I’m having a strangely geeky evening. Along with the usual over-geekery with what I’m eating since project fatty has been underway (which now sees me tantalisingly close to weighing 13st rather than exceeding 16.5st as I was at the beginning), I’ve been geekifying other areas of life. Not to mention being a professional geek as well.
Because of the foibles of the fixture computer, I’ve been busy with Forest lately. I had said to myself with my resurgent interest in music that I’d need to cut down on away travel with the Reds a bit, so focus on grounds I hadn’t visited before. Cue the first two league away games to be the only two grounds I’ve not ‘done’ in the league, and the cup draw to be away at Fleetwood. So tomorrow I’ll have been to my third Forest away game, which is all of them so far. I will be cutting back later!
But in updating the list of grounds on FootballGroundMap I started to lament the simple “count the distinct grounds” method they use – it includes Wembley, the Millennium Stadium, clubs who have either always been or subsequently become non-league, it counts the old and new grounds of a single club as two. The ‘holy grail’ if you will of football fans is to complete ‘the 92’ – ie, visit all the league football clubs homes for a match. I say holy grail, I’m not that bothered personally as I only really want to go and watch Forest.
Still, it’s interesting – thanks to some Excel geekery I worked out that I’ve visited 66 of the 92 distinct clubs currently in the league, because I’ve doubled-up on some clubs who’ve moved house that equates to 74 distinct grounds (with at least six who have moved since my last visit to add to this). Six grounds I visited as league grounds have become non-league, two were always non-league and two are national stadia (one of which was of course completely rebuilt – I’ve been to both versions).
If you took it too far you’d go mad – the very nature of the football pyramid is that it changes – teams drop out, they come in – I could’ve been up to 72 had it not been for the misfortunes of Mansfield Town, Stockport County, Chester City, Luton Town, Rushden & Diamonds and Wrexham! My biggest opportunities for new grounds like in League Two and League One – so sympathetic cup draws aside, I’m happy for them to remain unvisited!
The other thing I’ve been doing is realising that the aforementioned resurgent interest in music has run the risk of me double-booking myself more readily, so I’ve added them to my Google calendar which I suspect I’ll be using more now which makes my social life more like work – which is a bit depressing in a way. However, it’s a cunning plan. With Ferocious Dog, the Levellers (a few times 😉 ), Simon Friend and New Model Army gigs lined up I don’t want anything to end up inadvertently clashing with them.
Nothing else to report really. Apparently Prince Harry – a single 20-something bloke – cavorted around naked with friends in Vegas. Oh. Yeah. It’s not that interesting really is it? Shame on anyone who pays money to a publication attempting to profiteer from something so banal.
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