April 18, 2007

Sports ground finder: Enter you UK postcode and find your nearest football, rugby (either code) or cricket ground. Not much use to most of our users I realise, but maybe on a business trip?

posted by Abiezer to general at 11:50 AM - 7 comments

Largely useful for settling arguments about whether you do support your local team or a just a dirty glory-hunter, and not much else, I suspect. Turns out I grew up seven miles from Crewe's ground and they were the closest team.

posted by Abiezer at 11:52 AM on April 18, 2007

I don't know if this qualifies as a good FPP...

posted by jerseygirl at 12:12 PM on April 18, 2007

What makes a good front page post (FPP)? • A good FPP requires a sports related link that has not been seen by most people, is interesting in content, and will foster discussion among the community. Check • A good FPP is a link with a brief description of what the link is about, and that's it. Don't editorialize on the front page. Biased posts make for biased discussions. Personal opinion belongs inside the thread. Check • Unless there's no other option, don't link to an ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, or Associated Press article. While not forbidden, when linking to these or similar sites the quality of the link must be very high. Check • Keep the spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes to a minimum. Over use of caps, exclamation points, italics, bold, and aol-speak are discouraged. Take pride in what you are writing. Check (and by the way, just to get all grammar Nazi with the grammar Nazis, overuse should be one word) • While there are no hard and fast rules about cursing in threads, please keep the front page clean from words that may offend people visiting SportsFilter for the first time. Check I don't see how it fails in any way as a good FPP. I enjoyed using it to find out that the noise I hear on match nights is coming from Oxford United's ground, and that for some reason Saracens' rugby ground is 0.1 of a mile further from my house than Watford's football ground, even though they share the same stadium. I was also slightly surprised to learn that the nearest division one cricket ground is nearly 40 miles away (from Oxford).

posted by JJ at 04:07 AM on April 19, 2007

Why would you care that this tool is only useful for us Brits? There are plenty of US-centric posts. Apparently I live 62 miles from West Brom's ground. In the car it's 80 miles. I also live just under a mile from Oxford United's ground, but unlike JJ I can't hear when the U's are playing. On the other hand I can hear when the speedway is on.

posted by salmacis at 05:24 AM on April 19, 2007

I realise it is a bit thin, justgary, sorry about that. It cropped up in a post on my hometown club forum when people were arguing about supporting your local side, and I thought it might be fun and interesting to UK users (also lets you see how far you have to go for an away trip). Where I'm from in the northwest, there's a ton of professional football clubs all within a 40-odd mile radius of where I grew up. Sort of inoffensive I felt :D. Will do something more substantial in future.

posted by Abiezer at 07:00 AM on April 19, 2007

I too can hear the speedway. I lived in my house for a year before I figured out what that noise was. I thought perhaps my neighbour was a beekeeper with a particularly angry swarm. Strangely, there seems to be more noise coming from the U's ground since they dropped out the bottom of the league. Abiezer, thanks for the post. I'm 138.74 miles from the football team I support. Where I grew up (Belfast), there is only one listing (Ulster RFC).

posted by JJ at 08:29 AM on April 19, 2007

That's a bit ropey JJ, especially with the good showing in European football competitions by Northern sides in recent years. Hell, after the World Cup they need to get your cricket grounds in there too. Something good must be happening at some :D

posted by Abiezer at 01:05 PM on April 19, 2007

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