My name is Edward. I was born in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire in September 1997.

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I currently cover the English League Two in depth, and am a co-host on the D3D4 Football Podcast, a specialist community page that provides regular statistics and updates on all things League One and League Two in England.

 

I attended and graduated from UCFB Etihad Campus in 2019, and it's there that I first came up with the idea for "The Matchday Man."

There are a lot of good and helpful stadium guides available for fans to use, but nearly all revolve around how to get to the stadium and what you can before the game starts. I want "The Matchday Man" to be about what happens when you are there. How easy is it to get around the outside? What are the stands like? What kind of view can I expect from my seat? What kind of atmosphere can you expect? The most important part of a match is what goes on inside the ground, that's what football fans travel from miles around for.

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I want this website to be as accurate and fan-friendly as possible. If your club features on "The Matchday Man" and you think there's some information about the stadium that needs changing or added, feel free to message me on one of my social media accounts about it, loyal supporters know about their club's home better than anybody else.

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What got me into groundhopping?

Whilst at University, a friend introduced me to an App called AwayDays, where you can keep track of which of the 92 League Stadiums you have visited, along with the 24 sides in the top flight of Non-League Football. I realised that I had actually done a good number of them without intending to, and that adding more to that list could be easily done with a few trips into Lancashire, Cheshire and West Yorkshire alone. I found out about the 92 challenge a couple of months later, and instantly wanted to complete it.

Whilst watching games at the 2018 UEFA U17 European Championships in England, I met an amateur commentator who was also working through the 92 challenge, he introduced me to the Groundhopper App, which allows you to keep a record of every single game that you attend, regularly updating the fixtures for leagues across the whole of the World. It also uses your location to identify games that are taking place near to you that you can attend, and I have been using this app every week since to choose the games that I watch.

Groundhopping is a past time that has existed since the 1970s, and is popular across the whole world, particularly in other European countries such as Germany and Belgium. Chances are if you are at a football match at some point this season, they’ll be several people there adding another new stadium to their groundhopping journey.

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