You may have noticed that things have changed here a little bit. For starters, we’ve changed the name of this blog thing. Why have we done that? Well, we’d taken some time to reflect on what we like to write about and why. When we first started putting pen to paper (or indeed, fingers to keys), the plan was for it to be an even mix of travelling journal and football blog. What we’ve come to realise is that neither of us really likes writing about the latter so much. There are loads of blogs out there that will bore/entertain you senseless with talk of tactics, transfers and vivid, in-depth match reports. We don’t really want to do that. We both love football, and it is the driving force behind why we make our trips. But we’ve honestly found that we’d rather focus on the places we’ve been and the grounds that we visit, rather than the football that we’ve seen. That’s not to say we won’t be including some football. Particularly if there’s something remarkable to write about … However, 376 Miles was a very football-specific title (the number of miles of our furthest away trip the year we started the blog) and it also needed explaining every time we told someone about it! So we both felt that We Are Here was a more self-explanatory name and pulled the focus more to the places we were going rather than the matches we were watching.
So, that’s that out of the way. And now we ask, erm, ourselves - what are we looking forward to this coming season?
By the time this post comes out, we’ll have already had trips to Rochdale, Walsall and Glasgow Rangers, with visits to Oldham and Dunfermline on the near horizon. Tentatively penned into the calendar for later in 2025 are returns to Preston, Sheffield Wednesday and Oxford. There’s the possibility of a trip to Wimbledon in October (Liz may finally get to see that Womble!) and Ben is plotting an audacious London double-header in December, including a possible trip to Bromley to see the London City Lionesses.
As for Middlesbrough, we’re hoping for at least one interesting cup tie. We’ve played a lot of home games or had trips to other championship teams in recent years so it would be nice to draw one of those teams it’s really hard to get to other than as an away fan.1 Spurs away would be good, or maybe Liverpool. And along those lines, there’s also Wrexham who are in our division this year - but it’s the last game of the season and they have a ridiculously small away allocation, so … Crossing our fingers!
On Liz’s wish list are trips to Hallam FC (oldest football ground in the world, which we narrowly missed seeing last year). She’s secretly hoping that a trip to Sheffield to see a play might handily coincide with a home game for Hallam. She’s also threatening to go to Hull when Ben’s away. It depends how the season is going by then. She also might like to see how newly promoted Redcar Athletic are doing in their new division, which happens to be the same division as Hallam FC! Two birds with one stone, perhaps?
Ben’s goal is to inch closer to completing ‘the 92’ - seeing a match played at every one of the 92 football league grounds. After feeding the stats into THE SUPERCOMUPTER2 taking into account last season’s promotions, relegations and Everton selfishly moving to a new ground, he’s currently at 77/92. Stevenage, Cambridge United and Swindon Town are amongst the outliers yet to be visited which could possibly be ticked off this season. Plus, will he finally get to Leyton Orient (a the 4th attempt)? In terms of non-league football, Ben has long since promised/threatened Liz with a trip to Scunthorpe, so that might finally happen. Plus he really fancies a trip to Cleethorpes (for the fish and chips and the amusement arcades, as much as the football!). Closer to home, maybe a trip up to North Shields and a long overdue trip on the Shields ferry.
Wherever we go, we’ll enjoy ourselves. We always do!3
If you would like to find out where we go next, please do subscribe. It’s free! However, it’s also not a secret that we’re going to Glasgow Rangers next.
Okay, our first cup tie is home to Doncaster Rovers tonight - not exactly what we were hoping for …
It’s an Excel spreadsheet.
Nearly always. I still haven’t forgotten that cold, wet trip to Tow Law … [Liz]