It’s a few months since I’ve been in Sweden, but a quick visit coincided with the Second Round of the Swedish Cup. The game that I’d selected was in Pitea. It’s around a fifty-minute drive south from Lulea and, perhaps coincidently, the weather was so much better when we arrived than when setting off.
I was accompanied by a couple of fellas from work, and we got there early enough to nab one of the few remaining spots in the official car park adjoining the IF Arena.
Pitea are in the fourth tier and were taking on AIK of the top division. Apparently, the visitors are regarded as the third best team in Sweden. I’d sorted out tickets online for one hundred SEK a pop. The seats had already sold out by that time, and our allocated spot was a standing area in a newish stand along the side, behind three rows of seats. I got chatting to a couple of young lads stood next to me who filled me in on a lot of the match details as well as pointing out their history teacher, who was part of the Pitea coaching staff.
The game was well attended with two and a half thousand spectators filling the stands along the sides of the pitch and one very old-looking one behind the goal. AIK, from Stockholm, had around three hundred fans in a section further along from us and had brought flags, flares and a drum.
We had difficulties with food and drink as none of us had the Swish payment App popular at Swedish grounds. We had about nine quid in Swedish currency between us and that got us three bottles of coke and two chocolate bars from the only cabin that took cash. It seems so odd that you cannot tap a debit or credit card that would be fine just about anywhere else in the world.
At half-time we moved to the opposite corner of the pitch and stood on a slightly raised embankment. I got a couple of bites from whatever flying insects are doing the rounds in Sweden at this time of year, so regretted not having applied some repellent.
Pitea gave a good account of themselves on the pitch, and it wasn’t always apparent which of the teams played in the top tier. Whilst I’m sure all of the stats would show that AIK were dominant, it didn’t always look that way.
The visitors had to wait until almost half time before going ahead and it wasn’t until midway through the second half that they took the game beyond Pitea. A third goal in added time flattered AIK in what was a good night on and off the pitch for the hosts.
The first league game of the season is something to look forward to, although this year the impact has been diluted a bit by the scheduling of a League Cup game for the week before. Soph and I discussed our prospects as we walked the dog around Cowpen Bewley the evening before. It’s somewhere I’ve never been to despite living within a few miles of it for over sixty years. We both considered that this might be our year for promotion.
Harry and Tom had the same opinion as we walked to the ground. I thought Sol Brynn was good enough for us, but they both rated the new guy as a definite upgrade. A new centre half from Spurs who might cost us twenty million if all the add-ons materialize had been confirmed that morning. That gives us three high quality central defenders plus Luke Ayling whose attributes would be ideal for bringing on to see a game out.
The fan zone was busy. We had a chat with Amelia and Ryan who were equally confident. There were plenty of Lincoln fans enjoying their first visit to the second tier in sixty-five years. I’d like them to stay up, particularly if it is at the expense of, say, Southampton or West Ham.
The first half didn’t go to plan, although I should have expected that ex-Boro player Adam Reach would score against us.
In the second half we were more physical. The introduction of Riley McGree made a difference, as it usually does. Two goals from Will Lankshear, the second in added time, broke the hearts of the Lincoln fan as we took the points.
It could easily have gone the other way, but the teams that get promoted usually do so because they somehow find a way to win and that’s what we did.
It was Eclipse Day. Not the horse race, but the solar kind. Or the lunar kind, I’m no expert. I’d been listening on the radio about the need to observe it through pin holes in cardboard or facing away and viewing it over your shoulder on your phone.
It all seemed a bit alarmist really. What about those people who watch the sun go down each evening? It doesn’t seem to affect them. I watched the last eclipse in Scotland, maybe thirty years ago and I think we all just squinted at bit.
With the sky due to turn dark I thought it would be interesting to see how it impacted upon a football game. Clearly it would need to be at a ground without floodlights and so I selected an eleventh-tier Wearside League fixture at Ferryhill Athletic’s Dean Bank Recreation Ground.
It was four pounds admission, including a raffle ticket and I paid another couple of pounds for a coffee and a bag of crisps. There wasn’t any hot food, so there’s no pie review this week.
Approximately fifty fans and one whippet lined the perimeter fence and awaited the dimming of the sunlight. As ten past seven approached the light began to fade. It was probably a little darker than I’ve seen at matches of this level, but nowhere near the lack of visibility that we played in as kids ignoring our Mam’s shouts to come inside.
When the peak darkness occurred, we saw very little of the eclipse as it took place behind a cloud. We saw very little football either as the ref conveniently called for a drinks break that lasted until the gloom started lifting.
I’m not really sure what I’d expected. Birds falling silent? Dogs wimpering? Maybe locals ritually slaughtering those from out of town?
All we got was a continuation of play in light appropriate for an August evening and in an evenly contested game a second half goal was enough to clinch the points for Barney.
The first round of the League Cup usually takes place as a midweek fixture early in the season. A change of plan this year has seen it scheduled for the weekend before the opening Championship game. I like that idea, it’s a competitive fixture rather than a friendly, but one that most clubs won’t be that fussed if they lose.
I was joined by my daughter Soph, as well as Tom and Harry. She had come along to the box the previous weekend for the Espanyol friendly and enjoyed it, so made a quick return. Before that, it might be fifteen years or more since Soph was last in the Riverside and Espanyol was probably the first time I’ve been to a game with both of my kids since Eindhoven.
She was soon back in the swing of things, probably helped by us opting to sit down in the North Stand rather than having to stand up all game at the other end.
The change of schedule seemed to work as despite it being a Friday night game and live on ITV1, more than eighteen thousand fans turned up. There’s a bit of a buzz around the club at the moment with the new signings. For this game our two new Americans started as did Will Lankshear.
All of them look as if they will be regular starters and that’s what I want from a new signing. Forget about signing players for the bench, that can be filled by those displaced from the first eleven by the new fellas.
We played well and clinched the victory with a well taken goal from Will Lankshear. It’s early days, but he really does look like someone who might solve our problem with converting the many chances that we create. If he does, then promotion is a distinct possibility.
I haven’t really been to Great Ayton too often. I remember going with the cubs back in the mid-seventies. I think that we were supposed to be checking out Captain Cook’s house, but the bigger attraction to a group of young Boro fans was Boro manager Jackie Charlton’s house.
We were told not to bother him, but one kid knocked on his door and got an autograph. The rest of us ended up with a photocopy of it, if I remember rightly.
This time Jen and I just wandered around without any autograph ambitions. We called into Suggits for an ice cream where a 99 cone was just under two quid. That seemed remarkably cheap to me. I’d paid a tenner for two ice creams a few days earlier at the van in the Riverside Car Park after the Espanyol game.
Oddest sighting of the day was a dead crayfish on the pavement, presumably having wandered up from the riverbank. I’ve only ever seen them in Mississippi and had no idea that they had made their way to Yorkshire. I look forward to attending boils in the future.
Whilst the ice creams and crustaceans were an interesting diversion, we were in town for the football. Great Ayton were entertaining Lealholm in the eleventh-tier North Riding League Premier Division. It’s one of the three feeders to the Northern League.
I doubt Leven Park would satisfy the criteria for the next level. There are no stands or turnstiles and most people watched from behind a rope or from within their cars. We’d brought a couple of chairs, so sat behind the goal next to the groundsman’s hut. It’s all very picturesque, with the Cleveland hills providing the backdrop.
There were around fifty people watching and most of them appeared to know each other. One late arrival was greeted with a cheery “Now then, pig shagger”. Presumably, they weren’t just meeting for the first time.
Great Ayton went in at the break two goals to the good. In the absence of any floodlights and with the nights drawing in, half-time was an expedited eight minutes duration.
Leaholm briefly threatened to come back into contention a few minutes after the restart when a free kick was curled into the top corner to halve the deficit. Great Ayton promptly hit back with a third goal though and that’s the way it ended up.
Our return from our month-long Orkney trip led quite nicely into the start of the Boro season and a home friendly against Spanish side Espanyol. In the same weekend we also managed to get a bit more of the Yorkshire Wolds Way in, covering twelve miles in an out and back route, heading north from Nunburnholme.
Our walking was delayed as we detoured into the church at Nunburnholme to have a look at the Commonwealth War Graves. The service had just finished, and we were invited inside for coffee, biscuits and a tour of the interesting stuff.
There was a stained-glass window that was more than seven hundred years old. They were hoping to have it restored, which would involve taking it apart for cleaning before sandwiching it between two pieces of toughened glass. They also have a sarcophagus dating back nine hundred years that was recently dug up accidently whilst repairing the drains.
Highlights of the walk itself were a couple of red kites and watching a glider released and then soaring upwards.
For the Espanyol game we decided to get a box. Split between twelve it was fifty quid a head, which is less than a tenner more than you’d pay walk-up for a regular West Stand Upper seat. Our thinking was largely driven by Tom wanting to bring his son, Nolan, for his first game and trying to make it as easy as possible with a kid who has only just had his first birthday.
We were served chicken and rice for a pre-match meal. Alistair’s little brother Jem was also attending his first Boro game and he highly rated the chicken nuggets that came as a kid’s option.
Our seats were in the back two rows of the West Lower and whilst they were great for the kids to wander down to pitch side to track down Roary the mascot, I think I prefer a more elevated view from an upper tier these days.
On the field it was good to see former Boro player Kike get a decent reception on his first return.
I thought that we looked ok in the three-three draw, with a couple of new signings on show. It appears that we have bought extremely well in this window, and it bodes well for another promotion push.
Spending a week on the Orkney mainland gave us the opportunity to see a few more of the sights. We had a wander around Stromness, a town where I’d played Bobby George at darts thirty-one years previously. He won. The Cuween burial chamber involved a walk up a hill that gave some good views across the island, but the chamber itself didn’t take up too much of our time as it had a gate across the entrance.
The Ring of Brodgar was worth a visit, particularly as it had a path around the stone circle that then detoured away alongside the nearby loch. It is a popular attraction and any photos that we took without people in them were carefully framed and timed to avoid the coachloads of visitors from the cruise ships.
There were some football games kicking off at seven o’clock on the Thursday evening. That gave us sufficient time after I finished work for the day to head out to Yesnaby Castle. It is a two-legged sea stack that you get to by walking along the top of the cliffs.
It was windy enough for a waterfall to blow upwards. We thought that we had spotted some nesting puffins, but closer examination of the photos revealed that they had skinny pointed beaks, so they were probably some sort of gull.
The fixture I’d selected was at the Dounby Community Pitch. It is next to the school and just along from a community centre. Dounby seems like a proper village, more so than the likes of Harray or Twatt (yes, really) with the Smithfield Hotel providing a focal point at the crossroads.
The game was in the Reserve League, with Dounby in second place and Thorfinn sixth of the seven teams in the League. The teams play each other twice and we are closing in on the end of the twelve-game season. Dounby needed to win if they were to keep the pressure on Hotspurs at the top of the table.
The blustery conditions made life difficult for the teams and neither side really got to grips with the wind in the first half. I watched most of it from my car, pitchside, as did the other six or seven people in attendance. The ref limited the half-time break to five minutes, which I think is sufficient. FIFA take note.
Dounby had chances to clinch the points in the second half, hitting the same post three times in the space of eight minutes. Sometimes, though, it isn’t your day and Thorfinn scored twice in the last quarter of an hour for an unlikely victory.
As Dounby only had one remaining fixture, the result meant that Hotspurs would be crowned champions.
The plan for the Orkney holiday was to start with a couple of weeks spent on small islands. We began with Shapinsay, then Hoy, before moving back to the mainland and staying in Stenness for the final week.
Shapinsay is great. It’s a small island with around three hundred residents. We were staying in a former farmhouse with no neighbours other than sheep for a few hundred yards. We walked to the Bay of Sandgarth and up to a standing stone, Mor Stein.
The best walk on Shapinsay was along the coast and past Balfour Castle. There were seabirds swooping down, possibly in protection of their nests. The highland cattle took an interest in us as we passed them but didn’t approach. The only downside was a couple of locked gates that stopped us doing the circular route that we had planned, but it was no real hardship to retrace our steps along the shoreline.
For our second week we moved to Hoy. It’s much bigger than Shapinsay, but with a similar small population. I was working again by then so most of the good stuff took place after four in the afternoon. In a place where it doesn’t get dark until well after ten, that allowed sufficient time for most things that I’d want to do.
We called in at the Naval Cemetery where I noticed that some of the sailors were older than me when their ships went down. At the Lifeboat Museum in Lyness I chatted to a bloke who was friends with someone I’d worked with thirty years ago. At the Dwarfie Stane, the dog pissed up against another Neolithic tomb.
One evening we walked the six-mile round trip between Rackwick Bay and the Old Man of Hoy. It must be up there with some of the most scenic walks that I’ve done. Small birds hopped along the path in and out, with gulls nesting in the cliffs around the stack.
We also spent a day on Flotta, walking around the edge of the island. I worked there for seven years and spent the last six staying at the terminal. It was strange being back as so much of it didn’t match the memories that I had. The football pitch that we played on in the summer evenings was much smaller than I’d remembered. It was nowhere near the full-size that I’d thought it was, although it’s possible that it has since been reduced. Similarly, the post office where we bought cans and drank them at the counter with the postmaster had vanished altogether. Surely it really had existed?
The walk was good though and the dog made a decent effort at chasing a rabbit. Whilst he didn’t succeed in catching it, he got closer than we’d anticipated. Maybe all the walking is boosting his fitness.
Whilst the islands were all great to visit, if I wanted to watch some football the Orkney mainland was the only place where that would happen. I checked the fixtures for our final week and saw that I could get to games on the Tuesday and Thursday evenings.
The first one of those evenings had a fixture in Harray. I knew the village quite well, having picked up a colleague who lived there on the way to work for a year. I’d also been fishing on Harray loch, although I didn’t catch anything. It was a ten-minute drive from where we were staying at Stenness and I parked pitch side, next to the Community Centre.
From what I can see, the Orkney football clubs are divided into an A League and a B League, with six and seven clubs in each respectively. There’s also an eight-team league for reserve teams.
Outside of this structure, there are parish competitions and East v West games, where players represent the area that they are from, rather than a club. This fixture was in the E Frazier Electrical Limited B League. Hosts Harray went into the game in sixth place, with visitors Accies up in third.
I’d initially thought that the other cars might have contained people watching, but most were empty and likely belonged to the players. That meant that the game kicked off with just four spectators, including me. Three others turned up midway through the first half, perhaps they had gotten stuck behind a tractor.
Whilst we had a ref, the linos were recruited from the subs. One fella gave the impression that he was new to the game and when he ran the line, didn’t realise that he should stop at half-way. For a while we had the bizarre sight of two linesmen monitoring the same half of the pitch. He also delayed proceedings whenever he abandoned his flag to cross the adjacent road and search for the match ball in the long grass.
The swirling wind wasn’t conducive to a decent game, but both teams tried to keep the ball down. Accies scored twice in the first half, but the second half was more open with both sides missing chances and the goalies making some decent saves. In the end, the two goals were sufficient for Accies to take the points.
I hadn’t been expecting much added time, but, perhaps due to the frequent stoppages for ball retrieval and a short break to fill a hole discovered in the penalty area, we got nine minutes extra at the end. Fortunately, it stays light late up here in the summer.
I worked in Orkney thirty years or so ago and had often fancied going back for a holiday. My current job has an ideal combination of a month-long summer holiday and then generally working from wherever I want the rest of the time. This meant that we could head north for three and a half weeks and spend some time there.
We spread the driving to the north of Scotland over four days and initially broke the journey on the way up by stopping at Grinsdale, near Carlisle. This allowed us to do a little bit more of the Hadrian’s Wall National Trail. It wasn’t an ideal section, with some uncertainty over the temporary rerouting of parts that had been closed. The next day we did a few more miles of the West Highland Way near Drymen. That one wore the Beagle out for a while.
Despite having four days to reach the ferry terminal, I almost messed it up by arriving in Scrabster where, upon attempting to check in, we were told that our ferry went from Gills Bay instead. A hurried half-hour drive later we boarded the boat to St Margaret’s Hope.
We passed the island of Flotta, where I could see the flare stack and the oil storage tanks. I first went up there in 1995 and worked at the terminal for the next seven years. It’s a lot quieter these days, with a much-reduced workforce.
The next day we did a few touristy things, starting at the Italian Chapel. This was built by prisoners of war who were working on the causeways that link what were then separate islands towards the south of the Orkney mainland.
Dogs weren’t allowed, so Jen and I took turns to have a mooch around.
We had time to visit some of the older attractions too. Jen called into the neolithic chambered tomb at Maeshowe and then we took the dog to the Standing Stones at Stenness. Whilst that sounds like a pub, it’s simply what it says on the tin, some stones, stood up. Like Maeshowe they have been doing it for five thousand years. Not that their age prevented the dog from cocking his leg against one of them. There was also a Bronze age house nearby and he pissed on that too.
After buying The Orcadian newspaper the day before, I had discovered a football game going on that I’d been unaware of. Futbology has very limited coverage of Orkney, so it’s like the olden days. Not quite neolithic, but it feels that way when you have to search the inner back pages of the local printed press for fixture news.
The game was in the Parish Cup, which is a big deal in Orkney. It’s a competition where you play for the parish in which you were born or live. I’m not sure which, maybe both. It’s been going on for almost a hundred years and judging from the coverage in the paper, is much more highly regarded than the local league or playing for the Orkney representative team. Games are played over two legs with the final usually taking place on County Show Day.
The fixture we were going to was a semi-final first leg between Holm and St Ola. It was played at Holm’s Rockworks ground, next to one of the causeways and with the Italian Chapel visible in the distance. Rockworks has a pitch that looks as if it was dug out of sloped ground. That meant that if you parked your car on one of the two higher sides you had a view from an elevated position.
We got there just in time to park up behind one of the goals. There were around a hundred cars parked up, so probably three hundred people or so in attendance. There was no charge for admission, but I dropped some cash in a bucket collection. Nothing to eat or drink either, although a lot of people had brought picnics.
Holm are the current Parish Cup holders and took an early lead in what was a scrappy first half. St Ola had a chance to equalize from the spot, but the Holm goalie got down well to his left to keep it out. I thought a St Ola player following up was bundled to the ground, but the ref was well placed and saw it differently.
With twenty minutes remaining in the second half, St Ola equalised with a well-placed shot across the keeper into the corner of the net. Holm regained the lead with ten minutes left on the clock with a header at the back post to take a single goal lead into the second leg. We set off to Kirkwall harbour to catch a ferry to Shapinsay, where we would be staying for the next week.
The second game of the day and the third and final fixture of the Wales trip was at Bangor. It’s only a short drive from Caernarfon and the staggered kick-off times meant that seeing both games was easily doable. We’d booked a room at Bangor University and so all I had to do after dropping Jen off was walk the twenty-odd minutes to Bangor City’s Nantporth Stadium.
It was an overcast night and the floodlights were already on when I arrived at the ground. Bangor City are in the second tier of the Welsh pyramid and are a relatively new side, formed as a breakaway from the original Bangor City. The Nantporth Stadium isn’t much older, dating back to 2012.
I’d been going to buy a pie, but when I saw the burgers being cooked on the grill I changed my mind. Six quid got me a meal deal with chips and a can.
I sat in the main stand for the first half. There were plenty of groundhoppers around me with their little backpacks. In fact, more had clocked in at this game on the futbology app than had done at that evening’s Germany world cup fixture. The crowd was announced as 826, which I thought a decent turn out for a drizzly evening with World Cup footie on the telly.
The pitch looked good, probably due to UEFA taking care of it. Croatia also looked good in the early stages and went ahead after twenty minutes with a penalty. Ukraine equalized following a corner within five minutes to the joy of two guys in front of me with their yellow and blue flag and the dedicated group of around twenty of their countrymen behind the goal at the other end.
I moved to the family stand on the other side of the pitch for the second half. This looked to be new and so was probably a UEFA addition. Ukraine took the lead a couple of minutes after the restart. The result could have gone either way at that point with the Ukrainian keeper making some good saves, but a cracking shot close to the hour made it three-one and clinched the points for the Ukrainians.
Trail of the Lion King 