Groundhopping24

Josef Mazopust; arguably the greatest Czech footballer of all time.  For many people, Dukla Praha will only be a familiar name to a certain kind of British hipster, given that the club lend their name to indie outfit Half Man Half Biscuit's renowned 'All I Want for Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit'. That said, there's a hell of a lot more than what meets the eye with this club, who've endured highs and lows to extents that would make Portsmouth's recent history look like a succession of top half Premier League finishes. This is a club that, after all, have two founding dates on their Wikipedia page - 1948 and 1998. So before we even begin to look into this weekend's fixture of choice - Dukla Praha v Hradec Kralove - let's dive into one of Czech Republic's most complicated teams.  Initially founded as ATK Prague in 1948 ( Armádní tělovýchovný klub , which translates as Army Sports Club), the club won eight league titles in the first seventeen year...

  Prague - a city I was fairly close to moving to once my planned move to Portugal was thrown up in the air by visa related jeopardy. As Portugal's doors seemed to close, Czech Republic announced a decision to open theirs, which meant I'd applied for jobs in Brno, Prague and Ostrava. If not for the job in Brno being the most solid choice, I probably would have opted for a move to the Czech capital. That said, I've often told people it's a place I love visiting but couldn't live in, much like London to a certain extent. I guess you could say it suffers from Capital City Syndrome, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it brings certain issues. In any case, I hadn't been to Prague for anything other than work or travel purposes since probably a year ago, so a late November weekend seemed the perfect time to make up for that. A couple of good friends offered to put me up, so I travelled down on Saturday morning with the intention of enjoying a cultur...