Laos is one of those countries where it’s quite difficult to plan ahead if you are trying to see a football game. The information is all out there somewhere but it’s not the easiest to find until a week or so before any matches take place.
I had a three-day weekend back in March and on that occasion we made a speculative trip only to find that the top-level fixtures had been cancelled in preparation for a forthcoming international game. That time we stayed the Saturday night in the capital, Vientiane and our hotel was just around the corner from the old national stadium.
We had a wander around the old ground and, rather frustratingly, were told that a match would take place the following day, a couple of hours after our onward flight to Luang Prabang was due to depart. The fella I was talking to spoke no English, so I wasn’t able to work out what level of game I was missing, but it suggested that their league structure might be a little deeper than the Premier League that I was aware of.
We arrived in Luang Prabang the next day and I had faint hopes that there might also be some sort of game on at the local ground. It normally hosts a Premier League team, but if there was another level below that then who knows?
I was briefly encouraged as we approached the ground after a two miles walk from the town centre. There was a woman with a stall outside the main entrance selling shirts and flags. It’s hard to imagine that she would bother doing that on a non-match day.
Hard to imagine it may have been, but that’s exactly what she was doing. After she confirmed that no game was scheduled we made a lap of what appeared to be a stadium as old as the one we’d seen the day before. There was a gate open further around which gave us the opportunity to have a look from inside the ground rather than just peeking in.
Oh well. Still, it wasn’t a completely wasted trip as Luang Prabang is an interesting place to visit. There are the usual temples and markets, a rickety bridge across the Mekong and any number of elephant ‘sanctuaries’. I’m not wholly convinced by the use of elephants in tourism though and had little desire to join a queue of backpackers to sit on the back of one.
However, I found a place that seemed to better balance the need for cash with the best interests of the elephants. You weren’t allowed to ride them, but instead a group of no more than four people could walk alongside the elephants for a couple of hours.
You took a boat across a river to a spot where a couple of females and a two-year old male calf were fed bananas every morning at the same time. You then walked a mile or so along a track to a spot where they were fed again. The elephants weren’t guaranteed to turn up, or indeed to move to the next spot, but elephants aren’t daft and are unlikely to turn down a regular feed.
We fed them bananas at the first place as planned and then walked with them to the second one. Sometimes we plodged though rivers or mud but with some kind of wet-suit material socks on our feet it was easy enough.
A one stage the young ‘un got a bit arsey and charged at me. The guides flapped a bit but I stood my ground and steered him away. I don’t think he had any really bad intentions, but I imagine he could be a bit of a handful as he gets older.
Anyway, after a third and final stop for bananas another mile or so along, the elephants had no further need for us and left the trail by heading up a bank into the undergrowth. It was a worthwhile way to spend a couple of hours and I’d be happy to do it again at some point.
This latest trip was just to Vientiane and planned around a fixture that I’d noticed on a list posted on Lao Toyota FC Facebook feed. I’m not really a big user of Facebook as, this blog apart, I’m quite a secretive person who doesn’t like people knowing what I’m up to. Still, I can appreciate that it has its uses at times.
Once we were into the final few days before the flight a bit more information appeared and as luck would have it I had a choice of three games. I picked the first one of a double-header taking place at the New National Stadium, mainly on the basis that the three o’clock kick-off left more time for carousing later in the day.
The new national stadium, didn’t look that new to me, although I suppose it’s relative. I still see the Riverside as new, but I’ve been going there longer than the twenty-one years that I went to Ayresome Park. In another similarity it’s out of town, in this case by more than half an hour in a taxi.
With plenty of time before kick-off we had a mooch around the outside for a bit, nipping in through an open entrance to photograph the main stand before heading back around to the main entrance to get inside.
Nobody was selling or asking for tickets and so we followed the VVIP signs and emerged in the directors box where we took a couple of seats. If I were a real director I’d be asking them to remove the loud speakers that were blasting out the fucking racket that I hear all over Asia about somebody sending out misleading dating signals by leaving their clothes on someone else’s bedroom floor.
Our covered seats were in the west stand, giving us shade throughout the match. I spotted one person in the uncovered end to our left, but nobody in the covered, but less shaded, stand opposite or the uncovered end to our right.
At kick-off there probably weren’t more than thirty people in the stadium, including our somewhat bemused taxi-driver who had agreed to wait for us and who found it hard to understand why a local game would have any spectators at all. The rest of the crowd at that stage were predominantly wives and girlfriends of the players and they were quick to fold the team sheets that they were given into makeshift fans.
The Police team, in red, had more of the early chances. The Army, who were in white, had a striker with a weird little top knot that I like to think was some sort of variation on a fusilier’s hackle. There was no real niggle in the game which surprised me as you never know when the two teams could find themselves on opposite sides in a coup.
By the time the teams went in goalless at the break the crowd had swollen to around a hundred. It probably doubled during the second half as the officials and fans of Lao Toyota and Young Elephant arrived in advance of their 5.30pm kick-off.
It was Top Knot who broke the deadlock when he knocked the opener in off the far post. The goal caused his wag to scream in delight for a good minute or so afterwards.
There was a lot of of Army timewasting in the closing stages. I’d have hated to have had to try and get any of them to go ‘over the top’in the trenches and I suspect that the victory parade would have been long over before any of these fellas were ready to make a move. The delaying tactics paid off though and the Army comfortably saw out the remaining minutes for a one-nil victory.
The match took the total number of countries in which I’ve seen a football game to forty-five. My next game will be country number forty-six and the World Cup clash in Saint Petersburg between Brazil and Costa Rica. Whilst there will be a bigger crowd and better players, I’m sure that there will be a similar level of time-wasting in the final few minutes.
Trail of the Lion King 