Standing on the sidelines of a muddy playing field in Lancashire, a football fan carefully adds the final touches to a massive, well-worn scrapbook. The notes he scribbles mark the end of a journey spanning five decades.
At just 17 years old, Tony Incenzo visited the last of the 92 Football League grounds in 1981, making him the youngest person ever to complete that iconic pilgrimage—a feat many die-hard fans across the country spend a lifetime trying to achieve.
But rather than stopping there and simply following his beloved Queens Park Rangers, Tony set himself a fresh challenge: to visit every single ground in England’s non-league system, encompassing hundreds of clubs in every corner of the nation.
On Easter Monday, 54 years after his first non-league match, Tony’s epic quest reached its conclusion as Fulwood Amateurs kicked off at home against Thornton Cleveleys in the North West Counties First Division North.
His treasured scrapbook is filled with stamps and signatures from every home club he has visited, a colossal record of the ultimate football groundhopping adventure. Fulwood’s entry now sits on its own fresh page, marking the realization of a teenage dream.
“It’s just overwhelming emotion,” Tony says after both sets of players formed a guard of honour for him. “To finally do it, on a glorious sunny day, with a lovely green pitch, is a great relief.”
The non-league system covers steps five to ten of English football, with all divisions except the top tier—the National League—being regional. Since Tony began his journey, the system has undergone several restructures, but it now includes 996 clubs spread across 48 divisions.
Some of those clubs are fully professional, drawing home crowds of thousands, but many are amateur sides playing in municipal parks with no stands and crowds consisting mainly of family members and occasional dog walkers. Including clubs that have since left the system or dissolved entirely, Tony has watched football at over 2,000 non-league grounds.
“I get as much enjoyment from going to humble non-league clubs as I do big showpiece games,” says Tony, now 62. “You can turn up at a non-league game ten minutes before kick-off, park outside, pay your admission, stroll around the ground, stand wherever you want, buy food and drink—and probably have change from about £15.”
“I’ve been to places that I would never ever visit if it wasn’t for football—lovely little villages in Devon, remote seaside spots up in the North East and so on. It’s just great fun to travel all around the country and meet the people—people are what make a football trip special.”
Tony’s passion extends beyond non-league football. He has also watched matches at all 92 stadiums in the top five tiers of English football, at all 42 in Scotland’s four professional divisions, and at many others across Europe and around the world. Remarkably, he has managed all this without missing a single minute of any QPR home game—including friendlies and testimonials—since 1973, carefully planning his non-league adventures around his dedication to his first love.
His current total stadium count stands at 2,689, spread across 5,804 matches. In time spent watching football—not including stoppage time or extra time—that works out to 522,360 minutes, or 8,706 hours, or 363 days.
“It’s my way of life—my whole life,” Tony says. “I simply have to be at a match every Saturday.”
Often, one match is not enough. If the fixture schedule cooperates and he plans his travel smartly, Tony might fit in five games over a weekend. This requires meticulous planning, grouping together grounds in similar areas of the country with different kick-off times.
