With all the a***aches of attending noted above, not to mention the lure of a decent toilet, nice cup of tea and/or beer from the fridge, I just love live football. I find telly/streaming a poor substitute though I do get why it impacts on us all. Until the knees and the money go, i fear I will carry on rocking up.
With the on-site parking going to £10 and the capacity noticeably reduced in the last couple of years (apparently it was sold out yesterday with one row of cars going right up the hill, this used to be 3-4 rows of cars and they used to be going into the car park right up to the start of the match), it has become harder to find street parking.
We used to arrive at 1.45-2.00 and could always find a space (except maybe for Oxford or other bigger fixtures) - this was with similar attendances to what we had yesterday.
Now have to arrive at 12.45-1.00 to find anything, even then you’re grabbing the last space right up the top of a road which you never would have had to look down before.
That extra hour has made it much harder to get the kids sorted and arrange childcare so I can attend.
The price increase was arguably fair, it hadn’t gone up for a long time. But not sure why the parking capacity has reduced so much
My go to road is never available these days, but I think it was probably a bit too obvious, albeit still 3/4mile away.
But at least if it gets desperate you can always find somewhere, even if it's the other side of West Wycombe road, or up in Booker.
Yonks back, I was pleased to accept a lift home from a familiar face from a few roads away. Only to be bemused to find they'd parked a bit further along the road opposite the hospital! Might as well have completed the full walk home by then!
Out of interest do you enjoy watching football on Sky - especially lower league football. Have to be honest I struggle a bit with it even with the excellent commentary in previous seasons.
I think I am less interested in watching football on TV generally now. These days there is just too much of it and unless I have a vested interest in one club or other I can’t really bother.
Case in point yesterday. I had 40 minutes to kill waiting for a train, went into the Flint, sat at a table with a decent view of the Palace v Utd match. Watched about 5 minutes then got my laptop out and did some work.
Yet I will happily stand and watch a game of park football with no knowledge of any of the teams/players and often even the score for 15/20 minutes in the rain if I have time to kill waiting for someone.
(And if I drive past a village cricket ground with a game on it is really hard to resist parking up and wasting an hour or more watching that).
Personally, I'm along the lines of @bookertease for most football - including England non tournament games.
But very pleased to have the chance to watch Wycombe so easily and also premier league stuff -albeit not all games, just selected ones.
I appreciate some people are pure football lovers - I used to watch any game I could find, but now it's Wycombe and premier league really. Or playoff games late season etc, but even then not always. A far cry from the season I actually went to another play off final the day after Wycombe's cruel Southend defeat!
Said it before, I used to get a coach from the green Dragon pub in Flackwell, a coach that had come from Marlow, stopped in Bourne End and picked up more folk between Flackwell and AP.
After that stopped, I parked up at Cressex, near the cinema and got a shuttle bus , then more recently I parked at the Coach Hub and got a bus.
I liked having that 2.35 bus available from the hub. Into the ground nicely for 2.50.
Pick it back up at the bus stop down the road, 1st stop straight back to the hub. All with free parking too.
Then apparently people who got on at that stop moaned that they didn't have the choice of seats, so they made the hub stop the last one, meaning a 15min trip became best part of an hour and utterly ruined it.
Peaking in rubbishness when Portsmouth were in town and they decided the first bus out wouldn't even bother going to the hub, where a number of us had obviously parked.
So you had the choice of 1)Get the bus but get off at bus or train stations 1-1.5miles away up a hill
2)Wait for the bus to go off and come back (eta 1 hour)
3) Just walk the 3miles or so (up another hill).
Took option 1 but should really have just done option 3 and walked up New Road.
Parking availability in the field above the ground is largely a function of the weather forecast. 90% of the field is just plain unmodified mud with a small amount of the area having had planings (recycled road surfaces) scattered over it at some time in the past - probably illegally. In the event of a poor forecast, fewer tickets will be sold, often only a few more than are accounted for by season ticket holders. If the weather is better than expected, there will always be far more feasible spaces than cars in the car park. In the past we could just carry on taking money and filling up space until kick off. However, the club having decided that all car parking would need to be pre-booked has meant that we can no longer do that and hence many spaces have gone unfilled. The flip side of the previous system however was always that if the weather was poor, the car park would need to be closed long before kick off leaving a chaos of cars doing three-point turns in Hillbottom Road. Given that the field is not owned by the club and moreover planning restrictions mean that little can be done to improve the surface, I’m not sure what can be done to fix the situation. If anybody has any bright ideas, please contact the club!
I remember a Tuesday night fixture way back in the Conf era where I was parked up there, it was a full on deluge most of the night and leaving the ground my car lost traction and slid a good 10m. Only good fortune avoided a collision, it was scary as F.
it is a shame if the space cannot be utilised but it is quite a treacherous area. The availability of parking around the area has also decreased over time as more and more households have multiple cars and so residents have filled most of the available parking. In that backdrop, it seems more urgent than ever that buses from outliers and park and rides from places like Wycombe Six are set up again.
Is there still free parking at the cinema or have they clamped down and you need to validate now? Think there's definitely something like that at the restaurant next door.
Readings bus service from the railway station was easy to use and not at all a pain, but the main reason that they have the resources to provide that service is that Reading was one of the few places in the country to keep some degree of municipal control over local bus provision.
It's a pity about that Man City equaliser. I saw someone post, on Saturday, that City and Wycombe Wanderers are the only teams in the top four divisions to have scored two goals in every league game this season.
I am finding it increasingly difficult to do night matches. I used to park at the school, which was great. If I walk to the station and pick up the football bus, by the time it gets back to the Town centre there are no buses to outlying areas and this involves a long hike up Amersham Hill.
Good to have the context , doesn't bode well for the access road though if we can't get agreement/permission to do a bit of minor works on a field that is used by us and nobody else anyway.
Comments
With all the a***aches of attending noted above, not to mention the lure of a decent toilet, nice cup of tea and/or beer from the fridge, I just love live football. I find telly/streaming a poor substitute though I do get why it impacts on us all. Until the knees and the money go, i fear I will carry on rocking up.
Am i the only one psychologically scarred by Jordan Rhodes so that i really struggle to want to watch us on TV?
With the on-site parking going to £10 and the capacity noticeably reduced in the last couple of years (apparently it was sold out yesterday with one row of cars going right up the hill, this used to be 3-4 rows of cars and they used to be going into the car park right up to the start of the match), it has become harder to find street parking.
We used to arrive at 1.45-2.00 and could always find a space (except maybe for Oxford or other bigger fixtures) - this was with similar attendances to what we had yesterday.
Now have to arrive at 12.45-1.00 to find anything, even then you’re grabbing the last space right up the top of a road which you never would have had to look down before.
That extra hour has made it much harder to get the kids sorted and arrange childcare so I can attend.
The price increase was arguably fair, it hadn’t gone up for a long time. But not sure why the parking capacity has reduced so much
My go to road is never available these days, but I think it was probably a bit too obvious, albeit still 3/4mile away.
But at least if it gets desperate you can always find somewhere, even if it's the other side of West Wycombe road, or up in Booker.
Yonks back, I was pleased to accept a lift home from a familiar face from a few roads away. Only to be bemused to find they'd parked a bit further along the road opposite the hospital! Might as well have completed the full walk home by then!
Out of interest do you enjoy watching football on Sky - especially lower league football. Have to be honest I struggle a bit with it even with the excellent commentary in previous seasons.
I think I am less interested in watching football on TV generally now. These days there is just too much of it and unless I have a vested interest in one club or other I can’t really bother.
Case in point yesterday. I had 40 minutes to kill waiting for a train, went into the Flint, sat at a table with a decent view of the Palace v Utd match. Watched about 5 minutes then got my laptop out and did some work.
Yet I will happily stand and watch a game of park football with no knowledge of any of the teams/players and often even the score for 15/20 minutes in the rain if I have time to kill waiting for someone.
(And if I drive past a village cricket ground with a game on it is really hard to resist parking up and wasting an hour or more watching that).
Personally, I'm along the lines of @bookertease for most football - including England non tournament games.
But very pleased to have the chance to watch Wycombe so easily and also premier league stuff -albeit not all games, just selected ones.
I appreciate some people are pure football lovers - I used to watch any game I could find, but now it's Wycombe and premier league really. Or playoff games late season etc, but even then not always. A far cry from the season I actually went to another play off final the day after Wycombe's cruel Southend defeat!
How many bottoms will we need this year to reach the playoffs?
BFP is a joke these days!
Said it before, I used to get a coach from the green Dragon pub in Flackwell, a coach that had come from Marlow, stopped in Bourne End and picked up more folk between Flackwell and AP.
After that stopped, I parked up at Cressex, near the cinema and got a shuttle bus , then more recently I parked at the Coach Hub and got a bus.
All gone now.
I liked having that 2.35 bus available from the hub. Into the ground nicely for 2.50.
Pick it back up at the bus stop down the road, 1st stop straight back to the hub. All with free parking too.
Then apparently people who got on at that stop moaned that they didn't have the choice of seats, so they made the hub stop the last one, meaning a 15min trip became best part of an hour and utterly ruined it.
Peaking in rubbishness when Portsmouth were in town and they decided the first bus out wouldn't even bother going to the hub, where a number of us had obviously parked.
So you had the choice of 1)Get the bus but get off at bus or train stations 1-1.5miles away up a hill
2)Wait for the bus to go off and come back (eta 1 hour)
3) Just walk the 3miles or so (up another hill).
Took option 1 but should really have just done option 3 and walked up New Road.
Now there's no debate as they cut it all out.
On a positive note I caught the 13.02 train from Marylebone, 13.30 Bus from Wycombe Station and was sat in the Vere with a beer by 13.52
On a negative note there is no decent beer any more in the ground…
Parking availability in the field above the ground is largely a function of the weather forecast. 90% of the field is just plain unmodified mud with a small amount of the area having had planings (recycled road surfaces) scattered over it at some time in the past - probably illegally. In the event of a poor forecast, fewer tickets will be sold, often only a few more than are accounted for by season ticket holders. If the weather is better than expected, there will always be far more feasible spaces than cars in the car park. In the past we could just carry on taking money and filling up space until kick off. However, the club having decided that all car parking would need to be pre-booked has meant that we can no longer do that and hence many spaces have gone unfilled. The flip side of the previous system however was always that if the weather was poor, the car park would need to be closed long before kick off leaving a chaos of cars doing three-point turns in Hillbottom Road. Given that the field is not owned by the club and moreover planning restrictions mean that little can be done to improve the surface, I’m not sure what can be done to fix the situation. If anybody has any bright ideas, please contact the club!
I remember a Tuesday night fixture way back in the Conf era where I was parked up there, it was a full on deluge most of the night and leaving the ground my car lost traction and slid a good 10m. Only good fortune avoided a collision, it was scary as F.
it is a shame if the space cannot be utilised but it is quite a treacherous area. The availability of parking around the area has also decreased over time as more and more households have multiple cars and so residents have filled most of the available parking. In that backdrop, it seems more urgent than ever that buses from outliers and park and rides from places like Wycombe Six are set up again.
Agree totally.
Is there still free parking at the cinema or have they clamped down and you need to validate now? Think there's definitely something like that at the restaurant next door.
Readings bus service from the railway station was easy to use and not at all a pain, but the main reason that they have the resources to provide that service is that Reading was one of the few places in the country to keep some degree of municipal control over local bus provision.
We need a chairlift.
It's a pity about that Man City equaliser. I saw someone post, on Saturday, that City and Wycombe Wanderers are the only teams in the top four divisions to have scored two goals in every league game this season.
I am finding it increasingly difficult to do night matches. I used to park at the school, which was great. If I walk to the station and pick up the football bus, by the time it gets back to the Town centre there are no buses to outlying areas and this involves a long hike up Amersham Hill.
According to https://www.soccerstats.com/formtable.asp?league=england3, the form table for the last 4 matches has us in second spot, behind the Bluenoses and ahead of Hollywood.
A win at Bristol on Saturday might well get Matt the Manager of the Month award for September.
Why did you go and say that 🤦🤦, the manager of the month curse.
And you gents. Still haven't meet a Gasroomer I didn't like.
👆 same here
A splendid community of individuals
Just as well perhaps that our efforts (via DM) three or four years ago to arrange a meeting to share a pre match pint didn’t materialise !!
Good to have the context , doesn't bode well for the access road though if we can't get agreement/permission to do a bit of minor works on a field that is used by us and nobody else anyway.
Apparently there was an article on Jack Grimmer in the Sun last Saturday (I don’t buy the paper)
Not sure I’d be too pleased with that headline.
Bonus photo of Bayo too.
And a mention of Couhig in the other article. Is this the BFP and not the Sun?