Despite me having completed my aim of seeing each team in the four tiers of Korean football play at home, there was still one team that I hadn’t watched, the Police. They joined the new second tier K-League Challenge at the start of the season, yet for whatever reason ignored all of the empty stadiums around Korea and elected to play their home fixtures at their opponents grounds instead.

That’s a ground hopping nightmare. Do you ignore them? Should you turn up at every one of their opponents stadiums? I dunno, but with only two days left in Korea and the chance to see them take on Chungju Hummel before I left I decided to settle for that.

I took a ninety minute bus ride from Central City. It could have all gone wrong before I started as I was initially sold a ticket for Cheongju instead. After three years I’d thought I was beyond that sort of mishap, although maybe that would have been the perfect way to finish things off, turning up at an empty stadium in a town miles away from where I’d intended.

On arrival at Chungju I bought my ticket for the return journey, paying a little more attention this time and stocked up on fake Hello Kitty Zippo lighters. They’ll never come in wrong as Christening presents.

Catching a cab to the stadium wasn’t without its difficulties either. My usual fallback after trying speaking slower and then louder is to mime the sport involved. It tends to work reasonably well with baseball but the taxi driver seemed less than impressed with my re-enactment of the sort of pass that Bobby Murdoch would have placed just beyond the last defender for Alan Foggon to run on to. Fortunately one of his colleagues must have been more familiar with Charlton’s Champions and he was able to point out that the foreign bloke kicking an invisible cat actually wanted to go to the football ground.

They have a ticket office these days.

I paid five thousand won for a ticket which entitled me to sit anywhere I liked apart from the only section with actual seats. Wonderful. Jen and I had been here for a game the previous season where not only was it was free to get in but you could sit in the Director’s Box if you fancied. That’s progress for you. Over the course of the afternoon I was able to accumulate dust on my trousers from each of the various vantage points that I chose. The locals had all brought bits of cardboard to sit on. You’d think I’d know stuff like that by now.

The main stand with the small central VIP seated section.

I’d estimate that there were about six hundred people watching, including three different groups of Chungju ‘ultras’. One lot of thirty were sat in the main stand, near to the VIP section with actual seats, another twenty or so were stood behind a goal with a further splinter group of five setting up camp twenty yards away.

As the first half progressed the two main groups merged, although the five fans twenty yards away kept their distance preferring to sing their own songs, often in competition with the other lot.

I couldn’t see any Police fans, although there was a family behind the other goal dressed up in Suwon kit. I suspect that they were probably there to encourage one of their players doing his national service with the Police. Or maybe they had been sold bus tickets to the wrong town too and were just making the best of it.

“Next time we are taking the train.”

Chungju were in green shirts and red shorts whilst Chungju were in white shirts and black shorts. If you didn’t look too closely it could almost have been Cameroon against Germany.

The Police have been the stand-out K2 team this season and they looked the stronger side in the opening stages. They took the lead after eighteen minutes when Kim Young Hoo cut his shot back across the goal into the far corner. A few minutes later Jung Jo Gook almost made it two. He turned his defender four or five times before his efforts wore him out and he fired his shot tamely at the keeper.

Chungju had a couple of chances, one from forty yards that the Police keeper almost made an arse of by being too far off his line, and another shot from distance that went just wide of the post.

Ouch.

The tempo picked up in the second half and seven minutes in In Jun Yeon equalised for Chungju with a shot that left the Police goalie Yoo Hyun wrong-footed. I wasn’t too impressed with the keeper and thought him fortunate to be spending his national service playing football rather than issuing parking tickets or admonishing drunken old blokes.

Chungju on the attack.

It didn’t take the Police long to regain the lead though. A free-kick played in from the left ended up in the back of the net. I’m not sure if Kim Young Hoo got a touch or not. If he did, he looked offside to me. He celebrated as if it was his goal though.

That’s on its way in.

A minute later it was level again as Chungju swept down to the other end and Han Hong Gyu crossed for In Jun Yeon to side foot home his second goal of the game. Both players leapt the advertising hoardings to celebrate with their fans.

Two each.

There was more to come and fifteen minutes from time Yang Dong Hyun got the winner for the Police. I wasn’t paying attention and looked up just as the ball hit the back of the net, no doubt after some wondrous twenty pass build-up. However it happened, it was enough to seal the three-two victory for the rozzers.

There was an added bonus after the game when I noticed that the Police team bus was equipped with flashing red and blue lights. Ideal for those high-speed chases or getting to the gimbap shop that bit quicker.

Nee Naa, Nee Naa.

And so that was it. Two days later Jen and I left Korea.

In my time there I’d been to one hundred and eighteen football matches at seventy different stadiums.  I’d seen games in twenty-one different baseball parks, all ten KBL basketball arenas, both of the Asian league ice hockey rinks and I’d watched the horse racing at all three Korean racecourses. We’d hiked in all of the National Parks and most of the Provincial Parks. It’s been a fantastic three years in a country that’s ideal for hiking and watching sport.

Hopefully we’ll come back at some point in the future when there will be any number of new teams and stadiums to tick off. Until then the blog will just sit out there in cyber-space, chanced upon by people googling penis fish, karate bears and the Olsen twins.

Everyone loves karate bears.

Thanks for reading and I hope this record of what we got up to has been either entertaining or informative, depending upon what you were looking for. It looks as if we are off to South Africa next where we’ll continue going to the match and going for a walk. I’m expecting less kimchi, but more lions.

Once I’d started with the Korean ground hopping, I suppose the logical conclusion was to complete their version of the ’92 Club’ and see every team play at their home ground. There are currently fifty teams in the four divisions in Korea, but as the Police play all their games away it’s actually the ’49 Club’.

It’s a frustrating process trying to complete the set in Korea as each season usually involves the introduction of three or four new teams, a relocation or two to a different city and any number of stadium moves. I’d ended the previous year just four grounds short of getting around them all, but when the 2013 season kicked off the total outstanding had increased to ten.

Two months of zipping around the country meant that with just three days remaining in Korea the only club left was Yangju and so that’s where I went on Saturday evening.

A few years ago Yangju was probably all just fields of cabbages. These days it’s fields of cabbages mixed in with a few high rise apartments to cater for those who prefer to travel in and out of Seoul for their vegetables rather than growing their own.

No idea why Abramovich didn’t pitch up here rather than Chelsea.

If you take the subway, carry on one stop beyond Yangju Station and get off at Deokge instead. It’s then a twenty minute walk from Exit Two to the Godeok Stadium. There’s a convenience store just before you get there for stocking up on beer.

It’s up the hill, to the right.

The stadium wasn’t too bad for the fourth tier, mainly because it didn’t have a running track. There were five hundred or so seats running the length of one side of the artificial pitch, with another hundred and fifty in a raised stand on the opposite side. I reckon the attendance will probably have peaked at around two hundred and fifty.

The elevated stand.

The home side were in yellow and black, with visitors Hwaseong in white and blue. Hwaseong have had the better start to the season and looked more confident in possession in the opening minutes but neither side created much in the way of chances early on.

Hwaseong on the attack.

The deadlock was broken twenty minutes in by Hwaseong’s Jeon Bo Hoon. He received the ball close to the penalty spot and despite a Yangju defender clinging to his arm like a kid refusing to leave his Mam on the first day at school, he was able to place his shot wide of the keeper to open the scoring.

Action at the other end.

Once the first goal had gone in, Hwaseong stepped it up a bit and five minutes later Lee Soo Min struck a left footed shot across the keeper and in off the far post to double the lead.

Ten minutes later Mr. Lee got his second and Hwaseong’s third goal with an effort that was almost identical to his first. Yangju had a couple of opportunities from distance but didn’t really threaten and they went in at half-time three down.

A kid with a drum arrived during the  break and sat down near me. I took that as my cue to go and see what the view was like from the other side of the ground.

The main stand from behind the goal.

Despite the score Yangju were still competitive in the second half and if one of their early chances had gone in, then who knows what might have happened. It’s possible. Do you remember Steaua and Basel? Massimo off the bench?

It wasn’t to be though and with twenty minutes to go Lee Soo Min completed his hat-trick with a right-footed version of his earlier goals.

Where I’d sat in the first half.

The rout was completed five minutes from time when with the home defence left stranded upfield Kim Jin Il received the ball unmarked in the box and lofted it over the Yangju keeper for the fifth.

The Yangju subs.

And so that was that. The ’49 Club’ completed with a fourth division game in the middle of nowhere. That’s exactly as it should be.

There’s a new KBO team this season, NC Dinos. So far I hadn’t seen them play a home game but as I’m now finished with work in Korea, Jen and I took a Tuesday afternoon KTX down to Masan to put that right. We changed at Dongdaegu although that might not actually have been necessary as Jen spotted later that there are direct trains between Seoul and Masan. Perhaps we just got off one direct service and then caught the next direct train twenty minutes later.

Whatever, we got to Masan around four thirty, checked into the Prima Hotel next to the station and walked the half hour or so route to the baseball stadium.

That’s the edge of the football ground on the left.

The Dinos were playing Hanwha Eagles in an eighth v ninth place clash. As there are only nine teams in the league the fixtures between these two teams will go a long way in determining Korea’s crappiest baseball team. At the moment it’s Hanwha who hold that somewhat dubious privilege.

We paid eight thousand won for outfield tickets and took our seats amongst the other four thousand or so spectators. NC Dinos have been in a bit of trouble with the KBO as apparently one of the conditions stipulated prior to them joining the league was that they would build a new bigger stadium. The thing is though, their current place is pretty smart and if you are only filling a quarter of your seats why do you need something even larger?

It looked good enough to me.

Jen had her bag searched on the way in for ‘alcohol or sharp objects’. Oddly they didn’t bother with mine despite me having a couple of litres of wine brazenly on show in the outer pockets. When we got inside the security fellas were strictly enforcing the rule that the only alcohol you could drink was the beer sold at the concession stands. Now whilst this would seem perfectly normal in the UK, it seems an outrageous restriction in Korea where everybody routinely turns up at sporting events with as much booze as they like.

The security men would carefully watch from a distance and on spotting anything suspicious would swoop like hawks and confiscate whatever they found.

Soju Police.

The starting pitchers were a fella called Shirek for the Dinos and someone called Eveland for Hanwha. I’d look them up and tell you which MLB team they made two pre-season appearances for in 2006 but I can’t be arsed. I’m not in Korea for much longer and so I doubt I’ll ever see or hear about either of them again.

Dinos v Eagles.

A big hit in th second innings was enough to get a lad home from second base for Hanwha. The same thing happened on the next ball to put them two runs up. NC pulled one back in their second innings with more of the same, one bounce into the fence and the bloke on second getting home.

At that stage I’d already worked my way through a fair bit of the two litres of wine and so I stopped paying quite as much attention to the score.  It started to get quite cold as well, although it seems like its been that way at the baseball all season. Gates are down a third on this time last year and I can‘t help thinking that it’s because it has been so bloody cold. Baseball’s a game for short sleeved shirts not coats and jumpers.

A blanket seems so wrong for baseball too.

By the time we got to the sixth one of the teams was 4-3 up. Two and a half hours of drinking in the cold was enough for us though and we headed off for some warmth and some fresh supplies. I didn’t get around to checking the next day to see who won despite the importance of the game in the battle for eighth place. The information is out there though if you care.

One more scoreboard photo.

And that I think is it for me and Korean baseball for the time being. I’d never seen a game before I came to Korea but quickly came to appreciate the merits of sitting in the outfield in the late evening sunshine with a drink in my hand. I’ve even got a fair grasp of the rules although I doubt I’ll ever appreciate the nuances of the game in that way that someone brought up playing it would.

I don’t mind though, I’ve had a great time unwinding at Jamsil on an evening after work and travelling the country to watch games in more than twenty different stadiums. If I do come back to Korea then I’ll defintely try to get around a few more.

With all the groundhopping I’ve been doing I hadn’t yet managed to fit in a Jeonbuk game this season and so with our departure from Korea getting nearer I thought I’d nip down to Jeonju and check up on ex-Boro striker Lee Dong Gook.

Jen and I caught the KTX to Iksan. You can go to Jeonju on the train as well, but the World Cup Stadium is out of town and as you need a taxi from either station I think Iksan is just that little bit more convenient. Mind you, the taxi driver did make a point of checking that it was Jeonju World Cup Stadium that we wanted. I’m no idea as to how many fares he would ever have had to other World Cup stadia but I doubt it would be many.

Crunching tackle coming up.

It was busy outside of the ground with the crowd larger than normal as a consequence of it being Childrens Day. That’s the designated day that kids don’t spend in a hagwon memorising quadric equations but instead accompany their parents to a park or a football game.

It looked as if Jeonbuk had put some special deals on to boost the crowd as the lad in front of us in the queue had a coupon that got him in for five thousand won. Jen and I paid fifteen thousand each to sit in the West stand, mainly so that we didn’t have the sun in our eyes. It’s free-seating and so we made our way up to the less well populated upper tier.

The view from our seats.

The official attendance was announced as 23,000ish. I’d have estimated it at about two-thirds of that, but it’s still a decent turn-out. Jeonbuk haven’t had the best of starts to the season and on the back of failing to retain the title last season the crowds have been dropping off.

Seoul brought around two hundred and fifty with them which considering the terrible start to the season that they’ve had is equally impressive. As ever they made plenty of noise.

Defensive header from Lee Dong Gook.

Both sides struggled to impose themselves in the first half, Seoul probably having the best of the chances including a two on one which ended up with Jeonbuk goalie Choi Old Man forcing Dejan Damjanovic wide enough for the shot to finish in the side netting.

Lee Dong Gook didn’t see too much of the ball in the opening period, he won a couple of fifty-fifty challenges and linked up well with Eninho but didn’t have any scoring chances.

A few minutes into the second half Jeonbuk’s Lee Seoung Ki turned former Celtic player Cha Du Ri inside out before beating the keeper at the near post to put the hosts a goal up. Maddeningly he then picked up his second yellow of the game for removing his shirt. The Jeonbuk players argued that he hadn’t taken it fully off but the ref was having none of it.

Jeonbuk players making their point.

The sending off didn’t seem to change the game too much. Jeonbuk, as you might expect, occasionally sat that bit deeper at times but still pressed forward at every opportunity. Seoul hit the post on the hour and at the other end Eninho curled a shot just wide.

Jeonbuk came close to adding a second with a quarter of an hour to go when Lee Dong Gook bore down on goal, held off a determined defensive challenge and squared for Lee Gyu Ro who should have done better than the tame header he directed straight at the Seoul goalie.

Second half goalmouth stuff.

In added time Seoul almost snatched an equaliser but were denied by a great reflex save from Choi. Not bad for a forty one year old. Deep into injury time Lee Dong Gook was subbed. He got a warm round of applause from the home fans and a handshake from the referee. Seconds after he took his place on the bench the final whistle blew.

The one nil win moved Jeonbuk up into fourth place, leaving Seoul just above the relegation spots in tenth position.

Off he goes.

I think that‘s probably the last time I’ll see Lee Dong Gook play. I’ve watched Jeonbuk around thirty times over my three years in Korea and he’s played in almost all of those games, providing me with a tenuous link to Teesside. Mind you, I only actually saw him play half a dozen times or so for the Boro and managed to miss both occasions where he scored for us.

You never know though, maybe he and I will both get to go to the World Cup in Brazil next year. That would be nice.

Hwaseong are one of this season’s new teams in the fourth tier Challengers League. They don’t really play in Hwaseong though, more in the middle of nowhere to the south-east of the city. I’d been hiking on the morning of the game down past Taean and managed to catch a bus to nearby Suwon.

Jen had written down the full address of the Hwaseong stadium in Korean for me and the taxi driver was able to successfully enter the details in his satnav. It showed a journey of around 17km and thirty five minutes. Forty minutes later we were driving at walking pace along farm tracks. I was sure that we were lost and kept showing him a photo of the brand new stadium at Hwaseong. The driver remained equally convinced that the ground would be just around the next corner. He pointed out a hand-written sign stuck to a gatepost that apparently confirmed his belief.

He was right. We turned one more corner and the stadium appeared from nowhere.

That’s part of the main stadium in the background.

The delay in getting there meant that I’d missed the opening twenty minutes. I’d also missed four goals as the score was two apiece. Bugger.

The practice pitch main stand.

The game was on the practice pitch rather than the main stadium, but it was very impressive despite the almost obligatory running track. There was only one stand, but that’s all that was needed. I didn’t notice any fans from visitors Gyeongju, but there were around five hundred home supporters, most of them decked out in what I imagine were complimentary orange scarves.

Hanwha Eagles will want their inflatable sticks back..

Hwaseong were in orange whilst Gyeongju wore their white shirt with the red and green stripes. I’d barely arrived when a Gyeongju forward chased a long ball and put his side three-two ahead.

It was a ridiculously open game with play rapidly switching from one penalty area to the other. Both sides spurned plenty of chances to score until with a couple of minutes to go to half time a Hwaseong striker got clear and slide the ball under the body of the advancing keeper to bring his side level.

Gyeongju on the attack.

A few minutes later the ref blew for half time and to my surprise the players all slumped to the floor. It soon became clear that I hadn’t arrived midway through the first half of a 3pm kickoff game, but midway through the second half of a match that had started at 2pm. Well that would explain the open nature of the game and me having missed four goals. Double bugger as they say. I filed out and went to have a look around the main stadium. Very nice it is, hopefully I’ll get to see a match there sometime.

The real Hwaseong stadium.

As for getting back to Seoul, I took a cab to Osan station. It took half an hour and cost 15,000 won. I then stood for an eighty minute subway ride back to Yeoksam. If you are going to Hwaseong for the football I’d recommend catching a cab from Osan rather than Suwon. Apart from it being cheaper it’s a much more direct route on busy roads and you won’t piss the farmers off anything like as much.

The point each was enough to keep Hwaseong in second place in Group B, whilst Gyeongju climbed to third in the table.

After spending the early part of the afternoon watching baseball at Seosan Jen and I took a taxi back into town and then travelled fifteen minutes by bus to Taean. From there we caught another bus, this time to Kkoti beach. That journey took us through any number of small villages and by the time we reached the final stop forty five minutes later we were the only passengers remaining.

The reason for all the bus journeys was that we wanted to be at one end of the Haebyeongil Trail. It’s a five section walking route with one end being at Kkoti beach and the other being, well, I don’t know where. I’m not sure the entire route has been revealed yet. Sections four and five definitely exist though and our plan was to walk the twelve kilometre section five from Kkoti Beach to Baeksajahang.

Haebyeongil Map – Sections 4 & 5.

The baseball and the buses meant that we didn’t arrive at Kkoti beach until half past five in the afternoon. With a maximum of two hours of daylight ahead of us it meant that we wouldn’t finish the section in one go and that we’d have to stay overnight along the route, completing it the next morning. That’s a bit embarrassing really, having to spread 12km over two days, but whatever, it’s how it had to be.

A big rock on Kkoti beach.

The halt for the evening happened sooner than we’d intended. We’d probably have put up with the strong wind and heavy mist for a while longer but once it started raining there wasn’t much point in prolonging things. We’d gained a bit of height in the first kilometre and were able to look down on Bangpo beach. We could see what appeared to be hotels and restaurants ahead and after dropping down to sea level again we just picked the hotel that looked like it had the best view.

Bangpo beach.

The sea view was as impressive as we’d hoped and the exploding shellfish cooked on a grill were even better. Next morning we woke to a sunny day, meaning that our decision to stop as early as we did had turned out to be the right one.

Bangpo beach the next morning.

On leaving Bangpo the trail goes up into the woods and then down to the beach again. It pretty much repeats this all the way to Baeksajahang.

Through the woods.

The walk is generally well sign-posted. We lost the route a couple of times but were soon back on it. When you’ve got the sea as a guide it would be difficult to get too far lost.

And along the beach.

Three hours after setting off we arrived in Baeksajahang. It’s full of market stalls and restaurants so you wouldn’t go hungry. There were a few places to stay but we didn’t see anything that you could guarantee would have a bed. A new bridge is being built that when finished should nicely connect section five with section four and avoid the need for a detour around an inlet.

Baeksajahang

We kept walking through Baeksajahang and when almost at the end of town spotted a bus stop where we were able to catch a ride back up to Taean. Once in Taean you can pretty much get to most places in Korea. Jen went back to Seoul, whilst I took one to Suwon as I was heading off to a football game.

Here’s the timetable.

I thought the section of the Haebyeongil Trail that we hiked was a decent walk. Some of it is on wooden boards but the majority is on beachside paths or woodland trails. If you started a little earlier in the day than we did I imagine that it wouldn’t be too difficult to do sections four and five together in about seven hours of walking. If we get to spend more time in Korea then I’d like to do the rest of it.

I came to Korea in March 2010 to work on an engineering and construction project. The plant is built now and Thursday 2nd May was my last day at work. It’s possible that my next job might be in Korea too, but in the way that things work in my industry I won’t know for a while.

In the meantime Jen and I decided to hang on in Korea for a week or two and take the opportunity to fill our days with reserve team baseball in the middle of nowhere. It’s what you’d all do given the chance. Right?

Hanwha Eagles play their Futures League games at the Seosan Baseball Training Centre. Or at least some of them. I watched their first team play a pre-season friendly at Cheongju a couple of years ago and I’m fairly sure that they use that stadium now and again too.

We took a de-luxe bus from Seoul Central City terminal. For those of a statistical mind, it left at 10.20am, covered the 127km in an hour and fifty minutes and cost 10,800 won. From Seosan bus terminal we took a cab to the baseball centre. The taxi driver knew straightaway where we wanted to go once Hanwha Eagles were mentioned. I think a mime of swinging a baseball bat might just have been enough.

There are hills all around.

The players were on the field stretching when we arrived. A few of them shouted “Hello” and “How are you?”. We just needed “You are handsome gentleman!” to complete the set.

There were thirty people or so watching, I didn’t see any WAGs which is unusual at these games, there were a couple of families but it was mainly single blokes. Whenever a ball went into the stand, whoever caught it would keep it. That’s a long-standing tradition at the proper KBO games, but at this level it’s generally tossed back.

Seosan Baseball Training Centre.

Both teams rattled through their innings quickly, but by the end of the fifth it was still 0-0 with starting pitchers Lee Seok Jae and Song Chang Hyun having given up just the two hits apiece at that stage.

SK broke the deadlock in the seventh when with the bases loaded a hit to mid-field allowed two of them to get home.

The scoreboard.

We left them to it shortly after that as we had to catch a bus to go and do some hiking. On the way out we were given a ball of our own by one of the players who wasn‘t taking part. I’m a bit old for that sort of thing so passed it on to a small kid on the subway the next day.

Another two runs were scored after we left with SK eventually winning 3-1.

Wednesday was a public holiday so I knocked off work early on Tuesday afternoon and Jen and I caught the train to Singyeongju. It’s the newish KTX station on the edge of Gyeongju and it means that you can be there in not much more than two hours from Seoul. You’ve then got to take a cab into town but it still makes it a lot quicker than getting the train to the old Gyeongju station or catching a bus.

Our cab dropped us at the bus terminal where they are plenty of motels. We went for the Dollar Motel, although at 50,000 won its name was somewhat misleading. For our money we got a smart room, fast wi-fi and a packet of condoms carefully presented in a stand on the bedside table.

The Dollar Motel, Gyeongju.

The following afternoon we walked for half an hour up to the stadium. We’d been there as recently as six weeks ago to watch an FA Cup first round game featuring fourth tier Gyeongju Citizen and so it would have been a little disappointing if we’d managed to get lost.

Photobombed by an old lady and her dog.

Gyeongju Hydro and Nuclear Power moved to Gyeongju at the start of the season. Previously they had been Daejeon Hydro and Nuclear Power. I’ve a feeling that with a team already playing in Gyeongju then the new fellas are unlikely to attract many locals. Not to worry though, there’s always the option of busing in one hundred and fifty employees for a team-building day out.

Whilst if I had worked there I wouldn’t be too keen on giving up my public holiday, I can think of worse team-building activities than an afternoon at the football. As you would expect, they all showed commendable enthusiasm, waving flags, banging inflatable sticks together, blowing vuvuzelas and proudly wearing matching tee shirts.

“We all love our jobs!!”

I’d estimate there were another seventy or so people sat in the main stand apart from those seeking to improve their career prospects and that left the rest of the bowl to Jen and I. We’d watched the first of the new seats being installed six weeks ago and now that it was finished it looked very impressive. Completely pointless, but impressive nevertheless.

Never to be sat on.

Hydro Nuclear Power were in red shirts and shorts whilst Yongin wore all blue with a red trim. The teams seemed fairly evenly matched over the opening half hour, although with them occupying third and fourth places in the table I suppose that’s not too surprising.

Ten minutes before half time the ref awarded the home side what I thought to be a fairly dodgy penalty. We then had a four minute hold up whilst the ref and fourth official argued with the Yongin bench. Eventually one of the coaches was sent to the stand.

Off you go.

The Yongin keeper then added to the delay by walking twenty yards away from the goal and adjusting every bit of kit he had on. He just stopped short of removing his socks and trimming his toenails.

Eventually Ju Song hwan sent the keeper the wrong way to open the scoring.

One – Nil.

At half time most of the people on the team-building exercise disappeared and we didn’t see them again until the game was nearly over. I presume that they wouldn’t want to have to walk home or miss the roll call on the bus.

Gyeongju had the better chances early on in the second half, Yu Joon Soo going close with a shot that was deflected out for a corner.

A few minutes later the coach who had been sent off in the first half was spotted back on the bench and so received his marching orders for the second time. Having shown that he couldn’t be trusted to stay in the stands he was sent to the changies instead. Unfortunately the door was locked and so a compromise was reached whereby he could loiter at one of the stadium exits and smoke a fag.

And stay away this time.

Yongin upped their efforts as time ran out whilst the Gyeongju players did their best to take the sting out of the game by rolling around on the floor for a minute or two every time one of the opposition got within a yard of them.

The visitors almost equalised in the final minute when Jeong Hui Jin found himself clear on goal but he tamely rolled his shot straight at the keeper.

Yongin on the attack.

At the final whistle the HNP employees celebrated as if they’d just  been told that they could spend the next public holiday with their families. The result kept Gyeongju in third place and dropped Yongin down to fifth.

I’ve been to this stadium at least twice in the past to see Goyang KB. They don’t exist anymore though and so it meant a repeat trip to see the new K2 League tenants, Goyang Hi. It’s pretty straightforward finding the place, you just take Line 3 as far as you can in the direction of Daewha and the stadium is about a hundred yards further down the road.

Nice new banner.

It’s nine thousand won to get in. I’m not really sure about how successful clubs in the second tier will be at charging for admission. On the one hand I’m sure they are trying to portray the event as something of value whilst on the other they are competing with the K-League proper as well as baseball and basketball which charge similar prices but take place in front of much bigger crowds.

99% empty.

Goyang had attracted around four hundred fans which whilst poor for the league they are in still struck me as a reasonable turnout. They were spread around the forty thousand capacity stadium, most in the main stand with a handful behind the goal. There were a couple of extremely vocal foreigners just along from us, their shouts of “Come On Goyang” making a welcome change from the more traditional “Goyang Fighting!”

Goyang fans behind the goal.

The Army team had brought thirty or so fans with them. Some of them may have been the parents or grandparents of the players, others perhaps Korean War veterans showing their support for the military, some more than likely thinking that they’d signed up for a bus tour to the Azalea fields. Whatever, they seemed to be enjoying themselves with their drums and monk bells.

Oldest fans ever.

And the game? Nothing much happened in the first half whilst in the second Goyang had more of the better chances with their right-winger Yu Man Gi posing the main threat.

It was Sangmu that opened the scoring though with twenty minutes left. A cross from the left found the keeper on the wrong side of the ball and as he dived back towards his goal he could only palm the ball into the net.

Yu Man Gi levelled for the home side ten minutes later, bursting into the box and burying his shot into the far corner.

It’s like Maradona and the Belgians all over again.

Goyang almost sneaked it at the death when Yu Man Gi cut inside again but just failed to keep the ball in play before sending his cross over.

The two points dropped by Sangmu saw them fall from second to third whilst the point gained by Goyang took them off the bottom and up to the dizzy heights of seventh place.

I’d looked into going to watch the Police baseball team last year, but it seemed to be a complicated place to get to so I went to see Goyang Wonders instead. Eventually though, if you are going to try to see all of the teams in the second tier Futures League, then you’ve got to make a bit more of an effort.

For me, making more of an effort generally involves asking Jen to find out how to get there and so that’s what I did.

She worked out that if we got the subway to Dongsan Station and came out of Exit 8 then we could catch the 1082 bus to within a couple of hundred yards of the Police place at Byukje. It worked fine, made easier by the Naeyu Dong Bus Terminal that we got off at being the final stop on the route.

This is the bus you want.

With it being a Police training place the entrance was guarded. We got in simply by telling the bloke in the hut that we were there for the baseball. We weren’t asked for ID and given passes as I had been at the Army base when I saw a game there. Perhaps the Police don’t think that baddies would use the baseball as a cover story.

“Halt, who goes there?”

The Police were taking on Changwon NC Dinos. We got talking to a couple of old fellas who were wearing Dinos gear. One of them introduced the other as “Mr. Park, the former manager of the LG Twins”.

Whilst a backroom job with a new Futures League team seems a big step down, I bet he sleeps a lot easier these days. We chatted for a while and learned that the game we’d been planning to go to the following week wouldn’t be taking place after all. That’s one fewer wasted trip.

The main stand.

There were around forty fans sat in the bus shelter sized main stand. There wasn’t really anywhere else that you could watch the game from as the outfield fence was too high to see over.

The view from behind the plate.

NC opened the scoring with two runs in the second innings. Or inning as I’m told it should be. The Dinos players looked a lot younger than the Police opposition. One or two looked as if they should still be in school.

The crowd.

The Police fought back with seven runs in the third inning(s). One came from a batter being ‘non-deliberately’ walked, if you know what I mean, two came from a misfield and the rest came from the pitcher being tonked all around the field.

For the scorebard aficionado.

NC pulled one back in the fifth to make it 7-3 but that’s as much as we saw as we had a football game to get to on the other side of Goyang. I had a look later and the Police ended up winning 10-6. Better luck next time, Mr. Park.