Alfreton Town vs Cambridge United

As soon as you get to Alfreton you know that you're in for a pretty low key affair. The train station has only two platforms and is empty. The walk from the station to the ground is short and takes you through tranquil middle class suburbs, one of the least threatening places you can imagine. The present name for Alfreton's stadium is the Impact Arena, which defies all notion of what constitutes an arena, the biggest stand has a whopping five rows. The bar was the size of a living room and there were five urinals for the entire home support. A pleasant atmosphere, and like most of the games I go to, particularly non-league, the majority of the crowd were old men sipping bovril, you wonder where the next 500-strong home crowd will come from. I have had issues with the choice/volume of a lot of the tannoy music at football games, but Alfreton score well in this - loud enough to be heard but not enough to drown out the atmosphere/mean that you have to shout at the person next to you like in a club (the case with many stadiums, particularly at the higher end of the spectrum). And I enjoyed the Slade and Manic Street Preachers, among others. I'd already been there back in October, and after asking for a ticket receipt at the gate (£18 entry by the way, I could go on a rant about how I watched Barcelona at the Nou Camp for only a fiver more last year...) I was told to go and speak to the chairman - that kind of level of down to earth is Alfreton. Was good entertainment - being that close to the pitch you can feel and hear the tackles, such are the benefits of being a football follower at this level, Cambridge got an equaliser in the last minute and that was that, a sprint to the station to catch the 21:46 to Chesterfield and home.

Leeds United vs Ipswich Town

After twenty seven games on the job, I finally get assigned one in the city I live in. I'd been to Elland Road a few years ago but had little memory of it, aside from the loss of innocence at paying £28 for a League One game on a rainy Tuesday night, vs Millwall. Not the best located stadium, getting the bus from the city centre you pass through uninspiring suburbs, industrial wasteland and over a motorway, but the ground itself I was impressed by. Despite the stadium being only half full, the home end looked packed, and the atmosphere was decent enough from my position in the East Stand on the halfway line. Leeds, a mixture of promising youngsters and journeymen (far more of the latter) won 2-0 despite a drab performance - the first fifteen minutes of the second half were full of frustration - one of the things I love as a neutral is watching fans getting wound up over their team, Leeds gave the ball away constantly, but then followed it with a goal - the contrast in emotion and the relief that follows is one of the great things about football. 

In September 2012 I was fortunate enough acquire a job which involves working at football games. Since I'm based in Leeds, the majority of games are in the North of England - Yorkshire, Lancashire and occasionally Derbyshire. I have worked over twenty-five games so far; and I have decided to start documenting my experiences, as I can feel the memories disappearing already, and I want to record them before they do so. The games are diverse across the football pyramid - Manchester City, Alfreton Town, Doncaster Rovers, Middlesbrough reserves...so I'm pretty lucky to get a pretty authentic taste of life as a fan.