DOING THE 92...
ALAN JOHNSON discusses the pleasure – and pain – of attempting to watch a match at every Football League ground in a single season
A visit to Wembley or the Nou Camp could be described as a football pilgrimage. But perhaps the greatest pilgrimage, in English football at least, is to visit (and witness a first team match at) all 92 of the country’s Football League grounds in one season. No mean feat when you consider the league season contains only 41 Saturdays, leaving the remaining 51 grounds to be strategically spread over Sundays and week nights.
Organizing the task is a challenge in itself, something which Tom Dickinson of Luton discovered when he watched a game at every ground in the 2008-09 season: “I spent several hours a week staring gormlessly at the fixture lists trying to work out the routes that would provide minimal effort and expense, which often shifted around with fairly short notice.”
Not only that, matches scheduled for TV are usually revealed only around once every three months, meaning ones originally arranged for Saturday afternoons at the beginning of the season could have been put back to Sundays or Mondays by November.
Dickinson logged his adventures, which were later published in his book 92 Pies, referring to the food he scoffed at each ground (Morecambe had the best pie, Walsall the worst). In doing so, he clocked up around 4,000 miles in his trusty Peugeot 206 and ran up expenses of some £3,000, which would have been even more had he not been offered the odd free ticket along the way, and been able to sleep on friends’ sofas at various points. On top of fuel costs and match tickets, buying the obligatory programme, half time Bovril and indeed, a pie, all contributed towards an expensive day on a long distance trip.
Living in the Midlands certainly has its benefits in undertaking the challenge, rather than travelling from the far corners of the country to each match. As Pat Bristow, founder of
DoingThe92.com explains: “If you ask any ‘ground hopper’ for their advice on doing the 92, it’s usually to move to the Midlands. Devon and Northumberland based 92ers have my full respect because that’s an awful lot of motorway food. If you’re based in Birmingham then I’m going to say that on average the other grounds are 100 miles away. Lots are nearer of course, but if it’s 200 miles to Newcastle that would seem like a good starting point. That means a rough estimate of 10,000 miles if you live away from the centre of the country!”
The hardest and most crucial part of the challenge is the winter, when games come thick and fast over Christmas, and postponements ruin best laid plans, sometimes as little as 30 minutes before kick off. Dickinson found this out at the hard way after a long trek to Gresty Road: “Postponements were a nightmare! The season I did the 92 was one of the coldest winters in years and I came to resent the snow. But the only true catastrophe I encountered was when I drove for four and a half hours to Crewe, only to find out there had been a last minute postponement due to a frozen pitch. Words can’t describe my resentment for Crewe Alexandra after that.”
Despite the mileage involved, both Dickinson and Bristow highlight the travelling aspect as one of the most interesting parts of their adventures. Said Dickinson: “Exploring new parts of the country, meeting some lovely people (football fans are a great bunch generally) and visiting some fantastic stadiums.” While Bristow adds: “The attraction of doing the grounds for me is also seeing the towns – many of which I’d never get to otherwise.”
Bristow’s web site, and other 92 fan sites outline a number of guidelines that should be adhered to in order to legitimately do the 92, which can vary between challenge types. A popular challenge, though not as difficult as visiting every ground in one season, is to have visited and witnessed a match at each of the present 92 grounds at any one time. Consequently, when two clubs fall out of the Football League, the grounds of the two clubs who replaced them must be visited. Likewise if a club moves to a new stadium, you are not in the 92 club until you have been there. While the 92 in one season ethos is reasonably straight forward, Doingthe92.com rules are listed as follows:
• You have to attend a game of football at the ground. This is probably the strictest rule but we feel that this is a football passion, not an architectural or photographic one. So cricket at Northampton doesn't count. And don't even get us started on American Football.
• It must be a current League ground. Only grounds currently being used as a venue for home games by Premier League or Football
League clubs count. That's why the site is called what it is.
• Tickets must have been on sale for the game (even if you got yours free). This means that preseason kickabouts don’t count. Proper first-team pre-season friendlies are fine.
• You have to have made the effort to attend the entire game. If you miss the first half because you were stuck on the M25 then that's okay (well, not okay for you but the game still counts).
• No proof of attendance is required.You can now add a scan of the match programme as a sort of proof that you attended a game. We'll be adding the ability to load scans of match tickets and photos you take at a match at some point.
• Redeveloped grounds only count as ‘new’ grounds if the postcode changes. In fact, having given this some thought, we reckon a ground is only ‘new’ if it is not possible for the old and new ground to completely co-exist at the same time. So the new Dean Court is not a ‘new’ league ground because it shares some of its footprint with the original Dean Court.
• You only need to visit a ground once for it to count. If all the teams using the ground are relegated from the league, and then one of them is subsequently promoted back again, any games previously seen at the ground still count. • Promoted grounds count. Similarly, if you see a game (that meets the above rules) at a non-league ground that subsequently becomes part of the 92, then your original visit counts. This is a contentious one, but we like it because it’s a bit of a bonus card.
Many people have adapted these guidelines in order to complete their own challenges. Some set a more achievable goal of visiting each ground over the course of a number of years, while others – often for charity – are sponsored to visit every ground in one week, or on some occasions in 92 hours.
Such challenges, of course, do not require the participants to watch matches at the grounds. The current season has been made fractionally easier to conquer as there are only 91 active stadiums to visit while Coventry City reside at Northampton Town’s Sixfields Stadium.
In my opinion, you haven’t truly experienced English football until you have found yourself standing on a terrace on a freezing cold Tuesday night in February at Rochdale. Indeed, Dickinson states that some of his most enjoyable trips were visits to in his words ‘the rickety old grounds of Exeter, Bury, Brentford and Portsmouth’.
After all, it’s easy (well, perhaps not finan- cially) to sit in a plushy seat at the Emirates and watch Arsenal play the kind of free flowing football others can only dream of. Or to wolf down a prawn sandwich or two during the half-time interval at Old Trafford.
While their facilities are state of the art and excellent, grounds like the Riverside Stadium, Middlesbrough, Pride Park, Derby, and the King Power Stadium, Leicester lack history, character, identity and soul.
In fact these relatively new stadiums to me seem identical bar the colour of their seats. Even the grounds of the smaller league clubs are dropping like flies. Saltergate, Chesterfield, Gay Meadow, Shrewsbury, and Belle Vue, Doncaster to name but a few, while many other clubs such as Carlisle United and Gillingham have outlined their intentions of moving to pastures new in search of more economically viable locations in an age when the game is ruled by finance.
If it’s something you haven’t experienced before because you are fortunate enough to follow one of the big clubs, or one that plays in a new stadium, then get yourself to a little old ground and soak in the experience before it is too late.You never know, you might enjoy it, and who knows, maybe it will inspire your own 92 adventure.