Groundhopping24

 With the arrival of the Easter break came another opportunity to travel to a new country, and the last twelve months have been pretty strong with regard to ticking off new countries. Though the summer didn't bring any new countries, I did still have the joy of returning to Cork, experiencing Koper in Slovenia, and finally getting to the Eastern part of Slovakia with a long weekend in Košice. I did manage to get to Montenegro in October, though the less said about that, the better. Belgium in February was thankfully a lot more enjoyable, especially getting to experience the phenomenal atmosphere at Standard Liege. Now, it's the turn of Plovdiv in Bulgaria - a city I'd always wanted to visit having heard it was one of the longest inhabited cities in Europe, as well as a new country I was keen to explore. Having found a cheap flight from Bratislava to Plovdiv (and an annoyingly pricy one to get us back from Sofia to Vienna), the plan was to fly out on the Thursday and come ba...

 It would be easy to look at Slovak football at the surface level and think that Slovan Bratislava are the only club from the country's capital city, given that they are the only top-flight side from the capital at present. Moreover, the club are perennial title-winners. Even when not having a good season, they somehow manage to pull it out of the bag every time without fail. Those who don't follow current Slovak football, however, may not know about some of the other clubs based in Bratislava that currently occupy the second tier - Petržalka (formerly Artmedia Bratislava), and Inter Bratislava. There are of course many more that play in the lower reaches of the Slovak pyramid, but how did Bratislava go from a three top flight clubs in 1996-97 to just the one today? Well as well as the fall of Petržalka (which warrants a blog of its own - I even wrote one a few years back), there is also the story of Inter Bratislava, who I'm visiting for a first Slovak trip of the calenda...

  Sorry, I can't resist a Peep Show reference. Until around 5pm on Friday, I only had plans to attend one game this weekend, and that game wasn't even scheduled for the weekend. Monday evening will see Zbrojovka Brno face off against undesirable cohabitees (as opposed to noisy neighbours) Artis Brno, as they look to cement their status as the dominant force in Brno, and go one step closer to confirming a near certain league title. In any case, my plans were to take part in another darts tournament, but instead, I felt a trip to somewhere new and random would be just the ticket instead, especially given the upturn in weather. I looked through the league fixtures in Futbology and settled on another fourth tier game, this time between Humpolec and Kuřim. And of course, Humpolec being home to the best beer in the Czech Republic played a fairly sizable role in my decision. I am of course talking about the excellent Bernard beer, which is genuinely unbeatable on tap. I had the pleas...

 It's been a quiet start to 2026, but then the start of the year in a footballing sense is almost non-existent around these parts. Barring an excellent Spring Break trip to Belgium, I've barely had time or money to burn with random trips to various towns and cities across Czech Republic and Slovakia. Add to that, a newfound weekend hobby involving darts, in which I'll likely be biding my time between various groundhops and darting tournaments going forward. In early February, I had considered a return to Trenčín, but my finances had other ideas. Instead, I'd opted to play in a knockout dart tournament, narrowly losing 5-4 in the last leg despite pulling it back from 3-0 down, and having a match dart. Later on in the month, I'd long planned that to be the weekend I'd tick Jablonec off, but given Zbrojovka will likely be travelling there next season anyway, I opted to stay in Brno and win my first darts match - a highly enjoyable 3-2 success.  With only Zbrojovka...

Aywaille - a lovely little piece of Belgium  First of all, if you've not managed to read my Standard Liège blog yet, what are you doing with your life? More important things? Ah, okay, that's fair. But if you want to get a sample of my Belgium trip prior to la deuxième  game of my trip, you can do so right here . In summary, Standard Liège is an absolutely brilliant place to take in some Belgian football, whether it's your first visit to Belgium, or your umpteenth. It's certainly somewhere I'd relish returning to should the opportunity arise again. One thing I didn't cover in this blog, however, was the insanity of Belgian football, or rather the madness of how the top division is structured at the very least. Perhaps it's something you'll have heard about before, with the league splitting into three separate parts - the top six (Championship Group), the middle six (the European play-off group), and the bottom group (the regelation play-off group). The s...

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...