more than it can swallow, because it dives again and re-emerges without its prize. The one that got away.

There are lots of good drinking houses down by the Quayside, including the Bridge Tavern and one of my personal favourites, the Crown Posada. But I head back up towards the station behind which are two micro pubs occupying adjacent arches. The Box Social is operated by the local brewery of the same name and consists of a small downstairs bar, with another above. There are 4 cask ales on today, including two of their own, a 7.0% porter (tempting but too early in the day) and a 3.5% cloudy pale ale, Hybrid Theory, which I decide to try. It’s not much of a looker, and is definitely one for the unfined aficionados. Keg beer fans will be pleased to know the ‘craft’ choice numbers just shy of 10. The beer offering seems to be from all over Europe (a 15%abv Danish milk stout was in evidence, thirds only!)

Right next door is Beer Street, with a similar layout to its neighbour (as you might expect – rail arches tend to be symmetrical to each other). Here cask beer dominates, with a choice of up to 11 from all over the UK and the odd European beer – in this case the highly-respected Lervig from Norway – thrown in for good measure. I select Thornbridge’s salted caramel porter, Lucaria, which is as excellent as I would expect from this brewery.

Soon it’s time to head for the Metro at the main station, and a 15-minute journey to Hebburn via the Yellow line in the direction of South Shields. Zone 2 price is £4.20 return. From Hebburn station it’s a ten-minute walk to the Hebburn Sports Ground, with its floodlights visible from some distance away. I’m assuming, given the club’s very recent promotion from Step 6, that this stadium is work-in-progress, and although a fairly tidy set-up, does suffer from a very narrow passage way behind one goal which impedes access to the sizeable, TV-bedecked clubhouse, the layout of which – with the bar-servery adjacent to the main entrance, and the toilets at the far side – is less than ideal for biggish crowds such as today’s. However, there is a marquee set up to serve the drinking overspill, although I suspect this is a temporary legacy of some New Year party or other. Likewise they’ve pulled in fish-and-chip and burger vans either side of the main stand, although the food bar at the side of the clubhouse has pies (all meat) but can offer chips and curry to the non-carnivore. There’s no decent beer in the bar, unless you’re local and you swear by Newcy Brown that is!

Spectator facilities comprise flat standing all round (although not yet tarmaced down one side) and a three-step main stand, the layout of which appears to be set up for safe standing, with a crush barrier fronting every seat. There’s a covered area set well back behind one goal which looks like it’s only likely to be of any interest if there’s a sudden downpour.

I’m kind of expecting the home side to dominate this encounter, but it turns out to be quite the opposite, with Dynamo making most of the running in the first half, scoring once, missing a penalty, and kicking themselves by conceding an equaliser just before the break. After the interval Hebburn emerge revitalised and go in front before losing a man to a straight red. With 25 minutes left it’s Shepshed’s chance to prevail but despite a lot of huffing and puffing, and a late flurry at the end, it’s all in vain and Town move triumphantly into the last 16.

Could they go all the way? Well, they have a former serial winner – Paul Chow, ex-Whitley Bay – in the ranks, and recent Vase history is on their side. But also in the mix is another Northern League side, West Auckland Town, losing finalists in 2012 and 2014. If I was a betting man, I wouldn’t be looking a lot further….

Programme: £2 on the gate. Colour printed on very stiff card. Informative with limited advertising. Visitors Shepshed’s history seemed to have ended in 2013, however….

Floodlights: the traditional 4

Club shop: Didn’t see one but lots of yellow-and-black scarves and hats in evidence within the ground.

Toilets: Just the one in the bar, as far as I could see. Three urinals and a sit-down for a 700+ crowd.

Birdlife: This part of the world is famous for its Kittiwakes but as I can’t tell them apart from the common or garden gull, I’ve no idea if the shitehawks flying over the ground were of that particular breed!

 

 

 

Well it was forty years ago today….

Remember where you were during all those landmark events in history? Churchill’s funeral, JFK’s assassination, the Twin Towers…… well I know exactly where I was forty years ago tonight. When the old order crumbled and the young guns set out on their irresistible road to glory…..

I was stood in the Trent End at the City Ground, Nottingham, sweating – like most of the 40,000+ souls around me – on whether that single Gary Birtles goal would be good enough to get us past the dogged Scousers over two legs of this first round European Cup tie. Would our European adventure be over without us even leaving these shores?

Then up popped Colin Barrett and the rest, as they say, is history.

Colin Barrett hammers the ball past Liverpool captain Emlyn Hughes (right) to score Nottingham Forest’s 2nd goal during their European Cup 1st round 1st leg match at the City Ground in Nottingham on 13th September 1978. Nottingham Forest won 2-0. (Photo by Bob Thomas/Getty Images.)

North-East Double – Fri/Sat 17th/18th August – 883/4

‘Although nobody actually knows where Midsomer is, it seemed prudent to rope off the crime scene just in case Inspector Barnaby showed up…’

I’m not the world’s most prodigious reader but when I do pick up a tome it’s usually something either warfare-related, or possibly about heritage railways, or else it’s a good biography. The world of fiction is lost on me (OK maybe I do like a bit of the Sci-Fi stuff now and again but usually only on-screen).

My most recent brain fodder has been ‘My Magic Carpet Ride’, an autobiography by Forest legend Gary Birtles, and whilst not exactly the most riveting of reads, it did remind me of a few things from the Reds’ ‘Glory Days’, not least of which was the team’s attitude towards referees. Mr Clough Senior would not countenance any dissent from his players towards match officials, not even on the notorious occasion when the Man in Black had clearly been ‘nobbled’ (allegedly!) in a UEFA Cup tie against a team from Brussels.

Brian’s attitude was, despite a perceived injustice, that ‘a decision has been made, we will just accept it and get on with it!’ Surely sound advice for anyone else taking on a team from Brussels!

Sadly, in football at all levels nowadays, few people follow the Clough creed. You can have the words ‘Respect’ printed as large as you like across your playing strip, but nobody appears to show any. I see hard working referees and assistants putting in a real shift and getting most of the stuff right. But what happens when they don’t? Simply just get on with it, I say. But until the FA livens up and introduces Rugby-style punishment for dissenters – free-kicks moved forward ten yards, Sin Bins for persistent offenders – then that’s never likely to happen.

My two games this weekend are little different to any others I have watched in recent seasons. Most have been refereed to a competent level, at least from my neutral standpoint, but the officials have still copped for plenty of grief from players and supporters – plus club officials – with parochial axes to grind.

My appearance at Tow Law Town on the Friday night is unplanned. At 6.45pm I am sitting in the covered section of the stand at Durham CCC’s Riverside Stadium waiting for T20 Blast action, which has been delayed by the persistant heavy drizzle which continues to fall. A Clash song flashes into my head. ‘Should I Stay or Should I go?’  I decide on the latter, beating the mass exodus from the slippery car parks, with the Sat Nav set quickly for the distant Northern Division 2 ground. Reassuringly, it tells me I will be there before the 7.30pm kick-off. Just!

I had visited Tow Law once before, in the 1980s with my girlfriend at that time. I’d been fascinated by the place since reading football books as a youngster, with the village’s team having enjoyed some cup success in the Sixties, and as we were camping locally, decided to check out the village pub, The Surtees. This turned out to be one of those joints where strangers might just as well have been aliens, as everything stopped as we walked in and we were obviously the main topic of conversation until we quickly supped up and left.

Thirty-odd years on I’m back, there’s no sign of The Surtees, but I do find the football club’s Ironworks Road ground tucked away down a side street of the same name, and I am immediately engaged by the character of the place. The pitch has a decided side-to-side slope, with the small main stand of a certain vintage straddling the halfway line on the lower side, and rudimentary covered terracing behind the far goal. On the upper side is a strip of uncovered stepped terracing, while the clubhouse occupies much of the area behind the other goal. The 5,500 who crammed in to see the FA Cup win over Mansfield Town in the 1960s must have found it a tad cosy!

The game itself is against Brandon United who have the temerity to score first, but that’s about as good as it gets for them, with the home side sweeping forward in a generally one-sided first half and notching four in reply before half time. It’s a little tamer after the break but another three goals are added to the final score, with just one of them to the visitors. An entertaining start to my weekend.

Day 2 dawns with a trip to the Spoons at the Gateshead Metro Centre before heading out to the east coast, and the Meadow Park ground of Northern Division 1 side, Sunderland RCA. The prefix is a bit of a misnomer in that the club is actually based in Ryhope, not Sunderland, and was acquired when two sides amalgamated back in the day. The RCA suffix stands for Ryhope Community Association – not to be confused with nearby rivals Ryhope Colliery Welfare – which is where the club is based.

The ground wouldn’t be encountered by chance, being situated at the end of a maze of winding streets in a modern housing complex. Like Tow Law last night, the pitch has a decided slope, but this time from end to end, and all of the spectator accommodation, save for hard standing, is on one side the ground. The centrepiece is a basic but adequate cantilever main stand, and an area of covered flat standing, part of which is currently out-of-bounds. There’s a comfortable clubhouse where the barman makes my day by producing a chilled bottle of Black Sheep Ale just when I thought my options would be Carling or John Smith’s Smooth.

The home team is up against Dunston UTS, who have started the season well, and it’s an entertaining see-saw five-goal encounter which is only settled at the death when a goalkeeping indiscretion gifts the visitor a soft penalty. But the level of aggravation throughout the match targeted at the officials from players, supporters, and the odd club official alike, is what led me to open this blog with the Clough anecdote. Respect is in seriously short supply today.

Perhaps the local chap standing near me towards the end of the game has the answer to everything. He launches into a tirade at a Dunston club official who himself has just given the referee a real mouthful.

That he does so without provoking any aggressive response from the club official might have something to do with the brute of a dog he’s got with him. So there you go, equip the referee with a snarling rottweiler, or a belligerent Staffy, for an assistant and dissent would be reduced to a bare minimum. Respect would be the new norm, unless you wanted a ragged hole in your shin pads…..

Programmes: Tow Law Town – £1 (I think) at the turnstile. 36 pages of which 15 are adverts. Nice glossy cover and plenty of info & stats. Sunderland RCA – £1 (delivered to me in the bar, many thanks!) 32 pages on very thick card, of which 11 are adverts. Once again full of stats and info. Both very commendable publications.

Floodlights: Both clubs have eight pylons.

Club Shops: No

Toilets: Behind the goal at TLT and next to the stand at RCA

Birdlife: Just the odd seagull.

What’s In A Name: RCA’s utility player Dom Moan is not happy to be sat on the bench, whilst midfielder Dimitri Limbo is not sure whether he’s playing or not. Defender John Jury has a judgemental view about both….

 

2017/8 and all that…..

Well another season draws to a close and despite a dearth of blog entries (a mixture of lack of time and lack of inspiration!) you can see from the Twitter feed that I’ve still been doing plenty, despite a short spell in the Royal Derby (and that’s not a hotel….) which scuppered my annual trip to Berwick. Suffice to say, as I write this, that beer is currently off the menu, on doctor’s orders, which does cramp my style a bit!

But looking back on the season, I did manage to achieve my stated goal of bringing all my Step 5 leagues down to single figures, and although that’s been at the expense of a few Step 3 & 4 stragglers, many of those are 3g so best saved for when all else has failed.

So what’s ahead for the coming season? To bring all my Step 5 leagues down to no higher than 5 ‘needs’, whittle away at Step 6’s, and also those Step 3 & 4’s (11 of ’em) which have sneaked through my defences. Oh yes, and that new Spurs stadium too. I’m also looking to tick at least two more Highland League grounds, and also have a dabble in North Wales (holiday booked!)

Plus there’s always Ireland and Holland. Mind you, that depends on me getting my drinking license back. I can’t imagine going to either country and staying on the fruit juice. A man has to have standards!

Deal Town – Saturday 23rd December 2017 (850)

“There was speculation that a handful of tightwad supporters had discovered a secret back entrance into the stadium,,,’

Isn’t it funny how little bits of information from your childhood tend to stick in your mind? With all this new stuff going on you’d have thought there’d be no room ‘up top’ for such trivia a half-century on, but no, they’re still in there. For instance I remember there being a UN General secretary called U Thant; I can name the 5 power stations that used to line the Trent Valley (I won’t bore you); and that the former names of Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and Iceland were Rhodesia, Ceylon and Bejam respectively (yes I know it’s an old chestnut….). And that I had a friend who every year used to go on holiday “down Deal”.

Of course back then I had no idea where ‘down Deal’ was, and even when I became more geographically-accomplished I still had little or no reason to go ‘down Deal’. Until, that is, this football thing sprang up!

Having set myself the target of bringing all my Step 5 League ‘needs’ down to single figures by the end of this season, I’m acutely aware that I have to be in London most saturdays as it’s the ideal jumping-off point for the Premier divisions of the Wessex, Southern Combination and Southern Counties East, in which resides Deal Town FC, hence my belated need to visit the town. Today’s blast off from my Long Eaton base camp has been brought forward to 5.00am, courtesy of a revised Christmas schedule on East Midland Trains. And with St Pancras being the departure point for all things South East, it looks like that part of the capital will be seeing quite a bit of me this morning.

As I expected to have time on my hands, it was logical to select the furthest flung of the remaining SCEL Premier grounds that I need, and so that means Deal Town, an hour and a half on the faster of the South East trains services to the Channel towns. Having done prior research, I know that two of the pubs I want to visit will not be open until midday, so after arriving in Deal I kill a bit of time by taking a stroll along the minimalistic pier and chatting with the fishermen who are having a tough time chasing some elusive Whiting.

Having encountered a few down-at-heel seaside towns in recent years, I have to say that Deal is bucking the trend by appearing fresh and vibrant. There’s a busy little shopping area, the seafront houses are bright and colourful, and with regards to pubs and bars you really are spoilt for choice. Ordinarily I’d have stepped into one of the Shepherd Neame houses, or even the town’s Wetherspoon, but I’ve only time for three or four, so I must choose sparingly.

I start at the Queen Street Taphouse, right opposite the station. It’s a refurbishment job but definitely works on several fronts, not least of which being the four cask beer engines dispensing ales brewed in the county of Kent, plus 14 keg taps offering a wide choice of styles and strengths. These include some menu standards, but also some local delicacies such as the 9.0% Double Stout produced by Deal-based brewers, Time & Tide. As it’s my first beer of the day I stick to the relatively modest delights of Wantsum Imperium, a 4.0% dark ruby cask ale which is in impeccable condition, and at £2.65 a pint is doubtless priced to compete with the Spoons just down the road.

From here I move on to the Just Reproach micro pub where my timed arrival (12.02pm) sees me grab the only remaining table in a pub that officially opened only two minutes previously! This is a single-room bar with no music or other modern distractions (mobile phone usage warrants a fine) and as is customary in this kind of establishment I’m quickly into a conversation, this time with a gentleman who used to play top level rugby for London Irish, and who is happy to give me the heads-up on other local watering holes. My pint of Goachers Imperial Stout disappears a little faster than I anticipate, as in my eagerness to jot down his valuable advice, I manage to knock over my half-empty glass. Doh!

I’m intrigued by the building across the road which appears to combine a record shop with a craft beer coffee bar. Smugglers is in fact exactly that. Picnic-style tables are laid out amidst racks of new and second-hand vinyl, with other shelves groaning under the weight of some of the finest craft beers money can buy. These are for take-away, or drinking in, and once again I am quickly in conversation with a much-travelled former psychology student and an ex-navy man, about the merits of certain bands, great beers and just about anything in between. A bottle of Wipers & True Milk Shake serves to lubricate the discussion.

With the beer buzz starting to take effect – and the prospect of a twenty-minute walk out to the football ground still to come – I decide to eschew the Taphouse Beer Cafe for the similarly-named Tap Room, on the sea front. This is a keg-only bar but with a good choice of local brews, including those of Time & Tide. I’m attracted, however, by the Cow Juice milk stout on offer from Dover-based brewery, Breakwater, which I enjoy immensely, despite the £5 price tag for what is essentially a modest strength (4.2%) beer. It’s like being back in Dublin!

My culture-sampling session over, I head off past the railway station onto Park Avenue and then St Leonards Road towards the Charles Ground home of Deal Town FC. The stadium is a tidy little affair with a sizeable seated kit stand straddling the half way line on one side, and a covered kit-stand terrace behind one goal. On the other side of the pitch is a plush clubhouse, the roof of which provides some cover for anybody utilising the flat standing on that side. A cursory study of the catering facilities identifies the presence of the ubiquitous chip, while there are bottles of Shepherd Neame Whitstable Bay Pale in the chiller cabinet.

It being Christmas, the Southern Counties East League fixture secretary has conjured up a local derby today against Canterbury City, and it will be a home game for both, as City are currently homeless and ground-sharing at the Charles Ground. Previous results and table position would seem to point to a Deal victory, but City obviously haven’t read the script and are deservedly three up within 30 minutes. Even when we look to have a game on our hands after Town pull one back on the hour, the ‘visitors’ earn a quick penalty and the three-goal margin is restored. There’s just time for a couple of sendings-off – one being the City manager who caps off an afternoon of offering a stream of uncalled-for advice to the young referee by booting a stray ball into the stand – and the day is done.

An entertaining game and the ideal finale to my enjoyable day spent ‘down Deal’. My target now is the six-hour journey back ‘up north’.

Programme: Nicely printed and presented. £1.50 cover price but given away free today in a bid to show regular non-purchasers what they are missing.

Floodlights: Curiously seven pylons, with a gap on the clubhouse side where an eighth (presumably) should be.

Birdlife: No parakeets (yet) in this part of the world.

Club Shop: None evident

Toilets: Near the corner flag betwixt clubhouse and covered terrace.

Music the players emerge to: tbh I didn’t really notice, the effect strong beer has on me!