Supporting native soccer: how two followers discovered new groups – and saved money | Cash

‘My season ticket is free’

For so long as I can bear in mind, I’ve supported Tottenham Hotspur. Now that I reside inside strolling distance of their floor, you’ll discover me at a stadium midway down White Hart Lane. At Haringey Borough FC season tickets usually are not solely simpler to return by, they’re additionally free for everybody.

The north London soccer membership, whose males’s group play within the Premier Division of the Isthmian League, are providing free season tickets for the eighth successive season. I’ve had one for the previous three or 4.

The tickets give entry to the house video games of the lads’s and ladies’s senior groups, and the under-23s and under-18s groups. Cup video games value, because the receipts are cut up with the opposition.

Video games are fast-paced and high-scoring – and normally begin at 3pm on Saturday, as they need to. The gang is full of life, whereas refreshments are low-cost – the beer is inexpensive than at most native pubs (and you may drink it when you watch) – and kids are made to really feel very welcome.

Getting in totally free encourages you to spend cash on meals and drinks, and on merch – the variety of blue and yellow scarves I see round Haringey has proliferated as information of this nice deal has unfold. My buddy Niamh has the hat, the headband and the tote bag.

There usually are not some ways to entertain your complete household for a day for the price of a few drinks and a bag of chips however as soon as we’ve walked there and again, and my son has had a kickabout together with his buddies after the match, now that’s what has occurred.

I actually hope Spurs do effectively this season nevertheless it’s on the terraces of Coles Park the place one can find me cheering on my native group. Hilary Osborne

‘I’m saving a whole bunch a yr’

As any soccer fan will let you know, switching allegiance is a type of belongings you simply don’t do. So how have I ended up, after a lifetime as a diehard West Ham supporter, the proud proprietor of a season ticket at Brighton and Hove Albion’s Amex Stadium and an obsession with the fortunes of the Seagulls?

In my defence – and I admit it’s a bit weaker than Albion’s again 4 – it was a reasonably uncommon mixture of things that led me so far.

My dad’s loss of life coincided with West Ham’s transfer from the Boleyn Floor to the sterile London Stadium and, all of a sudden, the 2 greatest connections to my group have been now not there. I additionally had a younger son simply hitting the age when he wished to observe soccer.

It was solely Sam’s alternative which group he supported however I admit that my pockets and I have been relieved when he opted for his native aspect.

Premier League soccer doesn’t come low-cost, whoever you watch. My season ticket prices about £650, his roughly half that, paid for month-to-month by direct debit.

Crucially, we will be on the floor in minutes, and we keep away from all of the journey prices related to watching video games within the capital.

Brighton to Stratford Worldwide would value me a minimal of £35 on the prepare for a weekend sport – extra so within the week if I needed to journey throughout peak time. Rail strikes add an additional layer of value and confusion.

Consider West Ham’s eye-watering beer costs, and that further £50 that appears to fade at any time when I take the children to London, and it’s saving me a whole bunch of kilos a yr.

And it’s a cheerful coincidence that it has coincided with essentially the most profitable spell in Brighton’s historical past. Ian Carter