Non-League Day: shining light on the magic of my match-going decision-making process
I don't just chuck a dart at a map of Sussex on a Saturday morning, you know. There's science behind my weekly match-going choice. Okay, well, not quite 'science'.
There’s a small part of me which feels that it would be darkly appropriate, were this year’s Non League Day to be greeted with yet another washout. This has been a dismal winter, weather-wise, with each Saturday morning being a complex game falling halfway between cat & mouse and jeopardy as matches fall like dominoes in the face of relentless rain and consequently unplayable pitches. But at the moment, fingers crossed, things look… okay.
There have been weekends when practically every match not being played on an artificial playing surface has been knocked out by the inclement conditions. In some respects, I’m fortunate to live in a part of the country in which they’re reasonably commonplace. Part of the routine for every weekend has been to find the nearest match that’s being played on a 3g pitch because at least you can be reasonably certain that it’ll be going ahead.
The one thing that I have come to realise over the course of this season has been that my calculations for where to go on a Saturday afternoon are substantially more complex than I might at first have believed. And as it’s Non League Day this weekend (and because a proportion of you help to fund this entire caper), I thought it might be fun to shine a little light on the magic of how I arrive at the decision of which match to attend each weekend.
Because although it may look like it at times, believe it or not I don’t just throw a dart at a map of Sussex and make my decision based on that. For me this is work, part of my job, and although I make these available to everybody, every week, I’m also aware of the need to deliver to a paying audience every weekend.
Bear in mind that any reference I make to ‘science’ over the next 8,000 words or so—we all understand that’s a joke, yes?—is likely to be ironic. At the heart of my selection process is the word ‘vibes’. If I see a match is going ahead and it feels like the right one for reasons that I can’t initially articulate, then I’ll go to the match and let the day just play out. My ‘rules’, such as they are, aren’t exactly set in stone. There’s no I-Spy book-style points accumulation to be had here. There'll be a story, because wherever there’s a football match taking place, there’ll always be a story.
I am fully aware of how odd this may look to the majority of supporters. I’ve done my share of ‘home and away’ seasons, where the idea of just going to a match without it really mattering (to me) who won would have felt like the behaviour of a pervert.
But when I moved to Sussex in 2006 I was 33 years old, and I soon started to find that no matter where I went to watch football, the clubs I went to always felt like someone else’s.
For the first eight years that I lived down here I lived in Brighton, and my most regular haunts were The Withdean Stadium and The Dripping Pan, in Lewes. Nowadays I live thirteen miles to the west in Worthing, and my nearest grounds are Woodside Road (Worthing FC), Culver Road (Lancing FC) and Lyons Farm (Worthing United FC).
I wish them well. I still wish Brighton well, and it’s now been a decade since I last lived there. But none of them are my team. Perhaps they will be for my kids one day, but they still have no interest, for now.
Over the last eighteen years I’ve become a football nomad. When the teams I grew up with are playing down here I’ll go as an away supporter, but I’ve found great pleasure in just… going to matches. I don’t really consider myself to be a ‘ground-hopper’, because I consider the element of box-ticking to be a fundamental part of that lifestyle, and I have no real interest in that. I like going to football grounds that I’ve not visited before, but on a Saturday afternoon this season I’ve been going somewhere to tell you lot a story, not to religiously visit another new football ground every week.
So, how do I make this decision? Well, as explained above, the fundamental decision usually comes down to ‘vibes’, but like a duck swimming on a pond, under the surface there’s some frantic splashing around going on in my mind. I usually make my decision on a Wednesday or Thursday. If the weather is looking good, I'll usually advance book tickets and train tickets on the Friday. The criteria that I use looks something like these ten commandments:
How convenient will this be for me? I am a single father and, at 51 years old and with a six year old and an eight year old, I’m not a young one. I have my kids Monday to Friday, at which point I have 48 hours off during which I need to clean the house, socialise, go to the supermarket, and do all the other things which are either completely undoable or a ball-ache while the kids are about. My very first thought when trying to decide on a match is: ‘will this be a massive pain in the arse?’ I may have free Saturdays, but that doesn’t mean that I can get up at 5am and get home at midnight every week. There are people who pay money for these; they make a modest profit while giving me an afternoon away from it all. Once a month I go and stay with my dad for a weekend, and he lives in Horsham. I take this opportunity to check out what’s local to round there (as can be seen from trips this season to Dorking, Horsham, Redhill and elsewhere).
Is it a new ground? Like I say, I’m not obsessive about this, but if I’m going to go to matches all over the place, then I might as well take in some new venues and make a bit of an adventure of it. It’s also true to say that having two kids in pretty quick succession blew a hole in my football attendance for several years. I could get to a couple of local grounds with a pushchair or papoose, but further afield was wayyyyy too impractical. There are, therefore, a lot of grounds which I have been to before, but not for ten, twenty or even thirty-plus years. They are my next priority. And then, as failsafes, there are those nearest to me, which provide handy fallbacks.
Are they playing on grass? I don’t consider myself to be a Luddite, but after having seen dozens of matches played on artificial playing surfaces over the years, I simply prefer matches played on grass. I understand that the technology has advanced to the point at which there is no need for teams to play on mudheaps any more, but if I wanted football without its warts & all, I wouldn’t be here in the first place, would I? I do feel as though I should point out that I am also aware that this is a “me” problem, and that the benefits of clubs having them installed are substantial, both for the clubs themselves and communities within which they operate. This winter has only reinforced this, for me; I now identify a match to be played on an artificial pitch every weekend as a back-up.
How much is this going to cost? Non-league football is cheaper than EFL or Premier League football, but that doesn’t mean it’s always cheap. Entry to a National League match could cost £20. And I also have to factor in train fares. In this respect, I have been somewhat fortunate. I use a ticket booking app on my phone because it’s very easy, and in January the app people emailed me out of the blue and offered me a free Network Railcard, which gets me a third off weekend train fares. But it still costs money. A ticket to London including transfers to whichever suburb I’m heading for is £21. I can also claim them back as a business expense, though this doesn't help when I need to buy the tickets. My family isn’t destitute, but we’re not wealthy by any means so I have to ensure that I’m taking care of the most important things first.
What’s the journey like? You don’t have to live on the south coast for long before you realise how far you are from many other places. When I lived in London, I was an hour and quarter from Birmingham on the train. I’m now an hour and half from London. So, how long will this journey take each way, and how many changes will I have to make? Again, this is one of my two days ‘off’ a week, and I don’t want it to be a pain in the arse. Also, I have to take into account the possibility of replacement bus services or strike action. These haven’t been a big issue on Saturdays in my particular neck of the woods for a while, but you just know they’ll be back at some point.
What’s ticket availability like? One of the big selling points of non-league football is being able to just pay on the gate at five to three on a Saturday afternoon, but each club has its own arrangements and my absolute biggest fear is turning up at a ground and, for reasons I’ve not foreseen, being unable to get in. Throughout the winter this hasn’t been a problem, but as the season enters its closing weeks it could become more so, as races at the top and bottom of divisions start to heat up.
Is there a story to be told? My definition of ‘story’ here is gossamer-thin. It could come down to the teams’ league positions. One may be on a run of form that has caught my eye. It could be a local derby. Or it may be considerably more tangential. It may be the history of one of the clubs playing, or a news story that has been rumbling along in the background. I know it when I see it, and sometimes it just jumps out of the fixture lists at you.
Is it likely to be a 0-0 draw? I’m some way short of being obsessed with this (yet), but I haven’t attended a goalless draw since an FA Cup First Round match between Brighton & Woking in 2010, played in the pouring rain at Withdean Stadium on a dismal afternoon that I will never get back. I obviously can’t tell from looking whether a match is going to finish in a goalless draw, and I have had a couple of close shaves this season. Arundel took until the third minute of stoppage-time to beat Worthing United in December, while neither Crawley Town or Salford City looked like scoring when I saw them in January until Salford did with ten minutes to play. I’d like to keep that record going for the full season, so I will give the teams’ goals scored and conceded columns on the league tables a quick glance.
Will there be much of a crowd there? While I’m okay to go to a match at which the attendance might only be in two figures, I’d rather not. I don’t need to feel as though the football match that I’m attending is the most important event of the weekend, but it is nice to get to a ground and find that there is a decent crowd present, and that other people care too. I’m doing this in fortunate times. Non-league attendances remain healthy, and there are plenty of clubs who’ve doubled their home crowds over the last few years, while some have done even better than that. As such, crowds have not been a major consideration for me this season, but the prospect of a big crowd (for the level of the game concerned) certainly helps.
Any other idiosyncrasies? Perhaps the biggest appeal of non-league football is its diversity and the idiosyncrasies of the clubs involved. Does one of the teams wear interesting colours? What’s the runout music like? Do the home team have a frightening mascot? These things matter (to me).
The very fact that I’ve got this mental checklist like this in the first place makes it all sound about a hundred times as onerous as it actually turns out to be. Essentially, I choose a match, a back-up match and/or one on an artificial pitch on roughly Wednesdays or Thursdays and take it from there, keeping an eye on club social media accounts with regard to the possibility of any postponements. If the journey is a long one, merely the news of a pitch inspection may be enough to put me off altogether.
It doesn’t look as though it’s going to be a washout this weekend, but nothing’s guaranteed yet.