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!

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!

Review of my record-breaking football season

On Wednesday I went to my 60th and final game of the 2021-22 football season. This was a record number of games for me and through judicious planning I ended on a nice round number!

The result of the game on Wednesday was disappointing, as Wales succumbed to a late, late goal and lost to the Netherlands. At the end of the game, Gareth Bale's body language said it all.

Still, at least the rain held off. I got there early with my friend Paul and we were able to thoroughly dissect the Barry Town AGM that we attended the previous week, and discuss how we felt the team would fare in the coming season in the Cymru South. 

Anyway, on to my season stats, courtesy of the Futbology app.

In addition to it being the highest number of matches I'd ever been to in a season, it was also the highest number of new grounds (22) that I'd visited in a single season. Futbology has a map feature that displayed all 22 grounds for me.

The majority of new grounds were in South Wales, naturally. Hillsborough in Sheffield was an outlier. The two grounds in North Wales were The Rock in Cefn and Cae y Castell in Flint. Over there right in the middle of Cardigan Bay is Aberystwyth Town.

The grounds I visited in South Wales fir the first time tended to follow the A470 corridor up to Merthyr Tydfil.

Heading from the bottom of the map, there's Bridgend Street's ground in East Cardiff, then that line of five grounds in sort of a row are Canton Liberals's brand new pitch in the Cardiff International Sports Village, Lydstep Park in Gabalfa where Cardiff Draconians play, Cardiff Corinthians's ground in Radyr, Taffs Well FC and then the University of South Wales sports park in Treforest that Pontypridd Town call home. Also on the map are Pontyclun, Clydach Vale, Treharris, Penrhiwceiber, Aberdare and Penydarren Park in Merthyr which hosted the Ardal Southern Cup final at the end of May.

The last two seasons really have been famine followed by feast. After the pandemic curtailed the season in Spring 2020, there was an entire year (actually 16 months) where I didn't go to football matches. This is reflected in my graph of games attended with a grand total of zero games rocketing up to 60. 

If the 60 games this season had been spread over the last two seasons I would be round about average compared to previous seasons. At the start of the season I had secretly hoped to make it to 40 games. I overshot that target by a considerable distance, despite the lockdown in Wales suspending football here for about a month over Christmas. I more than made up for that with my 'decamonth' in April - although that wasn't the month with the most games; I started the season strongly with 11 games in August.

And that just about wraps that up. There are already details of friendly fixtures coming through for a few weeks' time. The new football league season starts on 30th July. Football will be back soon enough!