Welcome to Nomad-Online. If you are a first time visitor to the site and/or not too familiar with Non League football in Sussex, you may be wondering about the origin of the strange title.

Nomad n. 'a wanderer'
The title of the site is derived from the pseudonym I used as the title for a regular column that first appeared in the award-winning Langney Sports and later, Eastbourne Borough FC matchday programmes in August 1996 (that's him on the left). The original version of the site included links to over 100 of these columns and for a time I added more to form what was, in retrospect, one of the very first 'blogs'. Unfortunately, time commitments meant that I had to stop penning all but the very occasional column and therefore I have decided to omit them from this new 2007 edition of the site. In the very remote chance that someone is interested in them, they are safely tucked away in the depths of an external hard drive at home!

Mindful of the fact that people might not be interested in my columns alone (despite my ego telling me otherwise), I decided to set aside a large part of the site for the first ever online guide to every Non League club in Sussex... well, at least down as far as Division Three of the Sussex County League. This proved a great success and has been regularly updated ever since. It also spawned the successful book 'The Non League Football Grounds of Sussex' in 2003. A few copies of the book are still available from publisher Mike Floate.

 

The website
This now the Mark 3 Model of the site, having been originally launched in 2000, and then updated in 2003. However, this is the first to have a completely new-look.  It's slimmer but hopefully contains more of what visitors actually want to see, rather than what I think they want to see (OK, except perhaps for the Windmill section!). This version has considerably more photographs of the grounds in the Directory and now seems as good a time as any to thank a few people who have helped enormously in the development of that particular section of the site.

First of all I (and anyone who loves football grounds) owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Bob Lilliman, arguably the first person to really devote himself to photographng grounds from the 1970s onwards. Thanks to Bob we now have a priceless visual record of football grounds across the UK, many that are no more. Bob has generously allowed me access to his complete Sussex archive and it is fascinating to see how the county's grounds have changed over the years. Many of these photographs have never been published anywhere else and I am also grateful to Mike Floate of 'Football Grounds Frenzy', and Vince Taylor of 'Groundtastic' magazine who tirelessly scanned Bob's original slides. In additon I must thank Colin Peel, another respected figure in the genre of football grounds photography who has also granted me access to photographs of Sussex grounds in his enormous collection.

Finally I should thank two individuals whose commitment to their respective websites is quite astonishing, and without which I (and many others I suspect) would be quite lost: Richard Rundle (Football Club History Database), and Tony Kempster's  eponymous site.

So, regardless of whether you are a supporter, player or official of a Sussex football club; a casual or ardent 'hopper' looking for a few more clubs to tick off your list; or merely just dropping in for a look around, I hope you enjoy the site.

DAVID BAUCKHAM
July 2007