Trail of the Lion King

Well, I’m back. I was going to just leave the blog floating around in cyberspace to be chanced upon by people googling penis fish, but I had stuff to write about it and it was easier to do it here than to set a new blog up. So, as I’m not in Korea these days this place is no longer about Korean football, it’s about any sort of football. Or sport. So that’s fairly wide ranging then. We’ll get back into the swing of things with some games from Iceland in the summer.

I’ve often fancied a trip to Iceland, but it’s one of those places that I’ve either been too busy to get to or on the occasions when I’ve had the time there’s been somewhere better to go instead.

A combination of plenty of time off between jobs and a couple of Withered Hand gigs at the Music Mess Festival in Reykjavik meant that finally the time was right and Jen and I landed at Keflavik early on a drizzly Thursday morning.

It took us a while to clear the airport, mainly because of the various insurances I had to consider at the care hire desk. Windscreen chip cover was considered vital by the Hertz staff but they reluctantly conceded that if I fancied a gamble I could probably take a chance on volcanic ash damage. I struggled a bit with the money too, getting thoroughly pissed off with the cash machine at its continued refusal to give me what I later realised had been the equivalent of three grand Sterling.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. Time for the football. There are plenty of teams in the Reykjavik area which isn‘t surprising as most Icelanders live there. I’d picked out a fourth tier game at Augnablik as being the nearest to our apartment but when I turned up half an hour before the reported kick-off time there was nothing more to see than a couple of kids kid booting a ball around on what looked like a school pitch.

Not to worry though, there was a third tier match nearby and with the wonder of that blue dot thing on my phone I was able to turn up at the Hertz Vollerinn Stadium with time to spare. It was a thousand Kroner to get in which by this time I’d learned was just over a fiver in proper money. Despite the stadium sponsor, the bloke in the ticket office didn‘t try to sell me any insurances, nor did he require a hefty deposit in case I scratched my seat.

Here come the teams

IR were in white and blue, whilst the visitors Aegir wore yellow and black. My initial impressions were that the home side passed the ball a little better, but the away side had more fat blokes. Past experience of watching football at its lower levels suggests that the fellas carrying more weight than they should do are usually decent footballers. They have to be really, unless they are related to the manager or owner. Or are indeed the manager or the owner. Or occasionally both.

On this occasion better passing trumped triple XL shorts and the hosts took the lead midway through the first half when Jon Strom beat the offside trap, outpaced the pursuing defenders and sidefooted the ball past the advancing keeper.

The players celebrate with the mascots.

The visitors came close to equalising just before the break when a stumble from IR defender Atli Johannsson let in Milan Djurovic who, with the goal at his mercy, put his shot into the side netting. It was hard to say which of the two players looked the most embarrassed.

At half time I got myself a coffee and a hot dog and wandered around. There were about a hundred and fifty fans there, most of whom seemed to know each other, which isn‘t surprising really.

Discussing the long light nights , I imagine.

At the restart I noticed how many of the shouts from the players were in English. “Time“, “Man On“, “Start Again“, the usual stuff. The players seemed very respectful towards the ref, with very little querying of decisions and none of the mouthfuls of abuse that are part of the game in England. I prefer it like that. If I were a ref I’d book anyone who did any more than raise an eyebrow at anything I did.

From the ‘stand’ behind the goal.

With ten minutes played in the second half the home side doubled their lead when Jon Strom nipped in front of the keeper to poke the loose ball home for his second goal of the evening.

The second goal.

Milan Djurovic made up for his earlier miss when he pulled one back with a penalty twenty minutes from the end but IR saw the game out for a 2-1 victory.

This entry was posted on December 25, 2013 at 10:44 am and is filed under Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.