Trail of the Lion King

For the first of the Sunday games, I drove south on the old coast road from Santa Pola to Cartegena. It was a pleasant enough drive with the frequent roundabouts being outweighed by seeing what was going on in the small towns that I passed through. At an hour or so it wasn’t a great deal slower than if I’d taken the motorway.

I arrived early enough to have a look around the town. There was some sort of fun run going on which, judging by the condition of some of the entrants, mustn’t have been too far. One bloke, who was about my age, had such an impressive beer belly that his race number sloped at about forty-five degrees.

The highlight of the town was the roman amphitheatre, although there were plenty of other ruins to see, including a city wall with cannons. Maybe Stockton should have got some of those when we knocked the Castlegate Centre down, just in case Thornaby ever starts getting arsey.

The game I’d lined up was at the Ciudad Deportiva Gomez Meseguer, which was back out of town again and in an area that seemed part business park, part industrial estate. I was early enough to be able to park on the road outside rather than having to head for the likes of the Decathlon superstore.

There were two full-size pitches. One, which looked to be the original ground, was grass, whilst the other, which may well have been a subsequent addition had an artificial surface. This game was in the old ground. A poster outside stated that admission was usually fifteen euros for the tribune section down the side, or ten euros for general admission and a seat behind the goal. The pricing wasn’t applicable for this game though as admission was free as part of a Black Friday promotion.

I’d got there early, just in case people were keen to take advantage of the promotion and so had a seat in the Tribune section a good forty minutes before kick-off. The stand was built of scaffolding and seated around one hundred and fifty. There was a similar stand further along the touchline with a posher ‘Palco de Honor’ section between for the big shots.

The fixture was in the fourth tier Segunda Division RFEF Group 4 and both sides were loitering around mid-table with the potential for either promotion, relegation, or more likely a season that petered out not long after Easter.

The pitch was one of the poorest I’d seen in a while with bare patches and some potholes that looked to have been caused by leaking sprinklers. In some of them you could actually see the exposed pipework and fittings.

The standard of the playing surface fitted well with that of the play itself with a lot of moves breaking down before they led to anything. The opening goal came as a result of a speculative punt into the box that was turned into his own goal by the visiting centre-half with the ponytail.

The best piece of action in the first half was a shot from a direct free-kick, twenty-five yards out. It was headed straight for the top corner before the Cartegena keeper got his fingers to it and tipped it over the bar. It was swiftly followed though by a free-for all when a home player was barged into an advertising board by one of the opposition. The fans were irate, screaming that everyone and their Mams were whores whilst a middle-aged bloke in a Tupac tee-shirt spat twice at the nearest Velez player.

I moved behind the goal for the second half as it had the better combination of more shade and fewer fuckwits. It also gave me a closer view of the two further Cartegena goals as they ran out three-nil winners.