FC Halifax Town: Next stop Halifax for Dutch football fans

A group of football fans from Holland who will be attending FC Halifax Town's game with Forest Green Rovers. Here they are pictured at Oakwell in Barnsley last October

The party of 32 supporters, all from Rotterdam, make annual trips to England to watch matches in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

Their next visit will see them attend FC Halifax Town’s home game with Forest Green Rovers on February 19.

One of the fans making the trip will be Jeroen Koot, 42, from Rotterdam.

He said: “For most of the people it will be the first time they’ll be in Halifax, some others have been there a few times before.

“For some of them even the first time they’ll visit a football match abroad.

“We’re a party of 32 people and we make annual trips to England to visit football matches in the UK.

“Most of the time the matches we visit are in Yorkshire. We travel 12 hours on the boat towards Hull to watch 90 minutes of football and after the match we’ll have to go back to Hull for the ferry back home.”

The group have been to several grounds in the region, including Leeds, Bradford, York, Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday, Doncaster and Barnsley, and this will be their 10th visit to the country.

Jeroen added: “My first match in England was in 1995. But we’ve been making these kinds of trips since 2010.

“The vast majority of us are Feyenoord fans and we started to make these trips as a replacement for European away-days with our own team.

“I’ve seen more than 800 in total during my life - in England somewhere

around 40 matches and I’ve been to 33 grounds in England.

“We started with 10 of us in the group and now we have 32 coming over.

“It is good fun. I can recommend everyone from here to do it in reverse, get a boat to Rotterdam and watch a match at Feyenoord.”