How to Plan a Weekend Groundhopping Trip Using TheFans

You've downloaded TheFans, poked around a bit, maybe logged a ground or two — and then life got in the way. Sound familiar? You're not alone. The app can do a lot, and sometimes the best way to actually get stuck in is to have a concrete goal: a weekend away, two days, as many grounds as you can sensibly squeeze in without your legs giving out by Sunday evening.

This is a practical walkthrough of exactly how to use TheFans to plan one of those trips from scratch. No vague waffle — just the actual steps, in order, the way a seasoned groundhopper would do it. By the end, you'll have a route, a list of targets, and a very good reason to book those train tickets.

Step One: Pick Your Base and Set Your Radius

Every good groundhopping weekend starts with geography. Before you search for fixtures or worry about kick-off times, you need an anchor point — a town or city you're travelling to (or already in) that becomes your base for the weekend.

Open TheFans and head to the Explore section. Use the map view to zoom into your chosen area. The density of pins you'll see is usually the first pleasant surprise for new users — there are grounds everywhere, and many you won't have heard of. That cluster of pins around a market town in the Midlands or the South Coast isn't a glitch; it's decades of non-league football history waiting to be discovered.

Set a realistic radius. For a weekend trip, anything within roughly 20–25 miles of your base is workable on public transport or by car, depending on the region. Don't overstretch on day one — the best groundhopping weekends are enjoyable, not death marches.

Step Two: Filter by Division and Check What's Actually On

Not every ground will have a fixture on any given Saturday or Sunday, so this is where planning gets a bit more involved — and where TheFans earns its keep.

Use the filter options to sort grounds by league or division. If you're a relative newcomer, it's worth starting with Step 3 and Step 4 of the football pyramid — plenty of atmosphere, affordable admission, and grounds that haven't been sanitised into identikit bowls. But the app covers everything from the National League down to the ninth tier and beyond, so the choice is genuinely yours.

Once you've got a shortlist of grounds in your area, cross-reference with the fixture lists. The key practical tip here: Saturday afternoon remains the holy grail — most non-league clubs still play at 3pm, which means you can attend one game, then plan an evening or Sunday visit to a different ground for a midday or afternoon fixture. Two grounds in a weekend is a solid, sustainable target. Three is ambitious but achievable with good planning.

A word on Sunday football

Don't overlook Sunday fixtures. Several Step 4 and Step 5 clubs move games to Sunday for various reasons, and some cup competitions at non-league level are scheduled on Sundays specifically. Check thoroughly — you might find a local derby or a cup tie that's far more exciting than you expected.

Step Three: Build Your List and Map Your Route

Once you've identified two or three realistic targets, add them to your Want to Visit list in TheFans. This is the feature that transforms the app from a passive database into an active planning tool. Every ground you mark as a target sits there waiting, and you can pull the list up anywhere — on the train, in the pub the night before, at breakfast on Saturday morning when you're figuring out logistics.

From your Want to Visit list, open each ground's profile to get the address, then plot the route between them using your map app of choice. The TheFans ground profiles give you enough detail to understand what you're walking into: which tier of the pyramid, what the ground is like, how long it's been there. It's the difference between arriving somewhere cold and unprepared, and arriving with context.

A few practical routing tips worth knowing:

• If you're car-free, check the nearest train station to each ground and whether there's a bus or a short walk. Many non-league grounds are surprisingly well connected; others require a taxi or a lengthy hike.
• Build in buffer time between grounds — especially if you're attending a Saturday 3pm game and then trying to reach a Sunday venue. Factor in travel, food, and the very real possibility that you'll spend longer than expected talking to a steward about the club's history.
• Look at where the grounds cluster on the map. Sometimes two or three clubs sit within two or three miles of each other in the same town, which makes a Saturday afternoon particularly productive if only one has a home fixture — you can visit the other ground before or after for a walk-around, even without a match on.

Step Four: Log Your Visits and Watch the Progress Stack Up

This is the part that keeps you coming back. Once you've attended a match and set foot in a ground, log it in TheFans straight away — ideally while you're still there, with the noise of the crowd still in your ears. Tap into the ground's profile and mark it as visited.

What happens next is quietly satisfying. Your visited count ticks up. Badges trigger based on the grounds you've collected — regional badges, divisional milestones, total visit counts. After a two-ground weekend, you might unlock something you weren't expecting, which is half the fun.

The visit log also becomes a genuine record of your groundhopping life over time. Go back and look at a trip six months later and you'll remember things you'd forgotten — the state of the terrace, the pie you had at half-time, the last-minute goal that sent the home end into chaos. TheFans is as much a diary as it is a planning tool.

Add notes and photos where you can

When logging a visit, take a moment to add a note or a photo. Even a sentence or two about what made the ground memorable is worth having. A year from now, when you've visited fifty grounds, you'll thank yourself for it.

Step Five: Share It and Find Your Next Trip

One of the underused parts of TheFans for newer users is the community element. Once you've logged a visit, have a look at what other groundhoppers have said about the same ground. Their notes often contain gems — the best spot to stand, which end has the atmosphere, whether the tea bar is actually worth queuing for.

And when you're done with one weekend, the next one is already staring you in the face. Your Want to Visit list is still there, the map is still full of pins, and somewhere a couple of hours away there's a ground you haven't ticked off yet. That's the nature of this hobby. The list never really shrinks — it just gets more interesting.

Ready to start your groundhopping journey? Download TheFans free on iOS and Android.