"You've Come All The Way Here?"
 You know you're deep into a groundhopping trip when the guy in the next seat finds out you've come all the way from the States to sit here, at this game, and he looks at you like you're crazy.
That happened to me (most recently) on a cold, damp night in a cramped plastic seat in the corner of Kenilworth Road, home of Luton Town FC -- a seat from which the most prominent thing in front of me was not the pitch, nor a sea of fans, but a floodlight stand.
It occurred to me that night that perhaps I was a little crazy. A rainy Tuesday in Luton, a town that evokes a real contempt from nearly everyone in England, will do that to you. One part of their ground is from 1922, with wood rafters above and plastic seats mounted on metal racks bolted into the old concrete terraces below. The paint is peeling, the other side of the ground looks like shipping containers stacked up, the roof drips, there's a highway just outside, and it was one of my favorite grounds I've ever visited.
You can read all about my visit to Luton Town right here. And by the way, the very next night I was at the other end of the footballing spectrum, the great palace of the Camp Nou in Barcelona. But we'll get to that in the next Groundhopper.
Also Visited: Fulham and Watford
 Somewhere between Luton and Barcelona on the glamour scale lie ... well, pretty much the whole world. In this case I mean clubs like Fulham, recently in the Premier League, and Watford, right, who look to be on their way out of it. At both those places, they are used to foreigners, and I sell a fair number of tickets and hospitality packages to both.
At Watford, in fact, I was there to check out the package I sell, a really nice one with food, a lounge, and excellent seats. They got hammered by Burnley, though, so the outing wasn't great in that sense.
At Fulham, I was just there for their derby with Queens Park Rangers, but I did use the seats I sell -- down low in the (semi)rowdy Hammersmith End. At least the home side did their part, coming back from 0-1 down to win it, 2-1. Here's a photo gallery from my evening at Craven Cottage. |
