From Saints to Druids

An advert for the above-titled book, in this month's When Saturday Comes, caught my eye and tied in with something I'd been meaning to write about for a while, namely the Welsh (Cymru) Premier League.

Michael Grimes visited all 12 clubs in the top-flight during the 2019/20 and his discovery of Welsh football is chronicled in a book, available to order here.

During the past year of, mainly, closed-door football I've taken a closer eye on the televised offerings from Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland's Championship and made a mental note to travel to some of the more interesting grounds, The Oval in Belfast, Cappielow in Morton and The Rock, home of Cefn Druids, among others.

The Welsh Premier League as a whole has always fared well in surveys of affordability, something Michael confirmed when he was kind enough to answer a few questions from me earlier this week.

I also asked him how the idea for the book came about;

'I knew nothing about the WPL, it was as a result of a conversation I had with the editor of Football Weekends magazine, where by he asked me to cover some Welsh teams. I did 3 in a long weekend, then decided to do the whole 12 WPL clubs.'

That first weekend was clearly a productive trip, leading to 'From Saints to Druids' and a warm welcome on his travels for the author.

As an aside, the current April issue of Football Weekends has a nice piece on a recent trip, made by one of its contributors, to a couple of Highland League grounds.

As for a favourite ground amongst the 12 in Wales that he visited, Michael told me;

'Probably Newtown, the ground has an old school charm about it, probably helped by the fact that it wasn't raining...a lot of rain on my trips!'

For coverage of the top divisions in men's and women's football, Cymru Football has plenty of news and stats.. 

Below the top level it has been a very difficult year for the game in Wales, without even the intermittment action that managed to sustain grassroots followers in England, but hopefully clubs have been able to weather the storm as much as possible and are looking forward to the 2021/22 season.

Y Clwb Pel-droed is an excellent website that covers all aspects of the game.

Getting Fixture Ready

The recent publication of the updated guidance from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) meant a false start for many clubs at Step 7 of the English pyramid who were expecting to be able to welcome spectators through the turnstiles from next Saturday and it will be a few more weeks now until going to a game becomes a reality again at all levels.

When the time comes, the following sites have proved invaluable to me over the years in finding fixtures.

The London Football Guide - James Doe is the man behind Non-League Day and set up TLFG to provide a comprehensive guide to football (at all levels) in the capital and its suburbs. On a weekly basis he runs through all of the fixtures of note and is also happy to answer queries from anyone coming to London and looking to catch a match - I'm really looking forward to the site being back up and running once spectators can go to games.

Football in Berkshire is an excellent not for profit site that doesn't leave a stone unturned when reporting on football at all levels in the county.

The excellent She Kicks magazine also has a website with features, stats and regular fixture updates covering all levels of the women's game in the UK with Scottish Women's Football a great source of information north of the border.

The official FA site also has an easy-to-navigate fixture list with ticket info and links and it always worth searching for sites or social media pages that cover your local area, for example Hants Womens Footie (@hantswomans on Twitter).

The Northern Counties East Football League is my local Step 5 league and the home of Hallam FC who have featured regularly on the site. The NCEFL website is an excellent resource for results and fixtures and there are many similar sites covering leagues up and down the country.

 And, for the pleasure of having the fixtures actually in your hand, the Non-League Paper is published every Sunday and still costs just £1.50, an incredible achievement. As well as comprehensive coverage of games played the previous day, and the non-league scene generally, they have detailed fixture lists at the back of the paper.

The Champions League Alternative

Before the pandemic, on midweek evenings up and down the land, an alternative universe existed where supporters would seek out tea, pies, friendship (or solitude) and football at their local club while the Champions League would play out, glimpsed on televisions in clubhouses or scores scrolled through on phones.

For the past year, of course, the choice of escaping the ever-increasing reach of the Champions League has been denied to those supporters, unable to get out to a game and reduced to a diet of group stage matches with an increasingly familiar ring to them.

I'm not a fan of the competition, as you can tell, but at least at the moment, increasingly a closed shop it may be, but at least at present it still retains the recognisable features of a tournament with group and knockout stages.

That looks all set to change with the proposed changes announced this week that will see two spaces reserved for clubs who haven't qualified through the usual routes (through a formula inevitably designed to feature the bigger clubs) and a convoluted group stage.

A superb piece by Jonathan Wilson in Sports Illustrated lays bare the greed that lies behind these changes.

But an alternative does exist and, hopefully, it is one that we can all get back to soon as clubs finalise their preparations for the return of fans.

🏆 WE ARE BACK 🏆

The defence starts here...

⚽ The #Menace vs @Croydon_FC
🏆 @LondonFA Trophy, Round 2
🕜 1.30, Saturday 24 April
💷 £3 adults, children free
📰 £1 programme
🍺 £3 @brick_brewery cans
😷 See website for our COVID rules
🇹🇭 #Peckham #Dulwich #MenaceLifeAintEasy pic.twitter.com/EIolLcbNx7

— Peckham Town FC (The Menace) (@PeckhamTownFC) April 1, 2021