Groundhopping24

Belgium - a nation of diversity and contrasts it would be fair to say. Even linguistically, the country is split between Flanders and Wallonia, with the former speaking Flemish on the whole, and the latter speaking French. This is before we even mention the small German speaking part in the east too. One thing that I felt summed up Belgium quite well, as pointed out during a quick lunch with a friend in Liège on Monday, was the fact the massive Liège Together facade outside the station was almost impossible to photograph as one because of the various trees and bushes preventing the full view. In any case, as a teacher, February always involves a week off for me, meaning I often like to occupy it with a little trip to a new country. In 2024, I went to Lisbon and saw Benfica. Last year, I went to Romania, froze my nuts off, and saw both Farul Constanta and Dinamo Bucharest. This year it was to be the turn of Belgium, and Standard Liège (and Royal Aywaille in the lower reaches of the Belg...

 I'm not going to lie to you, 2025 has been a mess in so many ways on a personal level.  If you're a regular reader of the blog, you'll probably know every problem I've had to deal with over the last 12 months. In any case, I won't let that stop me venting before getting to the actual travel and football content of this particular blog, which centres around Cardiff away - a first away day with Stevenage in just under a year. The year seemed to start okay, with January mostly centering around excitement as to where I would spend the February break. I'd toyed with countless options, waiting for finalised fixture schedules - Mallorca, Lisbon, and Bucharest were the front runners. I chose Bucharest (and Constanta on the Romanian coast), with two games planned at Farul Constanta (the worst and coldest game I've ever experienced), and Dinamo Bucharest (slightly better, but still bloody freezing).  I'd love to say that just over three hours of drab football was...

 With Christmas leaving just as quickly as it arrived, we now encompass that nether zone in which nobody knows what the actual day of the week it is. As such, it's essentially the last chance to get a taste of some football before an empty January fixture calendar rears its welcome head, as far as saving money goes at least.  Though Czech and Slovak football does make a return around the end of January, I've nothing pencilled in until a long weekend in Liege for a mid-February week off. Of course I'll be watching Standard Liege against Union Saint Gilloise in what will be my first taste of Belgian football, and indeed Belgium. As well as this, I'm hoping to visit Plovdiv over the Easter break, and ultimately, get out to one or two countries in Central Asia in the summer.  I'll save the reflections on 2025 for the actual final blog of the calendar year (or more likely the first blog of 2026) which will follow my trip to Cardiff tomorrow, but it's always nice to l...

With the winter break for Central Europe fast approaching, as well as a fairly strong desire to save money for the Christmas period, this weekend would see my last Czech game of the calendar year, as Hradec Králové play host to high-flying Jablonec.  There will still be a couple more blogs before the year ends. I'll be attending Slovan Bratislava v Hacken in the Europa Conference League, followed by a cheap flight back to Luton the next morning. There will undoubtedly be at least one Stevenage blog of some variety in the wake of all three games I'll manage to see, and potentially a blog on a Welsh league game if I'm able to do a couple of nights in Cardiff for Stevenage's fixture there at the end of December.  In any case, it was my  fourth attempt at trying to get to a game in HK. The first instance was at the end of the 2023/24 season, with HK set to host Teplice for the final involving mid-table group teams - an ultimately pointless game, but a chance to check out a ...

 When you think of football in Prague, it's likely the first name that pops into your head is that of either Sparta or Slavia. Those of a more hipster distinction may think of the likes of Dukla, Bohemians, or  Viktoria Žižkov. But of course beyond these five relatively big dogs is a whole world of footballing history in the Czech capital. Beyond the B teams (and rather farcically, the one C team in Slavia Prague C), the third tier A division has four Prague teams - Loko, Admira, Aritma, and Motorlet. For today's blog, we'll be visiting Admira, with the aim of visiting the others at some undefined point in the future. Though an early start would likely have me questioning my sanity, there was an end goal in that I'd be visiting friends in Prague, and hopefully seeing the Optical Illusion Museum I'd been meaning to visit for a while. As for the football, Admira are enjoying the better season of the two sides up in sixth, though promotion is highly unlikely for either...

Through the mill - the beautiful Retz windmill  One of many advantages to living in Brno is being within range of three or four national borders. The likes of Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Austria, and even sometimes Germany are no more than a few hours away. With that in mind, and a fairly limited football schedule given the international break, I decided to take the hop over the border at Znojmo to third tier Retz of Austria. It always struck me as worth visiting given its proximity to Brno in terms of Austrian clubs outside of Vienna - as far as I could tell it was among the closest, with Austrian clubs between Brno and Vienna seemingly few and far between. Following a promotion from the fourth tier last season, Retz are enduring a fairly wretched time of things, with just the one win to their name all season, and also coming off the back of five successive defeats for the second time this season already.  Their opponents Sportunion Mauer from Vienna are already 13 points bett...