Football season 24-25 review - Futbology badges

It's been a decent season for Futbology badges. My biggest achievement was hitting the 600 games mark in April.

Earlier in the season I passed a milestone for the number of games I've seen at Jenner Park - which, incidentally, is now the stadium I have seen most games at.

And in my last game of the season I hit the half century at Cardiff City Stadium.

Almost half those games haven't involved Cardiff City, which is quite amusing to me.

I got a couple of smaller milestones for other teams - including Caldicot where my friend Ben plays.

And Penybont, mainly for all the Barry games I've seen against them.

I also got a ten-game badge for Cardiff Corinthians - although I only arrived at this game at half time so really it should only be a nine and a half games badge!

I decided to go to the Welsh Cup final. It was a good game and I was able to pose with the actual cup before the game. Getting a badge was a bonus.

And a couple of international games at the end of the season came with badges too.

Not a bad season haul at all!

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!

Book of the Month: The List of Suspicious Things

An early 'book of the month' this month because I had already finished reading this by the end of last month for one very simple reason: it was that good I tore through it on one of my return train trips to London, starting it somewhere just outside Cardiff on the way there and finishing it somewhere between Newport and Cardiff on the way back!

And also a shout out to whoever designed this book cover because this delightful scruffy crow on the cover, pilfering milk from a doorstep delivery caught my eye while on a wander in Griffin Books in Penarth. So I picked it up, read the back cover summary and thought 'hmmm'. Although - spoiler alert - crows don't feature much in the book. 

This is a fictionalised semi-memoir that carries a ring of authenticity heavily swirled in nostalgia. It is loosely based on Jennie Godfrey's own experience of growing up in Yorkshire during the early 1980s when Peter Sutcliffe, who was branded the Yorkshire Ripper by the press, murdered multiple young women. 

The two best friends in the story - Miv (Mavis) and Sharon - are drawn to the horror that starts overshadowing everyday life and follow the police's advice to look out for suspicious things. They start to create a list of things - and men - they think are suspicious. And along the way their investigations uncover a whole heap of other secrets in the lives of the adults around them.

It's a very engaging story and remains believable right up to the very end. I was worried that the story might turn silly with Miv and Sharon catching, or just encountering, the Ripper. But that doesn't happen. There is enough drama going on without fabricating that. Although it turns out there is a connection between Miv and the Ripper, based on the author's own childhood connection which meant she was just one step removed from the Ripper in real life. 

I have one very minor criticism: there are some slightly heavy-handed nostalgia drops into the text. As someone roughly the same age as the author I recognised the descriptions of certain fads and fashions and how particular brands were the must have thing among teenagers but the name checks amused me. I also recognised the freedom I had as a child, as Miv and Sharon head out after school on adventures with no phones, just an understanding they would be back for tea. 

Many of the secrets that Miv and Sharon uncover have very deep themes - loss, betrayal, unhappy marriages, child abuse, mental illness and racism. The girls grow up as they learn more about the people living around them, and while most of the characters have a happyish ending, several do not. There's a real emotional punch to the conclusion to the story, which shows how much it drew me in.

It's to the author's credit that there are no absolute villains, just hurt and broken people hurting and breaking other people. There's a deep underlying sadness for communities that are shifting sideways as the manufacturing industries abruptly shut down and despair kicks in, with some people kicking out in response and wounding others in the process. It's as much a nostalgic tribute to those disappearing mill towns as to the author's own family and childhood. 

This is the first book I've read this year that I would whole-heartedly recommend. I'm very glad the eye-catching rascal of a crow on the cover made me pick it up!

May 2025 round up

Every month I'm saying it's been a busy month... guess what! It's been a busy month!

It included a trip to Europhilex, a big stamp show at the NEC. I went on from there to Shrewsbury for the weekend. It was nice to spend time with my mum and the rest of the family on a 'normal weekend'. On the Sunday morning I went to watch Zac play in his final game of the season. He scored the opening goal in a 9-1 win and created several other goals for his team-mates!

I've been travelling quite a bit for work, including two trips to London. I had a brief interlude as a tourist and walked from the London office to Tower Bridge and then along the river. I blogged some photos from my London wandrin!

Another work trip was to Exeter to visit some laboratories where incredible work is being done to try and find a cure for type 1 diabetes. We took some young people involved in our programme and we all got to wear lab coats and have a go at science stuff. 

With my colleague Sophie

My football schedule was also hectic, with three cup finals, a promotion play-off, and seeing Cardiff Draconians clinch their league title. (Read about the Dracs in the first instalment of my review of the season.)

At the Welsh Cup final, Paul and I got a chance to pose with the cup itself - I think this may be the oldest original cup still presented because the FA Cup has been replaced a couple of times.

The cup final was a good game, with Connahs Quay Nomads pushing TNS all the way. However TNS won to make it a domestic treble in Wales. 

My second cup final of the month was an under-17s game, with Shrewsbury's side playing Cardiff City at the Cardiff City Stadium. As it was within walking distance, I had to go - and the Salop juniors won 2-0! 

The third cup final was the Ardal Southern Cup final, played between Cardiff Corinthians and Chepstow Town on Taff's Well's famous sloping pitch. It finished 5-2 to the Corries but, true to form, all seven goals were scored up the slope!

A week later I saw Chepstow play again, this time in the Ardal South promotion play off against Ynyshir Albions. It was a bad end to the season for Chepstow as they lost 2-0 and missed out on promotion. It was a bad week for them!

Those matches took me up to 59 games for the season - and it's not over just yet! Almost, but not quite. 

London wandrin

I've been up to London a couple of weeks running this month. Both times I've had a chance to have a wander. This post is just an excuse to post some photos.

The Tower

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre 

St Paul's selfie

The Shard

Norse team Blood Bowl debut

Another game of Blood Bowl and another new team got an outing. Last month I built and painted my "Norse" team, who I'm calling the Ragnarockers. And last night I played my first game with them.

Bryan has also made some painting progress, with a very nice finish on the scales of his lizard-man team. He now needs to pick a uniform colour for them. 

The lizards quickly raced into a 2-0 lead as I got to grips with a team that is strangely unbalanced. In fact, but for a spoiling throw into nothing just before the end of the first half, the lizards could easily have scored more.

The lizards are a difficult opponent as they can move further than most other teams and their saurus characters have above average strength. They also had Roxy the kroxigor in their line up. I didn't have a Norse big guy to put up against Roxy - Norse teams can field "Yhetee" creatures, but that means buying a yhetee model. 

However the valkyries on the Norse team have a skill called Dauntless, which means they can go up as equals against players that are stronger than them. One of the valkyries was able to knock Roxy flat on her back at one point.

Meanwhile, the dice were busy betraying me whenever I rolled an agility test for the valkyries to try and pick up the ball. I lost count of how many fumbles they made but Bryan estimated it was 1 success in 7 attempts. 

One of the things that attracted me to the Norse team was the "beer boars", little piggies that can provide sustenance to players who have been knocked over. I thought these would feature as extra characters on the pitch but they take up a player space and I didn't feel they gave much advantage to the team. After going 2-0 down I replaced one of the beer boars with a lineman and that shored up the defence a bit. 

The Norse managed to score two downs in the second half to drag the scoreline back to 2-2. It felt like an undeserved draw. They did manage to injure some skinks and one of the saurus blockers. But they had a couple of players knocked out and one fatality - a berserker who will now be playing Blood Bowl in Valhalla!

 

A cautionary tale about not checking with experts

In my book of the month post about the autobiography of Billy Meredith, I included this picture of a Wales team for a fixture that my great uncle, Tommy Matthias, played in.

However, when I sent the link to blog post to Anthony, who I've recently met through a vintage soccer memorabilia group, he almost immediately told me that the player I thought was my great uncle was someone else.

Anthony also said the photo was mislabelled in the book, as it was taken at the Racecourse in Wrexham. The pub in the background is The Turf, which is still present right next to the stadium. 

In hindsight, I should have known something was off because Fred Keenor should have been in the line up and he had a very recognisable face. 

I'm not sure who the guy I circled was. Anthony said he hadn't seen that photo before (so at least it was something new for him!) but it most definitely isn't the line up for the game in the caption. 

All this is a cautionary tale - I could have checked with an expert before posting. Next time I will!

Book of the Month: Football Wizard - The Billy Meredith Story

This autobiography had been sat on my footie books bookshelf for a while so I have a sense of satisfaction to have finally read it. There's a personal family connection with Billy Meredith because he played for Wales alongside my Great Uncle Tommy Matthias either side of the First World War.

I knew that Billy and Tommy were both in the Wales team that beat England for the very first time, in a British Home Championship game at Highbury in 1920. What I didn't know, until this past week in fact, was that Billy played in Tommy's benefit game for a "Wrexham and Welsh XI" in 1922. (I found this out from Anthony, a new contact via a vintage sports collecting group, who specialises in Wrexham's history.)

Billy was a fascinating character at a time when football was emerging as the sport of the masses. There is a great scene-setting chapter explaining how coal miners in the Black Park Colliery in Chirk, where Billy worked as a young man, would leave the pits at the end of the shift and go straight to watch - or play - football without even washing the coal dust off. Billy lived in Chirk and commuted to Manchester to play and train until he was offered a contract as a professional footballer. 

His upbringing wasn't conducive to playing football for a living. His religious parents thought it was a silly pursuit. His dad apparently only ever attended one game where Billy was playing, and reportedly was unimpressed. Despite this, Billy soon made a name for himself at Chirk - they won the Welsh Cup in 1894. The next year he was playing for Manchester City, and soon helped them win promotion to the First Division and then their first FA Cup win.

He was then involved in a scandal, when he was accused of trying to bribe the captain of Aston Villa to throw a match. His punishment was a lengthy ban from football. When he returned to playing, he was in the colours of Manchester United where he was part of the team that were League Champions for the first time in 1907 and then won the title again with them in 1911. In between those league titles was another FA Cup win. He also played in the first Charity Shield match, and was on the winning side.

Billy felt doubly hard done by with regards to the match-fixing scandal. Firstly, he felt he was unfairly treated due to being Welsh and that an English player wouldn't have been censured so severely. Secondly, he felt his club let him down badly and didn't have his back. Throughout his career he got into arguments with his clubs, often revolving around money. He was a big champion of the 'Player's Union' but this wasn't motivated by solidarity as much as feeling players weren't being paid enough when they were the reason people came to football matches. 

The author, John Harding, is pretty even-handed in how he writes about this. One can sense that Billy was a spiky fellow, with a focus on money that probably stemmed from his relatively poor upbringing. But there are several times when it seems like Billy let his pride guide him into rows that he could have avoided if he'd had a bit more nous.

But Billy was a superstar - as it evidenced by how he drew a crowd whenever he played in a testimonial, benefit or charity game. His was usually the name on the adverts for the game.  He tried his hand at endorsing products, set up a sporting goods store, and even appeared in a film playing a version of himself as a trainer and mentor to an aspiring footballer. Sadly, that film doesn't survive. He was regularly depicted in newspaper cartoons, which always included his trademark toothpick. 

Billy's professional career stretched over 30 years, although with a chunk of it lost to the First World War, when he played in several wartime league games. After the war he was back playing for Wales and for Manchester City and continued playing into the 1920s. 

If I was going to be critical of this book, it does rely a bit too much on reports in newspapers and magazines, particularly the Athletic News. This is a common problem faced by a lot of football writers; the story can just become a string of results and match summaries. The book could have done with a list of the honours that Billy won. It's also a bit annoying that some team photos have the players identified and some don't. I'm certain that one of the team photos includes my Great Uncle, but it's not confirmed in the book.

Tommy Matthias circled

Those are really quite minor quibbles. An updated version of this book has been published and some of those issues might have been dealt with. Overall this was a fascinating and enjoyable glimpse into the early days of soccer and I learned a lot from it. 

Football season 24-25 review, part 1

The three clubs I've taken an interest in this season have concluded their campaigns. How did they do?

Shrewsbury Town

The headline news is that Shrewsbury were relegated as the very bottom club in League One. But that doesn't really tell the whole story of a chaotic season. 

Suitably gloomy Shrewsbury game

Firstly, there were two managerial changes. Paul Hurst, who was only appointed in January 2024 was out the door by October. He was replaced by Gareth Ainsworth, who inspired an incredible win against big-spending Birmingham City. He also managed to get a win against Wrexham. But aside from that results were dismal. 

And then in March, out of nowhere, Ainsworth quit and was quickly installed as manager at Gillingham. It was a shock given how much he had been saying he liked Shrewsbury as a club and a place. 

There was a lot of fan rage and betrayal on social media. But also the feeling that, behind the scenes, the ongoing takeover saga with an unknown (and possibly phantom) interested party was influencing things. At some point it became obvious nothing was happening - which might be why Ainsworth walked - and since then Mike Harris, owner of TNS, has gone public that he wanted to buy the club but was rebuffed.

Shrewsbury had been the club with the longest continuous run in League One. Personally I did quite well in a relegation season - I saw seven games with 2 wins, 3 draws and only 2 defeats. But I'm also gutted because Cardiff City will be playing in League 1 next season and that would have been an incredibly easy "away day" for me.

Barry Town

Barry had a moderately successful season. They finished top of the lower half of the table meaning they qualified for the post-season play-off but then lost heavily in the first round of the play-offs. 

They shouldn't have been in the lower half of the table when the league split in January - but for some woeful decision-making by the FAW they would have been in sixth. There was mayhem at the end of phase 1 with fixtures moved at the last minute to make sure everyone finished the phase at the same time because Bala Town had a fixture backlog due to their planning ineptitude (scheduling games on Friday nights and then having to cancel them due to freezing conditions). 

The FAW cited "sporting integrity" as a reason to change the fixtures. After accommodating Bala by moving everyone else's games, there was further monkey business when Bala had their game called off while they were losing, only to win their rearranged game, which was played after everyone else's games. The result was allowed to stand by an FAW committee. So much for sporting integrity. Bala lost most of their games in a miserable phase 2 and then lost their play off game to a very late goal. I have zero sympathy.

The other big talking point for Barry towards the end of the season was really quite sad. One of the players was imprisoned for selling drugs - the club, and fans, only found out about it on the day he was sentenced. It was a nasty shock and suddenly scheduling shenanigans didn't feel so important. 

Cardiff Draconians

And some good news to finish - a promotion! The Dracs are Ardal South West champions and will be playing in the second tier of the Welsh system next season, although not at their home ground because it doesn't meet tier 2 licensing requirements. 

The Dracs didn't lose a league game until January (away at Swansea University; a game I went to) but they did exit the various cups quite early on. That enabled them to concentrate on the league, to use the old cliche. I was at the game where they clinched the championship - away at Morriston - and even made it into the official celebratory photo. I also saw them lift the trophy in their last game of the season. 

I enjoy watching the Dracs. Not just because my friend Scott's son plays for them. The people involved are doing it for the love of football. It's been really heartening to see the club do well this season and the old boys on the committee walking round with massive grins on their faces. 

I've got a couple more games on the calendar before I officially call time on my season. Look out for the next part of my football round up soon.

Europhilex

My first stamp show of 2025 and it was a big one. Europhilex at the NEC. I visited yesterday (Friday 9th May).

Given this was a large international exhibition, I was expecting a bit more from it. There was a large number of competitive presentations, including some great thematic exhibits. But overall, the hall wasn't full and there were fewer dealers than I was expecting. Unlike previous international exhibitions there didn't seem to be much presence from postal agencies from other countries either. 

My favourite display was an excellent analysis of diabetes, with a huge amount of material related to the history and science around it. 

The main reason I went to Europhilex was because the British Thematic Association were holding a meeting. This included a presentation about postcards from North Borneo followed by an opportunity for members to show some of their stamps. 

I took some bits from my collection of the Statue of Liberty on stamps. There was a real mix of other topics ranging from puffins to mistakes on stamps (like depicting Christopher Columbus holding a telescope, which hadn't been invented when he set sail).

I didn't buy much, but I did find a stamp featuring my favourite baseball player, Tony Gwynn. As it was Tony's birthday, I had to buy it!

I also got something for Cathy...