Groundhopping: nostalgia, emotion and the small places of football

Abstract

Groundhopping emerged in the 1980s as a primarily British social practice emanating from dissent with the capitalist structures of elite football and combining nostalgia, serious leisure, travel and collecting into a practice of regularly visiting small town football grounds. Most groundhoppers are middle-aged men, who value the atmosphere, architecture, camaraderie and sense of space of smaller venues. Groundhopping centres on travel, experiencing community, identity and the physical structures of grounds, thus invoking a sense of place and heritage in the ground and in its wider context. Greater social intimacy fosters and contributes to emotions centred on community, family, personal histories but also fetishised notions of the recent past.

Keywords:

• Groundhoppers
• football
• capitalism
• nostalgia
• community
• collecting
• travel