“Port Vale have played Everton at Priory Road, Anfield, Goodison Park and now the Hill Dickinson Stadium,” notes Kevin Doran. “Is there an example of any other team having played another team at four or more home grounds?”
Philip Davis starts us off with a likely potential host: “Brighton & Hove Albion have had four home grounds since 1902. After the Goldstone Ground (1902-97), the Seagulls ground-shared at Gillingham’s Priestfield home in 1997-98 and 1998-99 (both seasons spent in the fourth tier). After 12 years at the Withdean Stadium (1999-2011), they moved to the purpose-built Amex Stadium.
“Five clubs played Brighton in what was then Division Three at Priestfield and have also played at the Goldstone, Withdean and Amex: Hull City, Cardiff, Swansea, Doncaster and Brentford. Brighton also hosted Millwall in the 1998-99 Football League Trophy at Gillingham, and at their other three home grounds.”
Ken Foster takes us from Brighton to Bristol. “Grimsby Town, York City and Portsmouth have played away fixtures at Bristol Rovers at four different grounds,” he notes. Rovers played at the Eastville Stadium from 1887 to 1996, then spent a decade at Bath City’s Twerton Park before moving back to Bristol at the Memorial Ground – a total of three venues.”
Allow Ken to elaborate: “Rovers played five games at Bristol City’s Ashton Gate in the 1980-81 season after the Eastville stand fire, and those three teams were among the visitors. The other two matches were against Oldham Athletic and Newcastle United but they never played Rovers at Twerton Park.” It was a dismal season for both Bristol clubs, as both were relegated from Division Two. Only the Grimsby game was a league match; the visits of York and Pompey were League Cup contests.”
Tottenham have called Northumberland Park, White Hart Lane, Wembley and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium home over their 143-year history – and we have dug up examples of Southampton and Arsenal having visited them at these four venues.
Liverpool Women have played at a number of different home grounds over the years and Everton have travelled for derbies at The Halton Stadium, Prenton Park, Anfield and The Totally Wicked Stadium. They may even have faced each other with Liverpool the home team at West Lancashire College before 2012.
Can any teams do better than four away grounds? It’s complicated. Wimbledon FC played at three different home venues as a Football League club – the old Plough Lane, Selhurst Park and Milton Keynes’ National Hockey Stadium in 2003-04. After being renamed MK Dons the following season, the club relinquished its claim to Wimbledon’s histories and trophies in 2006.
AFC Wimbledon, who were promoted to the EFL in 2011, claim to be the original club’s “spiritual successors” and have played their matches at Kingsmeadow and the new Plough Lane stadium, which opened in 2020. So if we accept – as the average travelling fan might do – that Wimbledon FC and AFC are essentially the same club, we can find nine teams who have played them at all five different venues.
Bradford City, Gillingham, Rotherham, Sunderland and Walsall have played league games at all five grounds. Four other teams have completed the set thanks to a Cup tie: Coventry (League Cup tie at the new Plough Lane in August 2023), Crewe (FA Cup replay at Selhurst Park in Jan 1997), Ipswich (Zenith Data Systems Cup tie at the old Plough Lane in 1990) and Wigan (League Cup tie at Selhurst Park in Sept 2000).
Another eight teams – Blackpool, Bolton, Charlton, Grimsby, Notts County, Portsmouth, Swindon and Tranmere – have played either incarnation of Wimbledon at four different away grounds. Blackpool made the cut by playing AFC Wimbledon at Loftus Road in the 2020-21 season; the team played four games at QPR’s ground before moving into the new Plough Lane, all behind closed doors.
Can you find better examples of teams meeting at many different home grounds? If so, get in touch.
The offside goalie
“We all love it when a goalie comes up for a last-minute set piece,” stated Simon Buckton. “But has a goalkeeper ever been flagged for offside – or better still, had a goal disallowed for offside?”
Thanks to the many, many readers who got in touch to remind us of a famous example. Duncan Jones was first to reply, so over to him: “Peter Schmeichel scored this absolute beauty in an FA Cup replay against Wimbledon in 1997, that was tragically disallowed. He was only off by three or four feet for crying out loud – and in true 90s style, Andy Cole was also offside for good measure.”
A long way to go
“Truro City, who begin their first season in the National League on Saturday, are going to have some very long trips,” wrote Mel Slattery. “The distance from their stadium to Gateshead’s is 457 miles, according to Google Maps. Have two clubs in England ever met who are based further apart? Competitively or otherwise.”
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Andy Clark chimes in with a resounding “Yes! My local team, Whitley Bay, in fact travelled to Truro for an FA Vase last-16 tie in 2008. According to Google, this is six miles further, and all the players involved were part-time. Whitley Bay won 3-0, lost to Lowestoft Town in the next round, before winning the Vase for the next three seasons. Unlike most of their later opponents in those years, Whitley have not been promoted since.”
Chris Roe cannot find a fixture in the Football League with a greater straight-line distance between the two teams’ home grounds. Fourteen pairs of teams have faced off with more than 300 miles between them as the crow flies, with Newcastle United and Plymouth Argyle being the furthest apart. Here is Chris’s table of all 14 games – with Argyle featuring eight times:
Knowledge archive
“As an Arsenal fan, I’ve noticed that whenever we win the Community Shield, we inevitably go on not to win the league,” asked Matt Tread way back in 2005. “Is there a curse?”
Going back to the start of the Charity Shield in 1908, only 14 teams had gone on the win the league after winning the season’s curtain-raiser. At the time of the question, no side had won the Charity Shield and gone on to win the league since Manchester United trounced Newcastle 4-0 in 1996.
Arsenal have won the league 13 times, but only three of those were preceded by a Charity Shield victory: in 1930, 1933 and in 1934. The Gunners opened the season with Charity Shield victories in 1998, 1999 and 2002 – only for United to win the title on each occasion.
2025 update: With Liverpool taking on Crystal Palace at Wembley this Sunday, what has changed in the last 20 years? Well, five out of the six winners between 2005 and 2010 went on to win the title – Manchester United (three times) and Chelsea (twice) but since then, only Manchester City in 2018-19 have done the Shield/title double. As for Arsenal, they’ve won five Community Shields since 2005 … and no league titles.
Can you help?
“Within 16 minutes of the season starting, Salford debutant Kadeem Harris had scored at both ends in against Crewe. Has anyone scored a quicker own goal-proper goal combo either a) to start a season, b) on their debut or c) in any match?” asks Richard Wilson.
“I recently came across one of the more bizarre footballing tales: that of Michael Reddy, a former Sunderland prospect,” begins Mark Moran. “Multiple sources (fan sites, the Northern Echo, and even Transfermarkt) claim he left Grimsby in 2007 for FC Malamuk in Greenland, then moved to Port Stanley Albion after meeting a Falkland Islander at a fish festival. Surely there’s more myth than truth to this?”
“I have just heard CMAT’s song Vincent Kompany because I am cool, young and relevant,” writes the cool, young and relevant Will Unwin. “I was wondering if any other player’s name is the title of a song, beyond simply being referred to?”
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