Trail of the Lion King

I’d been meaning to get along to watch Witbank Spurs all of last season, but other stuff always seemed to crop up whenever they had a game. However, with the new National First Division season just a week old, a spare afternoon coincided with their opening home fixture.

Witbank normally play their games in Witbank. No surprise there really. This one though was another half an hour away along the N4 at the Themba Senemba stadium in Middelburg. I did wonder if the change of venue was a consequence of the service delivery protests that have been taking place in Witbank lately.

Apparently if the electricity goes off for a while, the appropriate response from the residents is to burn the local library down. That’ll show ‘em. If that doesn’t have the required impact you then escalate matters by setting fire to a few of your neighbours as well. Maybe they should march on the local power station when the library doesn’t have the latest Jeffrey Archer in.

Main Stand.

The sat nav got me to the ground about ten minutes before kick-off. It looked to be a fairly poor area around the stadium, but I’ve been to worse. On the plus side, I didn’t get a call from the security manager at work asking what the hell I was doing there. His lack of interest boded well.

It was fifteen rand admission and that entitled me to take my car inside too and park it by the edge of the pitch. Very handy, as it meant I could keep an eye on it during the game. It’s a pity that they don’t have that option at Anfield to save me from having to pay protection money to eight year old scouse kids.

Mine’s the Corolla.

Although I could have watched the game from my car I made my way around to the stand on the opposite side of the pitch. There weren’t any seats but the steel structure was marginally more comfortable that the usual concrete floor.

There were around thirty people sat in the stand with another fifty or so dotted around the remaining sides of the pitch. I had a chat with a couple of locals who thought the organisation was a bit shambolic. It seemed pretty good to me, although I suppose I’m comparing it with the likes of Korea, where lower league games are often moved from one ground to another with no notification.

View from the Main Stand.

Witbank were playing in Argentina strips, whilst visitors Cape Town All-stars were in green. It had only been a month since I’d watched Cape Town gain promotion from the Second Division and their three-week close season seemed a little unfair on them.

The home side opened the scoring early on with a cracking goal from  right-winger Themba. The ball fell to him on the edge of the box and he volleyed it home via the underside of the bar.

Cape Town had a couple of chances to level before the break but a lack of composure in front of goal meant that they went in behind at half-time.

Cape Town on the attack.

Witbank doubled their lead not long into the second half with another shot from distance, this time from  Ngobe, who celebrated with a double somersault. The half-arsed effort from the keeper to stop it earned him a few minutes of derision from the home crowd.

I’d noticed that the fourth official had a FIFA badge on his shirt and tracksuit. I bet not many FIFA refs in England spend their Sunday afternoons holding up the substitutions board at a game of a similar standard to Northern League.

Maradona makes his appearance.

Witbank seemed the bigger of the two sides, certainly at the back anyway, and with an even larger fella sat in front of the centre-halves they made life difficult for Cape Town. There were still cars coming into the ground as the game drew to a close with the home side secure in their two goal advantage.

So, that was it for the temporary Middelburg location and a stadium that I doubt I’d have got to if the Witbank residents hadn’t been so hasty with their petrol cans and lighters. Hopefully they will resist the urge to burn their local stadium to the ground and I’ll be able to see a game there at some point too.

Sometimes things don’t work out the way that you expected. The initial reason for us being in Durban had been to see a Sharks Super Rugby game that ended up being played in Christchurch, New Zealand. Oh well. On the other hand though, sometimes things work out very nicely and this ended up being one of those times.

The SAFA Second Division is a competition that I’ve struggled to get to grips with. It’s the third tier of league football in South Africa and gets virtually no coverage either online, in the papers or on the telly. I can’t even find out which teams play in the various regional leagues, never mind  the fixtures or results. This weekend though, I got lucky as the play-offs for promotion to the First Division took place whilst we were in town.

If you were thinking that the end of July seems a bit late to be holding the play-offs, you’d have a fair point. As there is such minimal coverage though, I’ve no idea why they wouldn’t be concluded until just a fortnight before the new season starts.

The winners of each of the nine regional Second Division leagues had spent the past week in Durban. They had been divided into two groups with the plan being that the winner of each group would earn promotion. The two group winners then got the chance to play each other to determine the overall Second Division Champions.

The final was scheduled to take place on Sunday at 3pm in Umlazi, a township a few miles outside of Durban. That gave Jen and I the opportunity to stroll along  the seafront beforehand in the winter sun.

You can see the new World Cup stadium in the background.

The beaches at Durban are busy from early morning with surfers, blokes with metal detectors and people taking their dog for a shite. There were few sunbathers, but I imagine it’s packed in the summer.

The highlight of the morning was watching what I assume was a crane of some sort catching and then taking its time to eat a large grasshopper.

Only one winner in that battle.

After an outdoor lunch we set off for the King Goodwill Zwelithini Stadium. If you hadn’t already guessed it’s named after the current King of the Zulus. I’d hoped that he might have made an appearance, after all, it’s not every day your stadium hosts a Second Division play-off final.

His Majesty had other things to do though, spending the weekend out of town marrying his sixth wife in a ceremony that was expected to accommodate four thousand invited guests and up to forty thousand gate crashers. He should be fine for toasters after that.

The new Queen and a couple of her bridesmaids.  Nice frocks.

We didn’t have to look too hard for the stadium, with it being right next to the Mangosuthu highway. Parking was easy enough too, as we just drove into the VIP car park giving the security fella a cheery wave on the way in as if we parked there every day of the week. Using the car park also enabled us to skip the turnstiles as it had direct access to the stadium. I’m not sure if there was an admission charge for everyone else, but it looked as if people were just wandering in.

The Zwelithini Stadium had been tarted up for the 2010 World Cup, as the intention had been for it to be used as a training pitch. I don’t think it got used in the end, which isn’t surprising when you consider the number of more convenient alternative pitches in Durban itself.

The improvements consisted of a main covered stand and concrete terracing around the other three sides. It looked as if people would have just stood on the grass banks before then.

The main stand.

With both teams normally playing their home games a few hours drive away, I wasn’t expecting much of a crowd. As usual, people were drifting in throughout the first half and I’d estimate that there were around three hundred or so altogether.

We were sat in the main stand and there were definitely a few people nearby supporting Cape Town All Stars, although they might very well have been squad members who hadn’t made it into the dugout for the final.

On the other side of the pitch there were a handful of Highlands Park fans. One of them had lapped the pitch beforehand splashing the grass with what looked like Coke. It was in a Coke bottle anyway. In hindsight, it might very well have been some sort of ‘holy water’. There’s a spring we drive past on the way to Pretoria that people collect water from for use in church services and I suppose it’s more likely that it was something like that rather than actual Coke. Who knows though.

Highland Parks fans.

We had a few potential WAGs turn up too, although they did seem far more glamorously dressed than they’d need to be to bag a Second Division footballer.  I’d have thought that they might have been better off crashing the King’s wedding in the hope of catching his eye and becoming bride number seven. The going rate for a royal bride is twenty cows, which I reckon would be beyond most of the lads on the pitch.

Incidentally, I was chatting with a women at work about the payments for a bride. Lobolo, they call it. It’s usually paid in cows, although quite how appropriate that would be if you lived in a block of flats I don’t know. Maybe you could keep them in the bride-to-be’s old bedroom.

She also told me that when negotiations get bogged down the budding groom might offer a sheep or even a chicken to up the price a little without having to stretch to a whole extra cow.

Highland Parks on the attack.

With promotion already clinched for both sides I was hoping for an entertaining game. There was a fair bit of money at stake though with a million rand destined for the winners and half that for the runners up. That’s serious money at this level. In fact it’s far higher prize money than that available in the First Division.

When the sponsorship was announced there were a few tongue in cheek comments that choosing to yo-yo between the first and second divisions would be a decent business plan for the First Division teams.

I’d settle for some of the sponsor’s money being spent on a website listing the fixtures.

View from the main stand.

The standard of play wasn’t bad, not too dissimilar to that of the top two divisions. Both sides kept it tight at the back with the only chance of any note in the first half coming when one of the Cape Town players clattered a long range shot against the bar.

Nobody got any closer to scoring in the second half and at full-time it went straight to penalties. Cape Town All Stars held their nerve and claimed the trophy with a 5-4 win. I’ll look forward to seeing both of the sides in the First Division in two weeks time.

This game was quite a late addition to our trip. Originally we’d just planned on seeing the two games in Natal but when another of the FIFA sales windows opened I couldn’t resist buying a couple of tickets for Italy’s clash with Costa Rica in Recife.

Initially I didn’t give much of a thought as to how we’d get from Natal to Recife, after all it’s only one hundred and eighty miles. Once I’d delved a bit more into it though it turned out that there weren’t any flights that fitted with what had to be a day trip, there isn’t a train connection between the two cities and the bus wouldn’t get us there in time for kick-off.

That pretty much left driving and so when we passed a car hire place in Natal a few days earlier we popped in and ended up not only with a car, but with the fella who worked there agreeing to drive us there and back for eight hundred Brazilian reals. That’s around two hundred and twenty quid, which struck me as fair enough, particularly when I recalled that having to get a taxi home from a Boro game in Blackpool nearly thirty years ago cost over a hundred quid.

On Friday morning we left Natal at around half past seven. The first three hours or so were relatively easy enough and we made good progress passing pineapple stalls, people riding donkeys and any number of cows wandering around and, I suspect, up to no good.

Did you know that cows bear grudges against other cows? They have little cliques too. That’s worth remembering next time you see one stood by herself looking miserable whilst the rest of the herd are frollicking around on the other side of the field.

One we arrived in Recife everything slowed down. We followed the signs to the stadium through heavy traffic for two hours before we finally broke free of the congestion and arrived at the Arena Pernambuco which is situated just off a dual carriageway in the middle of nowhere.

There wasn’t anywhere to park and the decision to hire a driver paid off as he was able to drop us at a service station ten minutes walk from the ground.

There’s the stadium.

We had Category Two tickets for behind a goal, but unfortunately it was the goal that was right around the other side of the stadium and with kick-off approaching we had to get a move on.

Matters weren’t helped by one of the security fellas suspecting that Paul’s sun cream was some sort of explosive device. Paul was initially asked to prove that it wouldn’t go off with a bang by eating some of it, but managed to negotiate a compromise whereby he would apply some to his nose.

“Just eat it”

We reached our seats just as the teams were walking out onto the pitch. They were pretty good, high up but under cover. Whilst it didn’t look like there was any prospect of rain it was better to be sat in the shade.

I’d estimate that as the game kicked off a third of the seats were unoccupied. I’m not surprised though as we can’t have been the only ones who underestimated the time necessary to get from Recife city centre to the stadium. There were still people arriving over an hour into the match and I suspect quite a few spent the entire game still in their cars and inching slowly forward.

We had a couple of Costa Rica fans behind us who spent the entire game abusing the opposition, the ref and, I suspect, their own team with shouts of “Puta”. I’d love to have heard how they’d have behaved in a dispute with an actual prostitute.

The view from our seats.

Whilst the beer was easy to buy early on, by half-time the queues were prohibitive. Fortunately we were able to take advantage of the bloke doing the rounds with a barrel on his back. Well done, FIFA.

By this time Italy were a goal down and Ballotelli had been subbed. That was a shame as there is rarely a dull moment when he’s around. Even with him off the pitch, I kept casting the odd glance over towards the Italian bench in case he decided to let a few fireworks off.

With their star man withdrawn Italy couldn’t manage an equaliser. The win took Costa Rica through to the next round and briefly stunned the two fellas behind us into silence.

Fans behind the goal.

Our journey back to Natal was little different to the outward trip. Two hours of crawling along followed by three hours of high speed. The main difference I suppose was that we had a couple of crashes. After the second of them our driver revealed that he’d only had two hours sleep the previous night. Oh good.

And so that was it for Paul and I, another World Cup over and done with.

I rarely think in any depth about much at all, but I gave some some thought as to the way in which the four year World Cup cycle marks the changes in your life. When we went to the Germany in 2006, I travelled from my apartment in Ferrol, Spain.

By the time South Africa rolled around four years later, I was living in Seoul, South Korea. I liked enough of what I saw of South Africa during that 2010 tournament that when the chance came to live there I took it and have been in Gauteng for the last nine months.

I doubt that Jen and I will still be in South Africa when the next tournament takes place in four years time but I’d like to think that wherever we are, I’ll be making my way from there to Russia for the 2018 World Cup.

When we bought the tickets for our two World Cup games in Natal it was before the draw had taken place and so in theory we could have seen any teams. Apart from Brazil that is, who as hosts had their route to the final mapped out. Oh, and the likes of Scotland of course, and all those other those diddy nations that don’t go to World Cups anymore.

As luck would have it we followed the Ghana v USA fixture with another clash of the titans, Greece against Japan. Whatever. It’s a World Cup and so it’s all good.

We’d had two days off between the games and that meant seeing a bit of Porta Negra. It’s a seaside town just outside of Natal and I suppose you could liken it to what Seaton Carew is to Hartlepool, albeit without the penny arcades. Less dog shit too.

Porta Negra has got a decent beach that was popular with surfers. I suppose when you are on that top corner of Brazil you’d expect to get some pretty big waves coming in.

Just like Seaton.

There were also plenty of bars and restaurants in Porta Negra and with three games a day to watch on the telly we got around a fair few of them. The food that we had varied from those lumps of meat that are skewered on a large metal spike and carved at your table to tapioca from a street stall.

The atmosphere was good everywhere, nowhere had any hint of trouble going on and the people couldn’t have been friendlier. I like that about World Cups.

Another game, another bar.

When it was time to leave for the Natal stadium we decided not to bother with the shuttle bus and instead accepted a lift from a fella who offered to drive us there for a total of thirty reals. That compared very favourably with the hundred reals each we’d paid for the shuttle three days earlier, although we did still have to find our way back to Porta Negra after the game.

The wannabe taxi driver dropped us close to the stadium at around three thirty. Our plan was to watch the England v Uruguay game at four o’clock on a big screen inside the ground and it all worked reasonably well. The gates didn’t open until bang on four and so we had half an hour or so of milling around outside with mainly Japanese fans. We did see a few Greek supporters but they were heavily outnumbered.

Mount Fuji hats were popular.

It didn’t take long to get through security and we were soon watching the England game on a big screen. It was sponsored by Budweiser but luckily we weren’t forced to drink their beer. There was a Brazilian beer, Brahma, on sale as well and so we stuck to that.

I thought FIFA managed the whole alcohol situation extremely well. Simply selling the stuff puts them ahead of UEFA who only serve non-alcoholic beer at the Euros. They also allow you to drink your beer in your seat. English FA take note. To round things off they have beer fellas walking around with a barrel on their backs for when your cup is running low.

So, whilst they might be incompetent and corrupt they have got the odd mitigating point.

Suarez behaving himself.

As expected England lost again and we made our way up to our seats. This time we were down the side of the pitch, almost at the back of the lower tier. These were Category One tickets costing a whopping one hundred and seventy-five dollars each.

Despite the price our seats weren’t far enough back in the stand for the roof to cover us.You’d think Category One would at least mean you stayed dry. It briefly rained a couple of times during the match, just long enough each time for me to put my coat on and then have to take it off again within a few minutes.

The view from down the side.

Aside from the neutrals, it was mainly Japanese fans in the seats around us. There was also a big section of them behind the goal to our right. Most of them brought and blew up plastic bags in the way I recall Lotte Giants supporters doing in Korea, although this lot didn’t loop the handles around their ears and wear them on their heads like the baseball fans.

I only spotted a couple of small pockets of Greek fans. Maybe the financial crisis is still taking its toll over there. Or maybe they just didn’t fancy their team’s chances.

Whilst I hadn’t seen anyone selling tickets outside before the game, a fella in front of us was trying to shift a couple for the upcoming Japan v Columbia tie. It didn’t look like he had any takers though.

That’s the way to advertise.

As for the match, well you might have seen it. Japan did more of the attacking, but struggled once they got inside the box. As soon as Greece went a man down they dropped even deeper and settled for the goalless draw.

Japan fans to our right.

Paul and I were sharply away after the game in the hope of beating any further rain, We picked up a lift in a minibus taxi for twenty reals each and forty minutes after the final whistle we were back in Porta Negra.

It’s that time again. The World Cup. As I’m someone who finds it hard to drive past a kickabout by the side of the road without stopping, the only place for me to be this time of year was Brazil.

My flight from Johannesburg departed just as the tournament was kicking off and by waiting until the final boarding call I was able to watch the first half of the Brazil against Croatia game in an airport bar. I suppose, with the flight going to Sao Paulo, I shouldn’t have been surprised when there was a collective groan as Marcelo scored his own goal to put the hosts behind. Understandably there was a more positive reaction on the plane when the pilot eventually revealed the final score.

My onward destination was Rio, where I met up with Paul. He doesn’t watch much football these days, but he knows a good time when he sees one and a World Cup tends to fit the bill.

We didn’t have any live matches scheduled for Rio and even failed to make it to the Fanfest on the Copacabana Beach, choosing just to watch the games in a bar instead.

The first of many.

We did have a wander along the Copacabana before the football started and a brief paddle in the sea.

Just like Ronnie Biggs.

In the early morning at the beach there are still people sleeping rough on the sand. The police didn’t seem interested in moving anyone on and in addition to those who looked like they regularly spent the night outside there were many more who were probably new in town for the football.

There were also plenty of sea-front joggers, getting their training in before it got too warm. I was a little surprised to see Stuart Pearce run past me, although not as surprised as I was when he calmly overtook anyone who got in his way rather than scything them down from behind.

That saves a hundred and fifty quid a night.

Paul reckoned that you can’t visit Rio without going to see that big Jesus statue. Surprising really, as he already had a very good view of it from his top floor hotel room. As I’d been allocated a room with a view of a storage yard I was quite happy to head out and have a look before the football started.

It’s a complicated process to get all the way to the top, involving three separate buses or taxis and two different ticket offices. We lost patience before the end and so viewed it from a distance. It was close enough.

A rare view from behind.

Our first live game, Ghana v America, took place on a Monday night in Natal and so on Sunday afternoon we took the three-hour flight north. Natal didn’t look very impressive as we were driven through it after dark in a taxi, but that was okay as we were actually staying a little further along the coast at the seaside resort of Porta Negra.

The surrounding area had been affected by torrential rain over the previous few days, resulting in landslides, sinkholes and the cancellation of the Natal Fanfest. We didn’t see any of that though in Porta Negra, mainly because we spent the early part of Monday watching football on the telly in a bar.

A different bar.

Our hotel had organised a shuttle to the game. I didn’t see any Ghanaians on it but there were plenty of USA supporters. I’m fine with Americans. I’m even married to one.  Maybe I’ve just got lucky though as the ones on the bus spent the majority of the journey whooping and hollering.

They even cheered as the bus set off and applauded when it arrived in the drop-off car park. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such excitable adults. If they ever win the World Cup I imagine a few of them might spontaneously combust. It would probably have been kinder to all concerned if someone had put eyeless hoods over their heads until we got there to try to calm them down.

We had a ten minute walk to the stadium, past a couple of busy bars. There wasn’t much in the way of security forces, certainly nothing like the presence that the UK media had focused upon. There rarely is though. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a football tournament that wasn’t preceded by the suggestion that we were all likely to be murdered or locked up. Or both.

Natal security.

Admission to the stadium was well organised, with a barriered queuing system funneling people towards the gates. The game was sold out but there were fans outside trying to offload spare tickets. I didn’t see anyone buying but I got the impression that prices wouldn’t be high. They looked like fans trying to get rid of extra tickets they had been stuck with rather than touts after a profit.

Whilst I might have been a little less than impressed with the hoo-ha on the bus, I couldn’t fault the USA fans for their enthusiasm for dressing up. Most were in team colours, the exceptions tending to be those in fancy dress, notably a top quality Vegas-period Elvis.

The Arena das Dunas.

It seemed like there was rain in the air and after witnessing the downpour on the telly during one of the earlier games at this stadium I was quite worried about the potential for drowning during the game. The tickets that we had were only Category 3 and so I wasn’t too confident that we’d be under cover.

The stadium has a roof, of sorts, but it appears to be more for show than for the benefit of the fans. If you were in the back few rows then I dare say you’d be fine, but most other places and you’d be in trouble. It looked okay in the poshest section where the roof will have covered the FIFA delegation and media seats.

We got lucky with our cheap seats, if you can call ninety dollars cheap. We were behind a goal but right up in the top corner. If it were to rain and providing the rain just came vertically down then we’d just about get away with it.

For those who like looking at tickets.

I’m amused at how much the rain bothers me these days. It wasn’t always like that. I remember going to watch the Boro at Oldham in the eighties and it pouring down all game. I was stood in the uncovered terracing behind the goal wearing a sheepskin jacket that may just have been briefly fashionable in certain circles, albeit fifteen years previously. That coat must have gained about three stones in weight by the time I got back to my car and when I removed it from the boot the following day it had dried solid and could stand up by itself.

Our seats were part of what looked like a temporary stand and so I assume that they will be removed after the World Cup to give Natal a stadium of a size appropriate for its needs. That’s fair enough. A full smaller stadium always beats a half-empty larger stadium for me.

View from the top corner.

As you may have seen on the telly the US took a very early lead. I did wonder how the fans from our bus will have reacted. Less than a minute into the World Cup and they’d already scored. Maybe they thought the scoring in football might turn out like basketball after all.

Ghana struggled to get back into the game until someone finally realised that what they needed was a Middlesbrough player on the pitch. With twelve minutes to go they unleashed Albert Adomah. Four minutes later Ghana had equalised.

“Boro Boys, we are here”

I like it when I see a Middlesbrough player at the World Cup. Paul and I were there when Stewie Downing come on as a sub against Trinidad and Tobago in Germany and then again when Chris Killen (remember him? Thought not) turned out for New Zealand four years ago.

Unfortunately Albert’s influence was fleeting as America went straight back up the other end and scored the winner. Typical Boro.

Whilst we were driving around Lobatse looking for the New Lobatse Stadium we stumbled across a game taking place on a pitch that we subsequently discovered wasn‘t too far from the ground we were after. It was a little out of town, or at least the part of town that had shops and offices. It did have cows wandering along the roads though, so that makes it the best part of town.

Sunday stroll.

I find it hard to drive past a match of any sort without stopping for a while and so I parked up and had a wander over. The pitch wasn’t up to much, not unless you were planning on planting potatoes, but they had nets. They also had around fifty people watching, suggesting that apart from going for a walk with the cows, there’s not much to do in that neighbourhood on a Sunday.

The Covered Stand.

The team wearing red had Pelenge Kicks on the back of their shirts, from which you could reasonably conclude that they had been named by Chris Waddle. I couldn’t see anything on the shirts of the team wearing yellow, so we’ll just call them Yellows.

A count up of the players confirmed that it was eleven a side, but it looked fairly congested. The keeper at my end was wearing number 300 on the back of his shirt, perhaps giving an indication of the size of the squad and his usual place in the pecking order.

View from behind the goal.

One team scored whilst I was watching although I can’t remember which one. It was at the far end though if you want to try to work it out from the photos.

I’m not sure where that goalie is. Maybe they were playing fly-keeper.

There were a few kids having a kickabout behind the goal and I asked one of them if he knew the score.

“Yes“ he replied, and left it at that.

As I was leaving one of the other kids asked me if I had two Pula. That’s around fifteen pence. Tempted as I was to respond in kind with a “Yes“ of my own I gave him the handful of change that I had in my pocket, which was probably no more than a couple of quids worth. He instantly became Mister Popular amongst his mates.

I’d seen an advert in the paper for a farm workers job that paid five hundred and fifty Pula a month and so that loose change was about equivalent to a day‘s pay. Frightening really.

Nice hat, ref.

Anyway, interesting as it was, we still had a stadium to find and so we left them to it

I’d thought that the football season in Africa had finished, but then I stumbled across the fixtures for the first round of qualifying for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations. South Africa didn’t feature, so I assume that they don‘t take part until later in the competition.

Jen and I didn’t have anything planned for the weekend and so I had a look  at neighbouring countries to see if there was a game that we could get to. Swaziland were playing away so that ruled them out. Lesotho had a home game, but the flights were a couple of hundred quid a pop and I thought that was a bit much for a game that didn’t involve the Boro.

Botswana were also playing at home, against Burundi, and as the flights were  a fair bit cheaper that’s what we went for. We booked a room for the Saturday night that was handy for the National Stadium in Gaborone and everything looked all set. Or at least it did until I discovered that the National Stadium had already been booked for the African Youth Games. Bloody kids.The national team’s qualifying match for the Africa Cup of Nations had been put back a day and shunted seventy kilometres out of town to the New Lobatse Sports Centre.

I wouldn’t care, but a similar thing happened last month to Botswana’s game with Swaziland after someone had booked the National Stadium for a car boot sale or something. You’d think that the country‘s football team would get first dibs.

National Stadium, Gaborone.

Still, at least there was something going on at the National Stadium. The African Youth Games appears to be quite a big deal, with fifty four countries represented by a couple of thousand participants. By the time we arrived on Saturday morning though, there were only a couple of athletics events to complete before the closing ceremony.

We couldn’t park near the stadium and were directed to a Park and Ride. The bus driver told us that it would be at least half an hour before the bus would set off and so as it was only a ten minute walk back to the stadium we left him to it.

The stadium looked fairly empty as we approached, with no one going in other than gangs of teenagers in matching tracksuits and accreditation around their necks. A security guard told us that the only way to get tickets was by finding a particular chain of supermarket and buying tickets there. As we weren’t too fussed about catching the under fifteens three thousand metre steeplechase we gave up and had a wander around the market that had been set up nearby instead.

The condom shop seemed popular.

I don’t think that many of the stall holders had made the killing from the games that they’d hoped for. Ticket sales to the public were poor and a couple of thousand teenagers on a trip away from home  are more likely to nick your stock than pay for it.

I couldn’t help but admire a suit that had a strip of animal hide running down the spine of the jacket with more skin decorating the front pockets. I knew that it wouldn’t fit and even if it did I’d struggle to find the right occasion to wear it to, but when the bloke selling it suggested that I try it on I didn’t need to be asked twice.

If only it had been made entirely of zebra hide, I’d never have taken it off again.

With a day to go until the Cup of Nations qualifier we had time to make sure that we had match tickets in advance and so we popped into Gaborone town centre. It seems a safe enough place, although we were targeted by one of those fellas selling paintings to fund a day care centre for one legged orphans. We’ll be able to open our own gallery one day.

I’d read that the match tickets were being sold at Orange shops and so once we’d found one it was easy enough to pick up a couple of fifty Pula seats for the shaded stand.

In case you’ve never seen a ticket before.

We’d booked into a backpacker’s hostel, mainly because it was right next door to the Mokolodi Game Reserve where we’d intended to track rhinos on foot. Unfortunately the rhino tracking was the last thing in my list of things to arrange and they were fully booked. As we were staying nearby we visited the reserve anyway and settled for a two hour game drive instead. We still didn’t see any rhinos.

There were a few giraffes though and as we were driven around I quietly dropped the raisins from my complimentary bag of nuts and raisins for the warthogs to eat.

That bush doesn’t provide much of a hiding place.

I noticed an advert in the paper the next day for some of the livestock on the reserve. It certainly beats your standard gift shop, although we’d have struggled to have got any of them on the plane back to Johannesburg.

They’ll even gift-wrap them for you.

The hostel was ok, mainly because we had the best room, one of those roundel things with a thatched roof. As well as having the only en-suite bathroom on the premises it came complete with peacocks and the fattest pig I’ve ever seen.

I can only hope she was heavily pregnant as dragging your stomach along the floor isn’t a good look. Despite that, we fed her more leftovers than I suspect is healthy.

Fattest pig ever.

Next morning we drove down to Lobatse. We’d planned to call in at some game reserve with vultures but couldn’t find it and so spent most of the morning driving around the town looking for the stadium before stretching out our lunch long enough to read every section in a couple of Sunday papers.

The upside of having not much to do was that we got to the New Lobatse Stadium early enough to get a prime parking space just outside of the turnstiles. The downside, however, was that we had almost two hours to wait until kick-off.

New Lobatse Stadium

We were in the only covered stand and were able to take our pick of the seats to the left of the central VIP section. It’s a nice enough ground in a modern sort of way, the best feature probably being the hills in the background.

Hills are always good.

As kick-off neared we were treated to a dance trio. They roped in someone who looked like a bigwig in the FA at some point and he added to the entertainment by playing air guitar on the stick that the bloke with the robes had been wearing.

You don’t get that at The Riverside.

By the time the game kicked off I’d estimate that there around five thousand fans in the stadium. As ever, they kept arriving throughout the first half and probably a bit beyond that. One of them had brought what looked like a full-sized stuffed zebra. Perhaps he’d picked it up from the Mokolodi Game Reserve.

The zebra arrives.

The standard certainly didn’t seem like an international match with plenty of tackles flying in early on that missed both ball and man. The game was finally balanced at nil-nil after the first leg and it stayed that way throughout the first half, with just the single shot troubling the away keeper.

A Botswana corner.

We had to leave at half time as the change of date meant that we’d have struggled to have caught our flight otherwise. Our quick getaway meant that we missed the Botswana goal that clinched their passage into the second round and a tie with Guinea-Bissau. Who? No, me neither.

If the National Stadium isn’t already booked for some kid’s birthday party we might very well head back and see how they get on in that one.

Saturday was Cup Final day, not just in England, but in South Africa too. Or rather it was Nedbank Cup Final day. I’ve no idea if Nedbank are an international bank, but if they are then they should open some branches in Scotland. I’m sure that they’d be very popular.

It’s a few weeks since I’ve seen a football game over here, what with the trip to the UK and then my kids coming over here for a visit. They’d have been happy to go to a match or two, but unfortunately none of the fixtures fell right. They did ok for wildlife stuff though.

I’m sure those sticks will be adequate.

There isn‘t a permanent venue for the Nedbank Cup Final and the South African FA wait until the finalists are known before announcing which ground will host the game. This year it was the Moses Mabhida stadium in Durban that got the nod. That worked out pretty well for Jen and I as we’d yet to get to that part of the country.

The Moses Mabhida Stadium.

I’d seen plenty of notices in the football paper giving details of overnight coach trips from Johannesburg for Pirates fans. I’m getting a bit old for that sort of thing though, maybe I’ve always been too old for it, and so we took a one hour flight to Durban instead.

Arriving by air allowed us to notice just how green the land around Durban is. It’s a bit of a contrast from the clay and rocks of the Gauteng area. It was a lot warmer than Gauteng too, or at least it seemed like it as we sat out in the hotel garden for lunch.

Our hotel was one of those near the stadium.

It promised to be an interesting final, with Wits University, or the Clever Boys as they are nicknamed, being good enough to have finished third in the Premier league, whilst ‘bigger club’ Orlando Pirates had already lost in three cup finals over the season, including the African Champions League.

I initially wasn’t really sure which team I favoured, either with heart or head. They appeared to be quite evenly matched on the field and my usual preference for the bigger club to come unstuck was balanced against the thought that no team should lose four finals in a season.

It remember how sickening it was when the Boro lost two finals in 1997 and then another the following March, but four in a season? No, you can’t have that.

It was probably the Pirates fans that clinched my temporary allegiance. I reckon that they would rival the Kaizer Chiefs nationally in terms of numbers, but they are streets ahead in the characters that they have turning up at the games. They’ve got that crossed-arm salute too, that even the players did before the game acknowledging their supporters.

A couple of Pirates fans.

I’d read that the 54,000 seater stadium had sold out, but fortunately we’d bought our sixty rand tickets a few days earlier. That’s around three and a half quid. Not bad for a cup final. I put more than that in the donations bucket at the recent Alan Hood Memorial Trophy final and that‘s for teams competing in the thirteenth tier of English football. I suspect that the tickets for the Arsenal v Hull game at Wembley will have been a little more expensive too.

There were plenty of empty seats as we went through the turnstiles with around half an hour to go to kick-off, but the stadium continued to fill up throughout the whole of the first half and beyond. By the end, there were only really the seats in front of the executive boxes that were empty, whilst in places people were sat in the aisles or stood blocking the exits.

The Moses Mabhida stadium is a newish ground, built for the World Cup and whilst it has a fancy arch that you can zipline from when there isn’t a game on, I wasn’t impressed with the distance between the pitch and the stands. It’s as if they planned for a running track, but then just didn’t bother. If you are going to build a football stadium, particularly for a World Cup, then just build a football stadium with the stands close to the pitch.

It’s an arch.

There weren’t many chances early on, with Wits taking the lead half an hour in. At that point the Pirates fans around us seemed to be expecting the worst. It wasn’t surprising really after the season that they’ve had.

I should have taken the camera with the zoom lens.

The Pirates coach is renounced for bollocking his players and on this occasion the half-time hairdryer treatment did the trick. Within eight minutes of the re-start Orlando were level and they quickly went on to add another couple of goals.

There was a collective sense of relief from the Pirates fans as their team ran out the clock whilst the Wits players took out their frustration in a series of scuffles.

Fourth time lucky.

The full time whistle sparked an entertaining pitch invasion as a couple of hundred fans celebrated victory by dodging the stewards and vaulting over the electronic advertising boards. As it is the world over, most of them couldn’t resist holding their arms out ‘airplane style’ as they weaved their way across the turf.

I think that probably brings the South African football season to a close for me. There are a few lower division play-off games still to take place but I don’t think that we will get to any of them. Still, it’s not long to the World Cup.

I haven’t bothered writing about Boro games previously, but with this now being a general sporting blog I thought, why not? The main reason that I record this stuff is to help me to remember what I’ve seen and whilst one Boro game does tend to blur into another these days, it can’t do any harm. There’s also a possibility that the photos could be interesting in twenty years time or so if blogs still exist then.

My son Tom and I drove to Middlesbrough and parked up near the University. It’s where we used to park when the games had much bigger crowds, but as we walked towards the stadium it occurred to me that we could have parked in any number of much closer places. It struck me how few people were making their way to the match. The crowd seemed to have dropped significantly since my last game in September 2013, much more so than the official attendance figures would suggest.

The busker was still at the underpass, despite the likely drop in his takings. Sometimes I give him money. It’s a karma thing, to try to buy us a result. This was a meaningless end of season game though and as a win wouldn’t have made much difference to anything, he got bugger all.

He probably did quite well ten years ago.

The lack of a crowd was just as noticeable at the stadium and we didn’t need to queue for tickets. We didn’t need to give names and addresses either when we bought them, which is a first, I think, since the move to the Riverside.

Tom’s been coming to the match with me, on and off, since his first game at Ayresome Park as a two year old. The attendances and the league position have gone full circle since those days in the early nineties with the glory years in between starting to feel like something that happened somewhere else.

Half past two.

Our seats were in the South Stand, just behind the Red Faction lads. They get a bit of stick from some of the older fans, but I think a lot of them forget just how low the average age in the Holgate was. The Red Faction drummer must have been practicing over the winter as he’s improved a lot. Or else he’d been replaced by someone who can play. Either way, any atmosphere at all in the ground came from that group of a hundred or so kids.

Barnsley on the attack.

There wasn’t much went on in the first half hour on the pitch. Barnsley needed the win to have a chance of staying up, but it was easy enough to see how they had ended up in the relegation area. The Boro weren’t much better in that opening thirty minutes but we managed to create a few chances as the half drew to a close.

Barnsley took an early lead after the re-start, but were soon pegged back. A couple of goals at the death gave Middlesbrough a win that was probably deserved, but of little consequence.

It’s strange, but the win didn’t mean much to me. It might have been because the season was already over, but I’ve a feeling that I just don’t care that much these days. There were too many players that I wouldn‘t recognise if they passed me in the street with their full kit on and that makes it harder to identify with them.

On the way out.

There was no need to try to beat the traffic as having to queue at the underpass is a distant memory, whilst the lack of congestion on the roads meant that we were back in Norton quicker than I can ever recall managing in the past. I suppose that there are certain advantages to end of season games in the Championship.

As you might have spotted from the team names, this one was a bit of a change from watching the likes of the Kaizer Chiefs and Mamelodi Sundowns. Jen and I were in the UK for Easter and I took the opportunity to watch a game between a couple of teams from the Wearside Combination League. Really? Yes really.

To be more precise, it was the final of the Alan Hood Memorial Trophy and that was pretty much the reason for my attendance. Alan was my Dad’s cousin and my godfather. He died in a car crash in 1987 and the Wearside Combination League re-named the former Blind Institute Cup in his memory.

Alan actually played in the first football match I ever went to. He was captaining Easington Colliery and his dad, my great-uncle Jim, took me along to watch. I reckon it will probably have been the 72-73 season, maybe 73-74. Anyway, Alan came over to talk to us as the teams were warming up and told me that the Vaseline on his eyebrows was to prevent him getting cut when head-butting the opposition players. I, of course, believed every word.

After he stopped playing he became a ref and went on to make the Football League list.  I remember watching him reffing reserve games at Ayresome Park and running the line in an old First Division game against Derby.

Alan as a boy, Uncle Jim is back right.

The venue for the final was the Boldon CA ground and so I took a drive up the A19 with my Dad and my son, Tom. There are two pitches, one of which is used by Northern League Jarrow Roofing and the other by Boldon Colliery Welfare of the Wearside League. This game was on the Boldon Colliery Welfare pitch, but it was still a step up from the places where these teams usually play.

Boldon CA.

The sign on the gate stated that it was £2.50 to get in, but it was charity donations into a bucket instead. The trophy was on display as we went in. It’s an impressive looking effort, but so it should be as it’s a full-size replica of the European Cup.

My Dad with the cup.

The setting didn’t really seem worthy of the trophy. You wouldn‘t expect to win the European Cup on a pitch full of dandelions where the grass was a good inch longer than it should have been. There were about forty people milling around when we arrived with the usual old blokes supplemented by friends and family of the players.

We’d got lucky in a way, with the top two teams in the Wearside Combination having made the final. Sunderland Hendon, who were presumably named to avoid any confusion with the Barnet-based Hendon that play in the Isthmian League, were taking on the equally precisely named Sunderland The Alexandra.

No Champions League theme music on this occasion.

Hendon were kitted out in a very Spanish looking red and white stripes with blue shorts combo with  The Alexandra sporting blue shirts and white shorts. The uneven pitch wasn’t the best surface for passing and so neither side really bothered, preferring just to lump the ball upfield at the earliest opportunity.

There was more squabbling than goalmouth action in the first half, with players turning on their team mates whenever a move broke down, Hendon were marginally the better side though and some dodgy defending from their opponents allowed them to go in at the break a couple of goals up.

A couple of those fans look familiar.

By the time the second half kicked off the crowd had grown to around two hundred. An early penalty to Hendon allowed them to increase their lead to three and it looked to be game over. The Alexandra players certainly thought so and started their post-mortem on the pitch rather than wait until they got to the pub.

Surprisingly, they stopped the arguing just long enough to pull a goal back and set up a frantic final twenty minutes. Being frantic generally isn’t enough though and it wasn’t sufficient to compensate for the panic that set in whenever one of them found themselves anywhere near the penalty box.

Championies.

Hendon hung on for the win and we watched them lift Alan’s trophy. I doubt any of them knew who he was or why he wore Vaseline on his eyebrows. We did, though.