My first experience of non-League football was of watching Dulwich Hamlet in the early to mid 1970s. Champion Hill was only a short number 37 bus ride away from my home in Peckham, South London and subconsciously Hamlet's massive yet crumbling stadium clearly had a great effect on my impressionable young mind. Although nominally a Chelsea supporter in those formative years (surely the best team never to win the Division One title in the early 70s) visits to Stamford Bridge were sporadic and with Millwall ruled out of bounds by my parents, Dulwich provided me with my 'football fix' in those early days. I also made a few excursions to away grounds and visited the likes of Woking, Sutton United and Kingstonian, proudly sporting my knitted pink and blue scarf (royal blue back then mind).

Although Hamlet was my main non-League club I also had a certain loyalty to Leatherhead by virtue of it being close to my father's home village of Ashtead, where I spent many summer holidays and when Dulwich met The Tanners I was noticeably less vocal on the terraces. Amongst my most vivid early memories of football (apart from Chelsea wining the FA Cup & Cup Winners Cup - let's forget Peter Bonetti's World Cup performance in Leon) was at Fetcham Grove watching Leatherhead beat Colchester United in the FA Cup before almost creating a sensation vs Leicester City at Filbert Street later in the competition.

The late 1970s and early 1980s found me increasingly disillusioned with football as I discovered other diversions ... no, not only girls ... but music, cinema and horse racing. The latter interest was perhaps the first sign of an obsessive attention to detail, although I did have my LPs in alphabetical order and also in date of release, not to mention the various sub-categories. It helped having a dream part-time 'job' working in Mecca Bookmakers' Head Office off Oxford Street, but Friday evenings were spent studying Raceform and Timeform prior to hitting the racetrack the following day. Note that I used to actually go racing, but only on the flat where there were no jumps to get in the way, and I only bet on 2YO and stakes races (very rarely handicaps and no multiple bets) ... something I did learn from working for a Bookie!  I did pretty well too and even won a 'Ten to Follow' competition in Pacemaker Magazine which led to a live BBC interview the day before the Grand National at Aintree.

Another thing I learned about betting was not to bother if you didn't have the time or money to lose ... so, marriage and all of its attendant restrictions saw me give up altogether and I have barely been in a betting shop since.

Instead, in 1987 I moved to Eastbourne on the South Coast and rediscovered non-League football. Back then Eastbourne United was the senior club but Eastbourne Town was closer to home. However, I became increasingly aware of another little club on the outskirts of the town. That club was Langney Sports and once I paid a visit to their Priory Lane home I never really looked back. I have been involved with the club ever since in various capacities: supporter, webmaster, programme contributor, and still matchday announcer as they have made the transition to Eastbourne Borough and moved up the Pyramid into Conference South (or Blue whateveritis these days!). I cannot think of a friendlier club to be part of.

Having found a copy of Kerry Miller's wonderful History of Non League Football Grounds in my local John Menzies (in Eastbourne - serendipity or what?) I decided that I wanted to see more of this wonderful world of characterful grounds that were depicted within, particularly those of Langney's opponents in the Sussex County League: where exactly was Oakwood after all?

I started to travel away to games and thought I would share the experience with stay-at-home supporters in the Langney programme. Thus the Nomad column was born. After a few years and more than 100 columns on various topics my ego told me that it might be nice to publish a selection in some way and, having already set up the first Langney Sports website in 2000 I thought I would create another website for this purpose: Nomad-Online - in hindsight perhaps one of the very first online football 'blogs'. Fortunately common sense prevailed and I wasn't quite conceited enough to imagine that anyone not connected with Langney would want to read my ramblings. I therefore embarked on my first little odyssey around the county with a borrowed 3.2 megapixel digital camera, taking photographs of every non-League ground in Sussex, down to and including Division Three of the County League to create an online Directory. This was my first excursion into photography, having never previously shown any interest or aptitude for what has since become a major part of my life and the site ultimately led to publication of The Non League Football Grounds of Sussex in 2003.

As Langney morphed into Eastbourne Borough and my website duties started taking me around the Southern League I began taking photographs of away grounds too. It wasn't long before, fed up with the restrictions of the team coach, I started driving myself to games; the only difference being that my route would be a little more circuitous, taking in as many 'new' grounds en route as possible (and some more on the way home when the evenings were light).

You see I've never classed myself as a 'hopper' - I don't have to see a match (or even a goal) to 'count' a ground. I just like to visit a new ground, have a nose around, and take some photographs. Having said that, I am increasingly finding the need to go back to watch, and more importantly photograph a game so perhaps I have caught the hopping bug after all.

This surfeit of photographs of non-Sussex grounds required an outlet and Pyramid Passion was born. As a result of my tendency to 'nose around' and the fact that at some lesser venues there was nothing much to actually photograph, images of dugouts and rollers also appeared on the site, and I quickly discovered that others were prepared to come out of the shadows where they had been lurking to declare similar fetishes. Evidence of this was provided when the Dugouts book garnered rave reviews all 'round and sales in the region of five figures.

Anyway, here we are. This website has been set up primarily as a means of publishing small print runs of books devoted to non-League football - just my own at present but we'll see how we go. I hope you will help support the venture by purchasing A Season Of Sussex Soccer, even if you happen to live in Northumberland - non-League is the same, and as wonderful anywhere in the UK.

I'm not a professional writer or photographer; far from it in fact, and I regularly suffer a severe case of 'camera envy' when I see the pros at matches. This is merely a hobby for me - I enjoy writing and taking photographs for my own pleasure, as well as contributing regularly to publications such as Groundtastic, without which my life would be a much emptier place. However, all that has to be fitted around a very 'supportive' (aka long-suffering) family and an interesting job teaching student nurses how their bodies work (well, someone has to).

Away from football music and concert-going remains a big part of my life and I still buy a ridiculously huge amount of CDs, mainly online as most of them are too obscure (or too expensive) to get in my local HMV. If, like me you are turned on by names such as Miles Davis, Mike Westbrook, ECM, Shostakovich, Soft Machine, and Steve Reich please get in touch. Fortunately my son has not inherited his father's musical ineptitude and plays violin in a local orchestra, as well well as keeping me up-to-speed with the indie scene.

Hope you enjoy the websites and any past and (hopefully) future publications.

David Bauckham

 

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Centre Circle Publishing, PO Box 2923, Eastbourne, East Sussex BN20 8WG