I’m not particularly good at geography. Old fashioned geography that is. You know, the type where you have to know which country is which, what their capital cities are called, or who owned them when they had natural resources worth pilfering.
Mind you, I’m even worse at the new-fangled geography where it’s all about coastal erosion, population changes and not a thought is given to the names of rivers or what colour a country should be on a map.
If you were wondering just how bad someones geography knowledge could be, I can reveal that for years, almost all of my years to be a little more precise, I’d thought that Brunei was in the Middle East. No idea where in the Middle East, maybe the middle or the east of it, but probably next door to somewhere like Qatar or Oman. Possibly another one of those emirates like Dubai. It sounds a bit like Dubai, doesn’t it? I knew that they’ve got a Sultan and that they do pretty well out of the oil business, so the Middle East is where I’d have stuck the pin in the wall map.
Brunei is nowhere near the Middle East though. It’s actually just a short flight from Kuala Lumpur and consists of less than three square miles over on the other Malaysian island, the one that’s got a bit of Borneo in it. Who’d have thought it? People who know their geography, I suppose.
As you may have expected, the reason for the trip was a football game. We saw some other stuff whilst we were there though. There’s a stilted village which was proudly described as the biggest in the world. I’ve no idea how many other places decided that it was a good idea to build houses on sticks in a river but Jen reckons that they are fairly commonplace in Louisiana.
It was a bit hot for walking around but we had a wander up a hill behind our hotel anyway in the hope of spotting a monkey or two. No such luck. No camels either despite me having always assumed that Brunei would be overrun with them.
Jen spotted a snake doing some snaking in the undergrowth, but the best I managed to see was a bird that had decided sitting on the ground was a much preferable activity to flying around.
Saturday evening was match time and local side DPMM had a fixture in the Singapore League. A little odd that they compete in the competition of another country, but it’s quite an odd league. As well as a team from Brunei, there’s a reserve squad from a Japanese club and the Singapore U23 national team get to take part as well. It seems to work, so fair enough.
We took a taxi to the Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Stadium where it was eight Brunei dollars to get in and another three for a programme.
We had centralish seats in the main covered stand, just above what looked like a VIP section complete with red carpet. It was reported in the paper next morning that the chair that was wide enough for two people to share was occupied by the Sultan himself, whilst the fella next to him who was getting more and more agitated as the match unfolded might very well have been the Crown Prince. Apparently a couple of lesser princes made up the rest of the front row.
The ground holds 28,000 when full. There might have been a thousand or so in there for this game with most people being in the main covered stand with us and a fair few opposite making a non-stop noise.
The Brunei team had a forty-six year old goalie. That was never likely to go well. Mind you, how old was that goalie from the Euros last summer, the one with the grey tracky bottoms that looked as if he’d retrieved them from a bag destined for the charity shop?
The elderly keeper had plenty to do. Just as well really as you’ve got to stay active and playing football certainly beats the standard old folks staple of wandering around pound shops and pursing their lips at the price of stuff they already have plenty of in their cupboards at home.
The geriatric goalie didn’t save anything he shouldn’t have but likewise didn’t let any in that he should have stopped. I imagine he’d have settled for that.
I don’t often recognise any of the players in these games, but on this occasion Billy Mehmet seemed familiar. It turned out that we’d watched him play up front for Tampines Rovers in Singapore a year earlier. He’d had quite an interesting career, taking in St Mirren and a club in Turkey. I doubt you’d get to live in a house on sticks in either of those places though.
There was a familiar face on the home bench too. Blackburn bogeyman Steve Kean has been quietly rebuilding his career over here since escaping the somewhat misplaced vitriol of the Blackburn fans in 2012. It’s a long way to go for a fresh start but perhaps he thought that Brunei was somewhere near Dubai too.
The visitors from Singapore always seemed to have that bit more about them. They went a goal up midway through the first half and whilst the teams went in level at the break Warriors were soon ahead in the second half.
DPMM equalised through Billy Mehmet, but two more away goals put the game out of reach of the home side. A late Brunei consolation was countered by an even later strike by Warriors that maintained their two goal advantage and rounded off the scoring in a 5-3 away win.
Heavy rain in the closing minutes saw the Royal party dashing for cover and, as I hadn’t brought a coat, left me cursing my preconception that the Brunei climate would have been drier. Something, perhaps, like that of the Middle East.
Trail of the Lion King 