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.
Jen and I were down in London for the weekend, primarily for a Saturday night gig. We were staying in Camden, which made it easy enough to walk down to Soho early morning. We’d signed up for the ‘In the City’ tour, which is run by Paul Weller’s sister, old mate and biographer. That’s three people, rather than one.
It was very good, calling at a few recording studios, including Solid Bond. Some defunct and some still going gig venues, as well as what was the highlight for me, the Apple building where The Beatles did their rooftop concert. It’s smaller than it seems in the footage, so no wonder the noise carried easily down to street level.
After lunch I took the tube out to Leyton, for the League One fixture between Leyton Orient and Rotherham United. Leyton seems ok, with lots of Victorian/Edwardian terraced houses that I imagine probably go for a couple of million quid.
There was a statue of former Orient player Laurie Cunningham, who had previously got a mention on that morning’s music venue tour. Apparently, he was a regular at some daytime disco on Wardour Street in the seventies.
I’d bought my match ticket online in advance for the East Stand, which looks to be the oldest of the four seating options. Even though I’d had my lunch, I couldn’t resist a pre-match snack of that East End staple, pie, mash and liquor. I’m more familiar than most with pie and mash, but liquor was new to me. I don’t see its appeal spreading northwards though, as it is a watery, tasteless green gravy.
I’d looked up the players at each club that morning and was pleased to see that former Boro players AJ Matthews and Aaron Connolly currently play for Orient, whilst Duncan Watmore and Jordan Hugill are on Rotherham’s books.
The fixture meant little to Rotherham, who had already been relegated earlier in the week, but Orient were still in a four-way scrap to avoid the drop. The people around me were nervous and saw the fact that Rotherham had nothing to play for as a bad sign.
They were correct to be pessimistic as an away goal in each half clinched the points that were no longer of any benefit to the visitors and made an Orient relegation more likely.
Of the ex-Boro players, the was no sign of Matthews or Watmore, whilst Hugill didn’t get off the bench. Aaron Connolly came on as a sub in the second half for Orient to the kind of reception reserved for players who have been missing for a while and whose reputation has grown during their absence. He tried to make things happen but was hampered by being just as fucking useless as he was for us. Maybe if Orient do go down, he might find his level.
Jen and I had booked a fortnight in Cyprus back in December, well before the latest Middle East drama. My Mam was convinced that we should cancel, particularly after the drone attack on one of the military bases, but that’s what Mams always say.
We were staying up in the hills on the edge of a small village, so I doubt there was much prospect of any missiles heading our way. It was quiet enough, certainly more so than in Paphos, which had so many Brits strolling around that it might as well have been Scarborough.
As you may have suspected, a reason for selecting Cyprus was that it is one of the countries where I’d yet to see a football match. There weren’t too many options with our first week coinciding with the break for the international fixtures.
One week in, we headed eastwards towards Erimi for a game in the third division. We stopped off at the archeological site at Kourion for a wander around the ruins. It was worth a look, with some well-preserved mosaics. I’d seen a snake the previous day, when wandering around some ruins in Paphos, and so spent most of my time hoping to see another.
We also had time to visit Kolossi Castle before the match, but there were no snakes there either. After a quick lunch, we drove further into Emiri to the Koinotiko Stadium. It had started to rain whilst we were at the castle and so Jen decided that she would stay in the car.
I paid my six euros admission and in a segregated ground had a choice of left or right. I went left and found myself in with the away fans. There wasn’t any shelter and so I just took a place at the top of the terracing where I was able to see most of the action over the top of the pitch side fencing.
The game was a relegation battle. Kouris Emiris, in fifteenth place in a sixteen-team division, looked doomed with only six points all season, but Omonia, in fourteen place, still might avoid the drop into the fourth tier.
The rain got heavier as the first half progressed. A lady very kindly insisted that I took her umbrella on the basis that she could share the one that her son was using. I was very grateful.
It was a typically hard-fought game, with lots of tackles flying in. Both benches screamed for everything, and I thought the ref did well to keep control.
The visitors took the lead after twenty minutes. The shot beat the keeper but slowed before it reached the line. The defender’s desperate lunge was just too late to keep it out and all those around me forgot the rain in the celebrations.
The weather improved in the second half as Kouris Emiris came back into the game. They equalized on the hour and after the visitors had a man sent off, nicked a winner with ten minutes to go. I felt sorry for the lady who had lent me her umbrella as even a point would have moved her team out of the bottom three, but that’s how it goes.
The game took the total number of countries where I’ve watched a football match to sixty-eight.
I’d had an eye on this fixture for a couple of years as I’ve not yet seen a game at the Kassam Stadium. I always think of it as a new ground, but Oxford have played there since 2001. In fact, they are planning to move again before long, so time was running out for me to tick it off.
I wasn’t sure whether I’d have enough priority points for a ticket in the Boro section, so took the precaution back in August of buying a cheap ticket from Oxford for an early round of the League Cup. I later got a free ticket from Oxford for an open training day that they held. Whilst I didn’t attend on either occasion, that buying history was sufficient from me to purchase a home ticket for the Boro game without fear of having it cancelled.
Oxford is a decent drive from Teesside so Jen and I made a weekend of it. My plan had been to walk some more of the Thames Path, but it rained all weekend. That meant indoor activities only and we visited a couple of museums, the Natural History Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum.
I was disappointed to see that the shrunken heads had been removed from public view. Maybe I need to hurry up and finish the doctorate so I can pass myself off as a legitimate researcher and have a peek in the off-limits areas. Oddly, they still had old photos on display of twelve-year-old African girls without their shirts on. I’d have expected more of a backlash about those than the trophy heads. On the plus side there were some good Captain Cook artifacts including clubs similar to those that may well have been involved in his demise.
I’d selected our hotel as it was close enough to the stadium for me to walk to the game. It’s no fun in the rain though and so I took a taxi instead. The Kassam Stadium only has three sides and on arrival I headed around to the right for the lower section of the South Stand.
I’d arrived in sufficient time to catch the end of the Coventry game on the concourse telly and got myself a steak and ale pie and a coffee. By chance I was wearing a yellowish jumper, which helped me blend in with the home fans, but as an old bloke who says little anyway, I wasn’t worried about being outed as a Boro fan.
I took my seat and watched some of the pre-match entertainment on the screen at the car park end. There wasn’t any footage of either of the four-one defeats for Oxford that secured promotion for the Boro in 1967 and 1998, but they did show one of the goals from the 1986 Milk Cup Final against QPR. I attended that game at Wembley with Blainey who had somehow obtained tickets and joined me in London for it.
The Boro fans were opposite me in the end section of the North Stand. It looked as if those in the first few rows or right at the end of the stand were getting wet. I was quite happy with my seat far enough under cover to stay dry and also the luxury of being able to sit down at a Boro game for a change.
Strelec and Nypan weren’t available after international duty and as we were well stocked with central midfielders, caretaker boss Adi Viveash pushed Hayden Hackney forward into the number ten role. This always seems a bit of a waste to me as he gets forward anyway, and I’d like to see another attacking player within the line-up.
We had the majority of the possession, as we usually do, but didn’t really have many shots on target. Oxford went in at half-time a goal up, but Morgan Whittaker bailed us out in the second half with a goal that I managed to photograph.
It was still raining when the game finished and in the absence of any taxis or buses I walked back to the hotel. That’s twenty-three of the twenty-four Championship grounds visited, with just Wrexham still to do.
The second gig of the Duran Duran tour was in Copenhagen and Jen and I flew in from Finland a couple of days in advance. I’d not been to Copenhagen for forty years but recalled that the only places we could afford to drink on that occasion were the free brewery tours that included three bottles of their product. Whilst I was grateful for the past generosity, or marketing tactics, of the breweries, forty years of saving up had allowed me to look forward to trying something other than Carlsberg or Tuborg on this occasion.
I may have been a little harsh with Duran Duran as they’ve actually got three songs that are listenable, which is three more than a lot of bands.
Jen wanted to buy some wool from a shop in nearby Roskilde that is well-known in world knitting circles. Roskilde is a short train ride outside of Copenhagen and also boasts a record shop and a church full of dead kings. We picked up an early seventies album from The Trammps which was selected primarily for its double denim with afros band photo on the sleeve.
Sadly, the dead kings weren’t on display, but the tombs that they were in were ok for a short visit, particularly the ones with stone skull carvings.
We were staying in the south of Copenhagen and so could walk to the first game that I’d identified. It was a fifth-tier game described as a relegation group, which is presumably that thing that they have in Scotland, where the league splits into two at a certain point in the season and you play only those teams in your half of the table.
It took us an hour to get there and on arrival we handed over fifty Krones each, which is around six quid. For that we also got a programme included.
The Sundby Idraetspark ground is a century old, but from what I read, the main stand only dates back half that time. There was a small open stand on a grassy bank behind the goal to our right and an athletics track lapped the pitch, although with only three lanes on all but the home straight.
We got hot dogs before kick-off, with the buns an optional extra. They were also serving beer from the same counter, but it felt a little early in the day to start a session.
1908 went into the game bottom of their group, with Greve a little higher and possibly safe from relegation. 1908 dressed up as Fulham with Greve rocking an Everton vibe. The match started five minutes before scheduled and an early goal for the visitors meant that 1908 were trailing even before they were due to have kicked off.
The home team’s day got worse as we approached the half-hour when a defensive mix up left a visiting striker unchallenged and all he had to do was take the ball around the prone keeper and roll it into the net.
For a long time, it just looked to be a matter of how many Greve would score, but with a quarter of an hour remaining, 1908 intercepted a back pass and tucked it away to halve the deficit.
Both sides stepped up their efforts in the final minutes. There were some late tackles and yellow cards. 1908 pushed hard for an equalizer but it didn’t come. The way that the home players slumped to the ground suggested that the result must have mattered to them. Perhaps it confirmed relegation.
Of more importance though was that I’d ticked off a game in Denmark, taking the total number of countries where I’d seen a game to sixty-five. Well done me.
One of things that that I try to do whenever I’m working away from the UK is to visit the countries near to where I’m staying. It worked especially well when we lived near Kuala Lumpur, and we spent a lot of time exploring the region with a mix of iconic sights and low-level sport.
Nobody would ever think of describing Al Ula as a ’hub’. There are usually around four flights a day, mainly internal and so it takes a bit of planning, and some time off work, to visit just about anywhere. Jordan is one of the places that I’d been lining up for a while. Petra, of course, is a well-known tourist destination and equally importantly, it’s a country where I’d not yet seen a football game.
The trip didn’t get off to the best of starts. I’d booked a hire car from the only agency that claimed to be at the airport, rather than off-site. They lied. After some difficulty tracking the guy that had arranged to meet us, we were taken to the middle of nowhere. I began to wonder if they had a side gig in organ harvesting. When we arrived we were offered a car that not only had more than a hundred thousand miles on the clock, but it looked as if it had spent most of those miles competing in demolition derbies or delivering coal. I couldn’t be arsed to go back to the airport and start the whole process again though and so we took it.
Our first couple of nights were in Amman and we made the obligatory visits to the Citadel and Roman Amphitheatre. They were fine. Of more interest were the pavement pet shops that we saw whilst walking back in the direction of our hotel. I quite like the idea of someone passing by and, on a whim, buying half a dozen week old ducklings.
The next stop was Wadi Rum for a couple of nights in the desert. It’s a four hour drive south from Amman and, as it’s close to the Saudi Arabian border, it’s probably not much further away from Amman as it is from Al Ula. The rock formations at Wadi Rum were spectacular and we spent time riding camels and hiking early in the morning whilst there was still some shade.
Jen and I were also driven around in the back of a pick-up to see rock carvings and places of interest. Lawrence of Arabia featured heavily with stops at his house, a spring that he drank from and a secluded corner where he had a piss.
The camp that we stayed in was virtually empty. On the first night a Dutch couple were there but on the second night we had the entire twelve tent set up to ourselves. Apparently, tourism virtually halted a year ago with the escalation of hostilities in the region. We passed other camps that also seemed deserted and at some of the destinations on the pick-up drive around, we were the only people there.
I felt sorry for the camp owner, who was just a young lad and had clearly made a big investment in his business. He seemed upbeat about prospects, but how do you absorb a year’s worth of bookings just vanishing?
The final part of our trip was three nights in Petra. It was about an hour or so’s drive back in the direction of Amman. Whilst hammering along the motorway I noticed something unusual in the middle lane. I slammed on the brakes and realised just in time that it was a puppy. Fortunately, there were no cars immediately behind me, so I was able to leap out and grab him. He can’t have been more than about six weeks old.
We tried googling animal shelters but that doesn’t seem to be a thing in Jordan. If I’d been in England I’d have kept him, but we eventually decided that his best chances of survival were to be dropped off where there were plenty of people and few cars. We found a spot in the next town and got a few strange looks as we abandoned him, but it gave him a better chance of surviving than he’d had twenty minutes earlier.
Petra was virtually as quiet as Wadi Rum. We stayed in a five-storey hotel right by the main gate which had only five guests. The Petra site was similarly deserted, which was great. Quite often we found ourselves with no other people in sight. On the third day we hiked in from a back gate to the tomb known as The Cathedral and it felt like we had the hiking trail to ourselves.
At times, there were more stray cats and dogs than people. Cats seemed appropriate to be wandering ancient tombs, but the dogs looked out of place. I always think a dog should have a human of its own.
Good as all the tourist stuff was, I needed to tick off a football ground to make the visit complete. There weren’t many options, and the only match of the trip took place on our first night in Jordan. Getting there required a forty-minute drive north from our hotel in Amman to the Prince Mohammed stadium at Zarqa. The roads were poor, as they were in most of Jordan, and I seemed to hit a pothole every few hundred yards.
The fixture was in the Shield Cup and from what I could gather, was being played at a neutral ground. It’s a pity that we hadn’t arrived in Jordan a few hours earlier as there had already been a game in the same competition at the ground that afternoon.
We were able to park at the stadium and had a chat with a lad hoping to pick up some of the passing shisha trade. He mentioned that he was a Liverpool fan then directed us further along the stand to the nearest entrance gate.
There wasn’t a ticket office, or at least not one that I could see and a guy scanning tickets pointed us in the direction of a young lad who he reckoned would sort us out. It seemed that the section we were trying to get into was for the Al-Faisaly fans and one of their ultras had been tasked with buying tickets online for anyone who turned up without having made prior arrangements.
We gave him four Jordanian Dinars each and once he’d downloaded the tickets, he accompanied us to the entrance and the first fella scanned them from his phone. It all seemed a lot more complicated than just handing cash over without involving the middleman, but that’s modern life.
We were then searched, and Jen had two cans of fake coke that we’d bought ten minutes earlier confiscated. When I asked if we could drink them there and then, someone intervened to point out that elderly visitors from abroad would be unlikely to misbehave and we ended up having our drinks returned to us to take into the stand.
We had seats along the side of the pitch, facing the main stand. Prince Mohammed Stadium was built in 1998 and has a current capacity of 11,400. It’s an artificial surface with a running track between the pitch and the stands.
Every now and then a group of Al-Faisaly fans would wander over to chat, checking out who we were, why we were there or explaining to us the difference between ultras and hooligans. One group of young lads even offered to take us out to a restaurant to sample the Jordanian national dish of mansaf.
I think Al-Faisaly were expected to win but unfortunately for the fans around us that’s not how it worked out. Al-Sareer had the better of the chances, but the game didn’t really take off until the final ten minutes when Al-Faisaly had a man sent off and then Al-Sareer took advantage of their numerical advantage to nick a late winner.
More importantly, I’d ticked off a football ground in my sixty-second different country.
Staying out in the sticks was all very well, but every now and then you want a little more action going on and so Jen and I booked three nights in New Orleans, staying in an Airbnb about forty-minutes walk from the busy part of town. Each day we had a wander into the touristy bit for a mooch around.
On one of the days, we got caught up in a jazz funeral that went past our house. You can’t miss an opportunity like that and so we followed it along to the church next to the underpass where the rough sleepers congregate. I’m not really sure who benefits from a jazz funeral, certainly not the dead and probably not those grieving. Maybe it’s just for bystanders like me.
One of the events that we’d planned was seeing Jonathan Richman at some old French theatre. I’m not that familiar with his music, but I’ve seen the tribute band, The Modern Ovens, that some of the Sea Power members play in, a few times. If it’s good enough for them then that will do.
We met up with Luke, one of Jen’s brothers who lives in New Orleans, and had an enjoyable evening.
Next night was the Pelicans in the NBA. Another of Jen’s brothers, Jeff, picked us up and commenting on the place we were staying asked “Were the projects too expensive?”.
I don’t think Jeff was too impressed with the seats I’d bought either. He used to be a marketing guy for a minor league baseball team and has the contacts to always sit somewhere good. We were quite high up, but I thought it was a decent view. The venue hadn’t sold out and Jeff let me know that if we’d waited until the day of the game we’d have picked up seats for buttons on the resale sites.
The Pelicans had only arrived back in town that day, having been stranded overnight after an away game. With sixteen games scheduled for November they chose to rest both of their star players which may have impacted on the crowd. On the plus side it meant we didn’t ever have to queue to get another ten dollar can of beer.
The lack of stars didn’t seem to hinder the home side and after a sluggish start they found themselves twenty-five points up at one stage. Thunder pegged it back towards the end, but the result was never in doubt in what turned out to be a good evening for the Pelican’s fringe players.
Trail of the Lion King 