I’ve always watched sport. I generally have a terrible memory but some of the earliest memories that I can definitely place are of watching sport. The 100m final at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and the World Cup final in 1994 immediately spring to mind. I also still have vivid memories of the first football match I attended, Tranmere vs Wolves at Prenton Park in what was then the English First Division in August 1995. We came from behind twice with a late John Aldridge goal saving a point.
That first game obviously had an impact on me as while everyone around me supported Liverpool or Everton I stuck with Tranmere and have always been drawn to the less alluring end of the football spectrum rather than the glitz and glamour of the Premier League or the Champions League.
That being said the inevitable pull of Sky had its impact, as it seems to have done with every sport it televises. The ease of putting on any game they were showing and ‘watching’ it while really paying almost no attention meant that that is what I have mostly seen over the past 15 years. To be honest I can’t really say I enjoyed much of it though.
That easy access to so much sport changed recently as we moved house and in doing so I reconsidered all the things that I was paying for month in, month out. Sky’s attempts at price gouging had reached a point that I was no longer willing to pay so I cut the cord and convinced myself that I would find my fix elsewhere.
The house move took us back into the centre of Aberdeen, to within walking distance of Pittodrie in fact. In the back of my head I had the idea that this meant I could pop along for the occasional game but at that point there was nothing more to it than that.
Then in May Aberdeen beat Celtic to win the Scottish Cup for the first time in 35 years. The following day we took our niece to see the parade and the response from the city was like nothing I’ve ever seen. The BBC estimated that there were 100,000 people along the route, which for a city of only 225,000 is incredible. ‘I really should start thinking about getting to Pittodrie next season.’
The 2025/26 football season rolled around and without Sky the options for what to watch were a lot more limited. Luckily BBC Scotland regularly broadcasts Scottish Championship games on a Friday evening. For a Tranmere Rovers fan football on a Friday evening is a very familiar feeling. Tranmere would frequently organise for their home games to be played on Fridays to avoid clashes with Liverpool and Everton games on Saturday afternoons and try to tempt a few more fans across the Mersey for an extra game over the weekend. The Scottish Championship nowadays also feels a lot like the English First Division did in the 90s and early 00s. It’s professional but in places only just so (Arbroath finished 2nd as a part-time team in 2021/22) and feels as though you could make a case for almost any team in the division to be promoted or relegated. If you want an idea of what the Scottish Championship is like the mascots alone tell you more than you probably want to know.
Sitting at home watching Arbroath and Ayr United play out a fairly drab draw to start the season I couldn’t help but think that I don’t just want to go and see Aberdeen play, I want to visit places like Gayfield Park and get battered by the wind coming in off the North Sea with a few hundred other people who’ve made equally questionable choices about what they consider to be entertainment.
So the idea expanded, why not try and visit all the grounds and teams of the SPFL. It’s a lot more manageable than the English equivalent, for starters there’s only 42 teams instead of 92 and the longest away day is the 266 miles between Stranraer and Ross County. In England the longest away day (Plymouth and Newcastle) would be 668 miles. The longest trip I’d have to make would be 230 miles and there are 12 teams within roughly an hour of where I live. It’s also probably a lot more fun. Even at the lower levels football in England has become big business that takes itself increasingly seriously. On the other hand Scottish lower league football still has stories of Ross County accidentally deleting their own website and losing the ability to sell any tickets to their home games and Dunfermline’s mascot, Sammy the Tammy, being condemned by the local MP for ‘attacking’ Raith Rovers fans with a cardboard tank.
I knew which I’d prefer so a plan was made….
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