Football season 24-25 review part 2

Last week I went to two international matches - watching Wales women lose to Italy in Swansea and Wales men winning in Cardiff - and with those two games I've brought the curtain down on my 2024-25 football season. In part 1, I wrote about the fortunes of the three clubs I follow most - which included a promotion, a relegation and a nothing-particularly- memorable. 

But now the season is finally over here's my Futbology round up of the season:

My total of 61 games is a few less than last season's 65, but is still my second highest total ever. In the four seasons since football restarted after the pandemic, I've been to 60, 57, 65 and now 61 games. It's been four years rather full of football. 

Some highlights - four cup finals, one play-off final, only one penalty shoot-out (very early on in the season). The highest scoreline I saw was an 8-2 win for Cardiff Dracs, which edged out Barry's 9-0 drubbing in a friendly at Oxford City right at the start of the season. I made it to a game in Scotland, which was also my nephew Finlay's very first football game (as mentioned in my post about my weekend in Edinburgh). That game was the most northerly of the 15 new football grounds I went to in the season. Here they all are on a handy map:

You can see from the map that most of my new grounds were in South Wales. I haven't quite got to saturation point there, but I'm close. I'm not far off totalling 150 grounds and I might need to start travelling further afield to tick them off next season. Hitting that total is one of the, admittedly modest, ambitions I have for next season. I'm not going to list them here, but I might put them in a kick off post for next season.

And so, as the curtain finally comes down on my 61 game season, I want to give a shout out to the many people who kept me company at all kinds of random grounds watching all kinds of random games. So here you go -  if your name isn't on the list and it should be, then let me know and I'll add it in! 

So, thank you for your company Steve, Paul and Val, Paul (Podge), Dave, Joy, Zac, Dan, Finlay, Ella, Scott, Sara and Leanne (and Cadi and Payton), Tom, Matt, Jim and Nik, Dan R and Emma, Jon D, and the Barry hoppers: Tim, Ian, Joe, John, Nick. I'm looking forward to seeing you all again next season!

2024 football round up

This is my last end of year review of things. The calendar year doesn't really fit for a review of football because seasons start and end in the summer. But, still, aided by the handy Futbology app, I have a nice summary of the games I went to and can cover some other football high points as well. 

I went to more games in 2024 than in any previous year - a total of 68 across the tail end of last season and the start of this one. 

Some highlights from those 68 games...

• The first game between Shrewsbury and Wrexham in a long time when they met in the FA Cup in January.
• Seeing West Ham v Bayer Leverkusen in a Europa League game at the London Stadium while in London for a conference in April.
• A hectic weekend seeing Shrewsbury play at Charlton Athletic on the Saturday followed by Colwyn Bay v Barry Town on the Sunday. The game at Colwyn Bay meant I completed the Cymru Premier League, having seen a game at every ground in the league.
• An odd game in Gloucester, watching Truro City v Torquay United, where both teams were over 100 miles from home and the "away" team had actually travelled a shorter distance than the "home" team.
• Seeing Penrhiwceiber Rangers win the Ardal South West league (Welsh system tier three) with pyro on the pitch and the victorious players performing outdoor karaoke afterwards.
• Three Wales women's internationals, including their two home games in the play off to secure a spot at next year's European Championships. 

I went to 16 new grounds across the course of the year, ranging from Huddersfield to Haverfordwest, Coventry to Seven Sisters, and including the epic views of the Transporter Bridge right next to the ground belonging to Newport Corinthians. (Part of a "Corinthian weekend"!) Here are my new grounds on a map:

2025 has already got off to a good start with a goal-fest, which hopefully augers well for this year!

2024 Cinema trips - all the 'quels

It was a case of all the "quels" in 2024. I saw sequels, a prequel and an interquel. In fact, five of the seven films I saw in the cinema were "quels", and the other two were adaptations of books. Here's what I watched on the big screen:

Dune Part 2 - sequel (although they split the source material in two for the movies so this was a continuation sequel rather than a second story in a franchise). Full review here. 

Inside Out 2 - sequel. I really liked the first Inside Out film, which took a complex concept and explored it in a very accessible way. The sequel continued the story of Riley and her emotions, which have multiplied as Riley grows up. This is probably one of the best depictions and explanations of how anxiety is a protection mechanism that can go into overdrive and become harmful. 

Besides Anxiety, the other new emotions include, Embarrassment, Envy, Ennui and, my favourite, Nostalgia, who pops in and is promptly dismissed for being too soon. Although I think I felt nostalgia as a teenager - certainly I found myself looking back to things I had done a few years previously and having a new appreciation for them. Nowadays I agree strongly with Douglas Coupland's comment that "nostalgia is a weapon" and I know it gets weaponised against me. That's why I end up with things like an A Team van made by Playmobil...

The film has a happy ending for Riley and her friends as they navigate the emotions around changing schools, establishing new friendship groups and playing ice hockey. I like the mix of joy and anger that fuels Riley's in-game activity. There's a good explanation about how our beliefs about the world and about ourselves shape our lives - another deep topic that I felt the film-makers summarised well. 

Harold and the Purple Crayon - the film version of a popular kid's book. So, not totally original but technically not a 'quel. Full review here. 

Alien Romulus - an 'interquel' that was apparently set between Alien and Aliens, the first two films in the franchise. Not the greatest movie in the Alien franchise but I enjoyed it. Full review here. 

Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! - a "legacy sequel" released decades after the first film. Full review here. 

Transformers One - a prequel of sorts. I'm not sure where in the Transformers franchise this animated film fits, but it was expanding on the in-universe lore and would act as a prequel to just about any other Transformers movie. 

It's the origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron, and why they became bitter enemies. I thought it was very well done despite leaning hard on some over-used tropes - the people in charge don't have our best interests at heart; best friends become implacable enemies; there is a quest for a lost artifact that can save civilisation. 

However, within those well known story arcs, the script was lean, the film was fast-paced with several action sequences that all served the purposes of the plot, and there was plenty of humour in the dialogue and situations but it never got silly. It felt like a grown up kid-friendly cartoon. It also added some depth to other long-established characters, even those with limited screentime like Starscream, who in this was more than just a whining minion of Megatron. 

The Wild Robot - another film based on a book. I watched this with Cathy on her birthday in a cinema that was experiencing temperature issues. It was freezing. At one point in the story an ice storm hits - at that point it felt like we were in a 4D film experience. 

The basic plot was of a robot booting up on a remote island and looking for tasks to carry out. Being a robot it works out how to communicate with animals and gradually develops its self-awareness to become the protector of the wild creatures. This includes teaching an orphaned gosling to fly - which I found was a surprisingly moving storyline. 

The third act of the movie dragged a bit. The most intriguing part was seeing the wider world, with humans living in large hi-tech habitats, with hydroponic farms, hovering over the drowned ruins of cities (San Francisco to be precise). It's a world after the climate apocalypse and the survivors seem to be doing OK with an army of robot servants undertaking menial tasks. Somehow, that felt like the most unrealistic part of the film compared to a robot learning how to talk to a gosling and teach it to fly before its fellow geese migrated and left it behind. 

Looking ahead to 2025, I'm sure there are more 'quels to come. I have set myself a challenge to try and watch more original films next year. 

Well, that was 2024

Time for a round up of a very busy 12 months. I squeezed in a lot! 

January 

I had two trips to Shrewsbury - for football and for family birthdays. I also went to London for work and visited the newish shopping centre in Battersea Power Station, mainly to visit the Lego Shop.

February 

Our building work on the house started - with a new roof in the wettest February on record. (At least we knew immediately that it didn't leak!)  I was mugged on my way home from the city centre and had a swollen blacked eye for a couple of weeks. But I also got to see my first ever international ice hockey games. 

March

A month of travelling! Mother's Day in Shrewsbury, journeys to Cambridge (and home via Oxford), work in London and a Wales C International in Llanelli (on the anniversary of my dad's death - a fitting tribute to him, I felt!) On Easter Sunday at the end of the month, Cathy and I went to our first gig of the year to see Tony Wright, in Abertillery.

April 

My brother, sister-in-law and their four kids visited Cardiff for the Easter bank holiday Monday (and my birthday the next day!) Work began replastering the hall and landing, which involved chipping off the hideous Artex that I have wanted to be rid of for 30 years! I spent a week manning a stall at a conference in London - and afterwards got to visit the Moomin Shop. 

May

The plastering was completed and we thought we were close to finishing the work in the house (little did we know....). We had a bank holiday trip down to Torquay. The men who attacked me in February pled guilty and were given prison sentences. And the Prime Minister at the time, Rishi Sunak, called a General Election. 

June

I went to the Major League Baseball game in London. We spent a week in North Wales with my Mum and our friend, Ella. I watched a lot of the European Championships on TV!

July 

A super- busy month! We had a visit from my sister and her three kids and took them to Techniquest. England reached the European Championship final. The UK got a new government in the General Election. We saw Frank Turner play at the Tramshed in Cardiff. The new football season started with a thrashing for Barry Town in a friendly at Oxford City. I went to a model railway exhibition. After being messed around by an electrician, we finally got the electrics sorted and could book a decorator to come and paint the house... in September. 

August

The big event for us in August was seeing Billy Joel play live at the Principality Stadium. It was a spectacular gig. I also had a big football awayday, watching Shrewsbury play at Huddersfield Town. We also acted as witnesses at a wedding for a couple who had put out an appeal for witnesses on Reddit. 

September

We spent the week of our wedding anniversary in Shropshire, and went to see Terrorvision play KK's Steel Mill in Wolverhampton on our actual anniversary. The hall, landing and upstairs WC all got painted! 

October

More work in the house - this time carpentry with a new little cupboard in our hall to hide the fuse box. I spent two days filming for work in Barry - and we were blessed with some great weather that made Barry look spectacular. 

November

It was World Diabetes Day, and I spent a weekend in Northern Ireland with the local team over there (and got a selfie with Mr Tayto!). A few days later it was Cathy's birthday. We had a chilled day out and went to watch a movie, in a cinema with a lack-of-heating issue so, literally, chilled! Shrewsbury Town appointed a new manager and I was there for his first game in charge - an unexpected win against Birmingham City. The final bits of work in the house started and we had new flooring!

December

In the first week of December, we finally finished the home improvements we started in February! I felt incredibly relieved that the mammoth undertaking was over after ten months. I had work events in London, Bristol and Port Talbot. Then it was Christmas - starting with seeing Mary and Steve and visiting The Longest Yarn in Tewkesbury, followed by nearly a week in Shrewsbury. I concluded the month with a football match on New Years Eve.

And that was a wrap for 2024!

Monthly round-up - September 2024

We are clearly heading into Autumn now. It's getting colder. At the end of the month, the Friends of Grange Gardens had a work-day and we ended up shovelling a lot of leaves!

Speaking of leaves... I had a week's annual leave and we spent it in Shropshire. Our week started with a lengthy wait in an A&E because Cathy had a poorly leg. But it got better after that. We had a night in Wolverhampton on our wedding anniversary and went to a Terrorvision gig - read my blog post here. And we had some nice times with family and pootling around Shrewsbury, Ironbridge, Bridgnorth and Much Wenlock.

I also did quite a bit of travelling for work, including going up to North Wales to attend a charity fashion show, and a midweek two-day trip to London. The train journey to London was chaotic due to a fatality on the line at Didcot, so I ended up diverted to Bristol Temple Meads. It meant I saw some different bits of the railway network than I normally do.

Football-wise I went to four games this month. I've blogged about my double dose of "Corinthian" football in the middle of the month. I also saw Cardiff Draconians play a cup match and made my first visit of the season to the Meadow to watch a Shrewsbury home game. I was in the safe standing section with my friend Jim and his son Nikolai.

When we were teenagers, Jim and I used to stand on the Wakeman End at Shrewsbury's old ground, Gay Meadow. So it was a bit of a throwback to thirty years ago when we both had more hair and possibly more optimism about Shrewsbury's chances of winning. With a bit of luck we might well still be watching football together in another thirty years time. 

My Futbology totals at the end of September:

Monthly round up - August 2024

August was another busy month. (They are all busy months!) Although most of the world was on holiday, I was working throughout. However my work included an afternoon in an 'Escape Room' - the first time I'd ever been to one. The good news is I escaped, along with my team of young people who are part of the programme I work on. 

I've blogged some of the really big highlights of the month already - like seeing Billy Joel at the Principality Stadium, and a trip to Huddersfield to watch a football match. And I've also blogged about cinema trips to see two wildly different films: Harold and the Purple Crayon and Alien: Romulus. But there have been plenty of things I haven't blogged about yet. On one of the cinema trips I met Beetlejuice!

I was very pleased to make it to the Keep Grangetown Tidy litter pick this month. It was on a sunny Saturday morning. I collected a couple of bags of trash, but nothing particularly interesting. The following morning the Cardiff Rivers Group were holding another litter pick - this time at Grangemoor Park near our house. So I went to that too. I set a new record for a plastic water bottle retrieved from a hedge - an 18.5 litre job that looked like it had come off a water cooler!

Cathy and I did something slightly out of the usual in the middle of the month. We were witnesses at a wedding. Neither of us had been wedding witnesses before. It was for a couple who wanted to surprise all their friends and family and put an appeal out on Reddit for witnesses. As the registry office is now very conveniently close to our house I offered our services and they picked us to be there. It took about 45 minutes in total (including travel to the registry office and back) and it was really lovely to be able to help them get hitched. 

Besides meeting strangers from the internet, we have been fortunate to meet up with quite a few friends and family during the month. We met Steve and Mary in Chepstow one weekend.

And Connor was in town so I was able to hang out with him down the Bay one evening. 

And we met our friends the Woottens in Thompson Park. Here's Anna as Queen of the Stump!

Football-wise, I went to 9 matches. There were two new grounds, the aforementioned Huddersfield and a more local team, Undy Athletic. I went with Steve to Undy to watch them play Caldicot Town. Our friend Ben was playing for Caldicot and we got a selfie with him after the game. He's grinning because they won 3-1. 

Here's my running total on Futbology for the season so far. The very first game of the season, Barry's 9-0 drubbing in a friendly, is still the highest scoreline of the season. It's likely to stay that way!

Home runs and holidays - June 2024

June was another very busy month. I've blogged about some of the major highlights already but here's my traditional end of the month review.  

The big sporting event this month was a day watching baseball in London, courtesy of my friend Gawain. This is the first month since July last year that I haven't been to any football matches. But I have been watching the European Championships. 

The Euros have been pretty good, overall, so far. Wales fell at the final hurdle back in the spring and didn't qualify but Scotland made it. They had a torrid time, though, and were on the plane back home after three games. England qualified unconvincingly from their group and needed some very late goals on the last evening in June to extend their Euros into July. 

I've also been to two stamp fairs, starting a new collecting theme - pangolins. My stamp collecting mojo comes and goes and I hadn't bought any for ages, but I enjoyed getting back on the hunt for things. I'm trying to collect stamps from countries where pangolins live and so far have a good mix. 

Recent additions

The stamp fairs and baseball were good distractions from a difficult ongoing work situation. I won't go into details but the 'change programme' stepped up a gear in the first week of June. We are now facing a few months of disruption. 

It felt like a good time to take a short break from work. So I was glad we had booked a week's holiday in North Wales with my mum and a friend. I've already blogged about it - with lots of photos. Castles, beaches, steam trains - all the staples of a holiday in Cymru, with the added unexpected bonus of sunshine and zero rain!

At the end of the holiday we had a weekend in Shrewsbury, which was great timing as my eldest niece, Joy, was celebrating a milestone birthday - she's now a bona fide teenager and had the balloons to prove it.

Hard to believe it's 13 years since Joy's appearance turned me into an uncle. (I blogged about it back in 2011!) 

We also got to see other members of the family, who were all delighted to see us!

And that marks the halfway point in 2024!

End of season review - football 2023-24

Going to the Wales women's international at the very end of May marked my last live game of the season. So, so here is my review of the year. The Futbology app gives a useful summary:

65 games is a new personal season record. I wasn't expecting to set a new record at the start of the season and the achievement was unintentional. That's more than a game a week, and a bit silly really. 

However, my number of new grounds was lower than previous seasons. I achieved a decent geographical spread, though. (Map from Futbology)

On my season round-up, I listed Barry's away win at Caernarfon as my favourite game of the season. It was a game with 5 high quality goals including a late rocket shot that settled the game in Barry's favour. It was also my debut as a radio commentator. 

The game with the most goals - Swindon Supermarine v Poole Town - was right at the start of the season. Former Barry defender Luke Cooper was playing for Supermarine who unfortunately conceded seven. 

I didn't see any games with more than ten goals this season (unlike 2022-23) and my overall goals total was noticeably lower than the previous season, despite going to more games. 

My stand out memories are Shrewsbury taking the lead against Leeds at a packed Elland Road, being in with the Leverkusen fans at West Ham, the Caernarfon and Supermarine games I've already mentioned, completing the Cymru Premier at Colwyn Bay (with my nephew Zac), Shrewsbury's hilarious three goals at Notts County, and Truro City playing a "home" game in Gloucester against Torquay United. I was also in the crowd at a sold out Meadow to see Shrewsbury renew rivalries with Wrexham for the first time in 15 years, after they were drawn together in the FA Cup.

There weren't many matchgoing disasters, although getting on a train at Cardiff Central to go to a Newport County game and then discovering the next stop was going to be Reading was stressful!

So, it's been an enjoyable 11 months! Roll on next season!

Love and crime - events of February 2024

And suddenly we are at the end of February, even though this year we had a bonus Leap Day. 

For Valentine's Day, Cathy and I celebrated by building a cute Lego set together. I hope these two hedgehogs are as happy together as we are.

February was a difficult month all told. Halfway through the month a "change programme" was announced in work, which will have an impact on my team. Morale and motivation have definitely taken a hit as a result. It's almost inevitable that it will, particularly if people are leaving as a result - it's reminded me of several aspects of organisational change that I studied in my Business Psychology MSc. 

On the home front we have had some stress too. What started initially with enquiries about some repairs to the house turned into a full blown roof replacement. We are very happy with the result, which included taking the top part of the chimney out and roofing over it. The state of the chimney has been worrying me for a long time and I'm very glad it's sorted. 

However, getting a new roof during one of the wettest Februarys on record meant it took a lot longer to complete than anticipated. The benefit of having it done while it was lashing down with rain every other day meant we could instantly check whether it was watertight. Fair play, it held during some downpours even before the new slates went on. 

Also, I've discovered that getting a new roof fitted is a great way to meet some of your neighbours. We had several people knock on the door asking if our roofers were any good and seeing if they could get quotes for their roof repairs. 

Our roofer, Sheldon, was very good. I liked him a lot and when he finished on the final day and said goodbye I honestly told him I was going to miss him. Apparently he is going to be back in our street soon working on someone else's roof and he says he will knock on the door to say hi. 

Less pleasantly, for the first time in my life I was the target of muggers. I won't go into too much detail, but basically, I was walking home from the city centre at about 6.30pm on a Friday evening. There were two youngish lads at the end of the street and as I walked past them one of them lashed out without warning, hit me and pushed me to the ground, then demanded some money. 

After taking some money, he proceeded to run off. His mate ran off after him. I phoned the police and talked to a 999 call handler all the way home, which was only a few minutes. Obviously Cathy had a horrid shock when I walked in bashed and bleeding. Police officers were able to attend and take a statement within minutes. CID called round the next day. And I'm very happy to say that within two weeks, the police had arrested my assailant, had charged him and he's currently being held on remand.

While the incident was horrible, the response I have had from family, friends, neighbours and colleagues has been lovely. I genuinely felt loved and supported by so many people, many telling me how outraged this had happened to me. Some of our neighbours brought a box of cookies because they saw the police car outside and saw my black eye and wanted to check I was OK. That was the only time I cried about what had happened - crying because of their unexpected kindness.

So, yes, a bad thing happened, but there are still lots of good people in the world and the response to the bad thing really brought that home to me. 

And on a final note, even having that incident happen, didn't stop me from going to nine football matches (full report to follow!), my first ever international ice hockey game, and making a dent in my pile of shame by building one of my Blood Bowl teams that had been sitting there unbuilt for two and a half years! So a good sporting month all round. 

New Blood Bowl Orc team ready for mayhem