Trail of the Lion King

There are two football teams in Cheonan. One of them, Cheonan City, plays in the National League whilst the other, Cheonan FC, is one division lower in the Challengers League. Up until recently they played their games at the Baekseok and Oryong stadiums respectively. These days though they both seem to have been turning out at the newer Cheonan Soccer Centre.

The Soccer Centre has four pitches, two grass and two artificial. Both the grass pitches have seats for spectators, the main pitch having stands down two sides whilst the other has just the one stand.

So, what’s all this leading to? Well, I was coming to that. Both teams had been given a home fixture on the same day and so it should have provided an opportunity for a few hours of watching football, with one game following the other. That’s too sensible though and instead both games were given three o’clock kick-offs. Baffling. I couldn’t miss the opportunity of watching two games simultaneously though and so Jen and I caught a train from Seoul to Cheonan at Saturday lunchtime.

Cheonan is pretty well served by transport options ranging from the thirty-five minute KTX journey to a couple of hours on the subway. This time we went by Saemaul, which was the fastest option until the introduction of the high-speed KTX trains a few years ago. It took just over an hour and that was fine. We overtook a few of the subway trains at a pace where I could look smugly into their carriages. The KTX trains must use a different track which is just as well really as the difference in speed between the KTX and the subway trains would no doubt be enough to suck out the subway carriage windows and spirit away the hats, glasses and false teeth of the people inside.

We took a taxi from Cheonan station, but that was only because we didn’t know where we were going. It’s probably only a ten minute walk from there to the Soccer Centre. Once we arrived we had to decide what to do. Do you focus on one game or try to watch them both at the same time? If you sat right at the end of the stand you could pretty much keep an eye on both, a bit like if you had a seat right on that dividing screen at The Crucible when the snooker is on. In the end though, we decided to watch forty-five minutes of each game and started with the National League fixture between Cheonan City and Busan Transportation.

The view from the main stand looking towards the other grass pitch.

Both teams have terrible kits. Cheonan were wearing maroon with grey shorts and socks. That’s not a football strip, particularly the grey socks. They looked like kids who had forgotten their PE kit and were just wearing standard school uniform socks. Busan weren’t much better, they have a strip that resembles a Brighton kit from the front. Nothing too bad about that I suppose, unless you are a Crystal Palace fan, but the blue and white stripes are only on the front of the shirts. The shirts are solid blue on the back which makes them look nearer to Chelsea when you see them from behind. It’s as if you are watching three teams chasing the same ball.

School kids v Brighton v Chelsea.

Whilst the strips were dodgy, the crowd was very impressive for a game at this level. I’d estimate that there were about five hundred people in the main stand and another seventy or so sat in the sunshine opposite. The home side were cheered on by about a dozen ‘ultras’ whilst Busan also had a few supporters making a bit of noise at the far end of the main stand.

Cheonan City fans.

The visitors almost opened the scoring in the first minute but the ball ran just the wrong side of the post. They were certainly the more attacking of the two teams, but the finishing from both sides left a lot to be desired.

Busan had another good opportunity ten minutes before half-time when Kang Jin Kyu cracked the ball against the bar from the edge of the box. He hit it with enough force for the rebound to clear the penalty area. The miss was forgotten a couple of minutes later though when Busan took the lead through Park Seung Min. The former Incheon United midfielder capitalised upon a spot of arsing about by the Cheonan defence to drive the ball home from close-range.

This wasn't the goal, but it would be ideal for a Spot the Ball competition.

That was about it for the first half and as we had another match to watch on the next pitch, just about it for us too as we moved to the adjacent stand at half-time. A few minutes into the second half the noise from the crowd alerted us to a goalmouth scramble and we were able to watch from a distance as Busan doubled their lead.

A little later I had a wander between the two pitches to get some photos of the main stands so I did see a bit more of the Cheonan – Busan game.

The view from the other side of the pitch.

We didn’t miss any more goals though and the match finished with Busan maintaining their two goal advantage.

This trip didn’t turn out anything like I’d intended it to. The original plan had been for Jen and I to walk along the Hwaseong fortress wall before watching Suwon City take on Mokpo City in Suwon’s Civil Stadium. In the end though, we did neither.

A late night on the Friday resulted in us getting up too late to walk along the fortress wall. It did mean that we had a bit of time to watch some baseball in ballpark next door though. Once that had finished we made our way to the Civil Stadium.

Suwon Civil Stadium.

Now, I’m coming to the conclusion that I’m not really one for learning lessons. Unless, perhaps, physical pain or injury is involved. For example, I no longer use that open razor blade on the cheese grater for slicing bits of cheese. Not since I took a chunk out of my thumb anyway. Nor do I try to force corks into a wine bottle with a knife if the corkscrew doesn’t do its job properly. At least not since the time when a bottle cracked and I nearly severed a finger.

Where I’m still struggling to learn lessons is in making sure that games are on before setting out. God knows I’ve missed enough of them and this one was yet another. We arrived at the Civil Stadium bang on three o’clock and after wandering in caught sight of another pitch without goalposts. Perhaps if I get Jen to jab me in the eye each time it happens I might start to check things a bit more thoroughly.

Fortunately, the most likely alternative to the as yet incompletely refurbished Civil Stadium was the Suwon Big Bird Stadium, either the main pitch or more likely the auxiliary one next to it. There’s not too much distance between the Civil and Big Bird Stadiums and a twenty-minute taxi ride was all that was needed.

I’d watched Suwon City on the auxiliary pitch last season. It’s ideal for a lower league team with one small stand running the length of the pitch. As we walked around the outside of the main stadium though we could hear drumming and chanting from inside. A quick glance confirmed that City had borrowed the Big Bird from their K-League neighbours, Suwon Bluewings.

It was a relief to see some goalposts.

Suwon were in their red and blue stripes and were already a goal down to Mokpo. It was strange seeing a stadium that is usually one of the best attended in the country staging a match in front of no more than a couple of hundred spectators. Mokpo had contributed to the crowd by bringing eight fans with them for their rare day out in a World Cup Stadium. I wondered if any of them had turned up at the Civil Stadium first.

It was a good day out for these fellas.

We made our way around to the far side so that we could sit in the sun and watched the remainder of the first half. Suwon had a few chances to equalise but were unable to take them and they went in at the interval still trailing by a goal to nil.

A Suwon corner, just before half-time.

Mokpo doubled their lead a couple of minutes into the second half when Suwon keeper Lee Jung Hyung dashed to the edge of his box only to get in the way of one of his defenders. The mix-up meant that the ball fell to Han Jae Man who after controlling it with his arm was able to roll the ball into an empty net. A couple of the Suwon players protested to the linesman who I’m sure must have seen it. Maybe the odd poke in the eye might have helped him to focus on the task in hand too.

Suwon responded by bringing on their lanky striker Bae Soo Han. Although having checked his height it turns out that he is only six foot three. Maybe he is just tall in comparison to some of his short-arse team-mates. Whatever, the substitution paid off almost immediately as Suwon pulled a goal back when Jang Hyuk’s shot from the edge of the box sneaked in next to the post.

Goaaaallll.

The home side had plenty of time to find an equaliser in the remaining half hour and they put the visitors under a lot of pressure. The Mokpo keeper had a decent game though and he was able to keep the Suwon efforts out to help his team pull off an unexpected away victory.

It hadn’t been quite the day that I’d planned but it had worked out pretty well in the end, whilst the fortress wall and the Civil Stadium will still be there for a future trip.

The last time I’d been to Bucheon I’d taken a trail through some woods to reach the ground. This time though, I didn’t have time and so after getting off the subway at Sosa I just followed the road for twenty five minutes to Bucheon’s stadium at the Leports Complex. On my previous visit I’d arrived only to discover that the game had been switched to the opposition stadium but thankfully this time I could see the players walking out onto the pitch through a gap in the stand.

With the game about to start I followed some fans through the main entrance where I was politely turned away and re-directed further around the stadium to the ticket office. It came as a bit of a surprise as it’s not often that you have to pay at this level or indeed, the one above.

I found the ticket office and joined the queue for a five thousand won ticket. It wasn’t ‘Boro at Wembley’ length, but I did find the idea of printing tickets and then employing people to sell them and check them on entry a bit over the top for a division where the crowds average around two hundred. Wouldn’t just handing over a five thousand won note as you went in be a bit more efficient if you are going to bother charging an entry fee in the third tier?

At least you didn't have to camp out overnight.

I’d missed the first couple of minutes by the time I’d got inside the stadium. Bucheon were in red shirts with black shorts and Paju were in green tops with blue shorts. There were maybe five hundred people or so watching, including a dozen from Paju behind the goal. That’s a pretty healthy crowd for a Challengers League game, so perhaps it’s worth their while charging for admission after all.

The Paju fans seemed happy to catch up on their sleep.

Bucheon had more of the ball in the first half but neither side created much and when a half-chance did fall to someone a goal never really looked likely. It was goalless at half-time.

Paju on the attack in the first half.

The Bucheon fans were very impressive, singing throughout the match and they marked the start of the second half with a flare. Bucheon 1995 is a club that was founded by supporters of SK Bucheon after the K-League club was relocated to Jeju Island a few years ago as part of the effort to de-centralise clubs from the Seoul area. Whilst the new team play in the third division, they use the same stadium that SK Bucheon did and they wear the same colours.

The Bucheon fans show the Paju lot how it's done.

The game came to life ten minutes after the interval when the Paju goalie flattened a Bucheon striker on the edge of the box. It looked like it was going to end in tears from the moment he set off as he was never likely to get to the ball first. Even though the ref had little option but to send the keeper off, the lad was furious, throwing his gloves to the pitch in a fit of temper.

Bath time, sonny.

Once the keeper had left the pitch, we still had to wait a while for the re-start. First of all the Paju staff had to work out which of their twenty of so subs were actually goalies. Then they had to decide which of them would come on to replace the unlucky outfield player. Once the new keeper had been selected, we then had to watch him warm-up at the side of the pitch for five minutes whilst the rest of the players and the crowd gradually froze to death.

Eventually the new lad felt ready to come on. If I’d have been the ref, I’d have booked him for time-wasting as he made his entrance. His first touch saw him pole-axed as if he had been clattered with a length of 4″ by 2″. I did wonder at that point whether he just didn’t fancy it, despite his extensive warm up. His second touch was to pick the ball out of the net as Bucheon finally got the opening goal.

As most of the home players ran to their fans to celebrate, Paju had to be stopped by the ref from sneakily kicking-off against the couple of Bucheon players who were back in their own half.

The goal opened the game up a bit more and both sides had their chances. A few minutes from time a Paju free-kick from the edge of the box was curled just wide, whilst Bucheon could have sealed it at the end with a chip over the Paju keeper that landed just the wrong side of the post.

Almost an equaliser.

The single goal was enough to clinch victory for Bucheon and the win took them above Paju in the table and into second place.

Three weeks into the new season and with Jeonbuk Motors visiting FC Seoul, it was time for me to catch up with Lee Dong Gook. The Boro’s greatest ever Korean player had started the season exceptionally well, capping his recall to the national team with three goals in two games and then continuing his good form with another three in Jeonbuk’s first three K-League games.

I’ve been to see quite a few games at Seoul’s Sangam stadium over the last couple of years and so to make the day a bit more interesting Jen and I decided to walk there. We’d tried to do the same thing last year but had been thwarted by the flooding of the Han River.

This time though, we were still three months or so away from the rainy season and saw no reason why we wouldn’t be able to just follow the river all the way to the stadium. We set off from Yeoksam not long after eight in the morning which gave us almost seven hours until kick-off. Just to make the route a bit longer, we walked in the wrong direction to Jamsil and joined the Han River at the Olympic Stadium. This took the overall distance to more than twenty kilometres. I’m not sure how much more, but as we seem to average around three kilometres an hour, I wasn’t entirely certain that we’d make the kick-off.

There wasn’t a great deal going on that we hadn’t seen on previous walks along the Han, apart from a much increased security presence. There was a Nuclear Summit due to take place the following day that the likes of Obama would be attending and it looked as if every copper in Korea was on duty. We passed three coachloads of police by the COEX centre and as we walked along the river we saw policemen on bikes, in boats and guarding every bridge we passed. Helicopters constantly flew overhead.

Undercover Police pretending to be fishermen.

Every time I walk along the Han I see more improvements to the paths, facilities and surrounding areas. It’s a place where kids can play sport and older folks can walk their dogs or work out on the gym equipment. There are stages and seating for open-air concerts and car parks where people can watch films on big screens. There are swimming pools, football and rugby pitches, basketball, badminton and tennis courts, croquet lawns and baseball parks. Taxation levels seem very low in Korea so it surprises me when I see the extent of public spending on leisure facilities.

We passed the areas where the previous year we had been forced to make extensive detours and in some of those cases the path had now been relocated to higher ground in response.

Last year.

After a bit of earth-moving and with a new path installed it now looked like this;

This year.

We first spotted the World Cup Stadium at around two o’clock. It took us another half an hour or so to get there as there were numerous roads to cross. I’ve a feeling that if we had carried a little further along the river then there might have been a nice easy path through a park. Maybe next time.

Six hours later.

It was a cold day and whilst Jen was fine with that during the walk, she was less confident of her ability to avoid hypothermia whilst sitting in a football stadium for two hours. She headed off back to Yeoksam (on the subway) and I got myself a fourteen thousand won ticket for the Jeonbuk end.

As I went through the gate I noticed that Jeonbuk shirts were being given away for free. I joined the queue, but was told that they were only for employees of Hyundai Motors and their families. Judging by the amount of shirts being given away, half the factory must have been attending the game. Despite the decent turnout by the Jeonbuk fans, the overall attendance was poor. It was announced as 25,811, but it was easy enough to work out that the true figure was less than half of that.

The match started well for the visitors and within three minutes they were in the lead. Luiz dispossessed a defender and played in Lee Dong Gook who calmly placed the ball to the keeper’s left for his seventh goal of the season.

One - nil to Jeonbuk.

Seoul had plenty of possession though and equalised just before the half-hour mark. Dejan Damjanovic’s shot hit the bar, bounced down and Ha Dae Sung  was first to the rebound, scoring with a diving header.

At half time I moved upstairs, partly for the change of view but mainly for a bit of peace and quiet. The woman who had been sat behind me in the lower tier had been getting a little too excited in the first half whenever Jeonbuk were on the attack. On the occasions when they got near to the Seoul penalty box, she sounded as if she was close to orgasm. I thought it only polite to give her some privacy.

Jeonbuk should really have regained the lead on the hour. Lee Dong Gook got clear though and was one-on-one with the keeper. He tried to leave the lad flat on his arse but in doing so allowed the goalie to nick the ball off his toe. He got a second chance at it but his shot was cleared off the line by a defender who had got back to cover.

Jeonbuk have got a new foreign striker this season, Hugo Droguett, a Chilean who has been playing in Mexico. He came on as a sub for Eninho mid-way through the second half but didn’t make much of a difference. He put a free-kick wide of the post and failed to hit the target after a one-two with Lee Dong Gook. I don’t want to judge him prematurely, but I didn’t see anything that made him look as good an option as an impact sub as Krunoslav Lovrek, who has moved on from Jeonbuk to Qingdao Jonoon in the China Super League.

Droguett puts his free-kick wide.

As the game drew to a close I reflected that whilst both teams would no doubt be disappointed with just the point, they had each missed so many chances that they couldn’t really complain. It wasn’t over though and in the eighty-ninth minute Molina weaved his way through the Jeonbuk defence and finished well to clinch the three points for the home side. I was keen to be home before midnight and so decided against walking in favour of the subway.

The third tier Challengers League expanded from sixteen to eighteen teams this season with the additions of Jungnang Mustang Chorus and Paju Citizen. Seoul based Jungnang Mustang Chorus are owned by a firm of lawyers who are apparently keen to use their involvement in the league to help them in their quest to represent players. I’ve no idea whether they have any top-level footballers on their books yet, but I’d imagine that the most likely opportunity that anyone would have of making money out of the lads in the third division would be if one team bus crashed into another at the traffic lights and sparked a flurry of whiplash claims.

However, whatever the motives of the owners, more teams means more options for watching a game and so Jen and I got the Jungang line subway toYangwon. We came out of the subway on the wrong side and had a bit of wandering about, but the pitch is right next to the Jungnang Camping Ground and only about three hundred yards from the station, following the route of the railway line.

I reckon the camping ground means that it could be a great fixture for away fans who fancy making  a weekend of it. It’s an ideal location for survival enthusiasts like Bear Grylls too, with all those big city five star hotels close by if it gets a bit chilly during the night. Today’s visitors were Seoul Martyrs though and so I doubt that many of the visiting fans would have brought their tents with them.

We’d left home a little bit late as I’d got the kick-off time wrong again, and so by the time we had messed about on the wrong side of the railway tracks for ten minutes the game was well underway.

The view as you arrive from the direction of the station.

We arrived just in time to see Seoul Martyrs take the lead. That was a bit of a turn-up, Jungnang had won their only game to date whilst the visitors had lost both of their league games and had suffered an eight goal beating at the hands of a student team in the cup the week before.

It got even stranger a few minutes later as the visitors got a second goal. At that point I was sure that the legal bods in the Mustang Chorus back-office would be frantically searching for the termination clause in the league constitution that would enable them to return to spending their Saturday afternoons chasing ambulances rather than lost causes.

It's Billy Ashcroft! He was subbed before half-time though.

At half time I met up with Foggy and Clegg, a couple of fellow lower league enthusiasts. Foggy is a fan of the Martyrs and after I’d congratulated him on his team’s performance he was able to put me straight as to which team were which. I’d got them the wrong way around. Jungnang Mustang Chorus were in the yellow and Seoul Martyrs, who were in red, were actually losing by two goals rather than winning. Despite my mistake, I reiterated my congratulations on their performance anyway as it was still an improvement on their usual four goal deficit by that stage of a game. I blame the scoreboard for my confusion, which used the American system of showing the away team’s score first. That and senility, of course.

The view looking towards the Camping Ground.

In the second half I was able to cheer the right team on, after all you can’t be rooting for the lawyers. Well, not unless they are appealing on your behalf against the death penalty. Or a parking ticket. Or indeed, against the Premier League deducting three points from your team and causing them to be relegated for something that had been accepted as an ‘honest error’. Bunch of bastards. Contrast that with the deliberate dishonesty and deceit shown by West Ham over Tevez and the Premier League decision not to deduct points from Trevor Brooking and his chums because ‘the fans would suffer’. Bunch of bastards, indeed. I’m not still bitter, as I’m sure you can tell. Still, looking on the bright side, West Ham have to put up with Fat Sam these days, which does bring a smirk to my face more often than it really should.

So, I suppose what I’m getting at is that there probably are a few times whan you could back the lawyers, however today wasn’t one of them.

I liked the stand, although it didn't provide much protection from the snow.

My properly directed support must have made a difference as Seoul pulled a goal back straight after the restart. I suspected that a few of the Martyrs players had also been told at half-time that they were the team in red rather than yellow, as a lot more of their passes were going to team-mates rather than the opposition. The occasion wasn’t helped by the changing weather. We had the odd sunny spell interspersed with snow showers. I’d brought a few cans of beer inside a cool-bag on the premise of keeping them chilled. In reality though, the cool-bag served the purpose of preventing the beer from freezing.

And that's the view of the end with the new houses.

The Martyrs had a few chances to equalise as the game went on, but the better chances fell to the home side who seemed incapable of placing a shot anywhere other than straight at the visiting keeper. There were no more goals in the second half and the win for Jungnang maintained their hundred per cent record. Martyrs, on the other hand, maintained their own record of having lost every game this season and remained bottom of the league.

I probably wouldn’t have bothered with this game normally as it’s a bit of a rush to get to Seongnam’s Tancheon Stadium for a 7pm mid-week kick-off. I was having a browse through the squad of their Chinese opponents though, as you do, to see if they had recruited any ageing superstars, when I spotted that they had an English player.

I’d never heard of the fella listed, Akpo Sodje, but all that means is that he probably hasn’t scored too many goals against the Boro over the years. Google is your friend though and it turns out that he’s played all over the place.

He started off at QPR as a kid and then had spells at Stevenage Borough, Margate, Gravesend & Northfield (That’s one team, not two), Heybridge Swifts, Erith & Belvedere (that’s one team as well), Huddersfield Town, Darlington, Port Vale, Sheffield Wednesday, Charlton Athletic and Hibernian. The last couple of names are actually two teams.

So, he’s been around a bit. It was his spell at Darlington that clinched it though. If he’d played for Darlo, I’d have to go and see him. I suppose you could describe Darlo as being like the Boro’s kid brother. They play nearby but are too crap to be considered a rival.  A bit like the way it was with Sunderland when they had Mick McCarthy in charge.

I must admit, I did wonder just why a team in the China Super League, particularly one that had qualified for the Asian Champions League, would have wanted to sign him. After all, Anelka is playing over there now and we keep reading reports that Chinese clubs are prepared to pay Frank Lampard or Rio Ferdinand a quarter of a million pounds a week to make the move. Still, that’s a matter for Tianjin Teda.

Akpo Sodje gets booked in the Sheffield derby for messing with Boro legend Ugo Ehiogu. Serves him right.

I hurried out of work and got to Tancheon a minute or so before kick-off. It was 10,000 won to get in and I sat in the East Stand, near to the half-way line. Akpo Sodje and his Chinese team mates didn’t seem to be much of a draw to the people of Seongnam as I’d reckon that there were only about a thousand spectators present. The official attendance was 2,553, but there’s no way that there were as many as that in the ground. In fact Akpo had probably played in front of bigger crowds at Darlo.

Seongnam had their usual twenty ultras behind the goal to my right and as happens every week they were outnumbered by the away fans. It was closer than most games though, with only about fifty people at the other end supporting the visitors.

Tianjin Teda fans.

The pitch was looking good, probably the best I’ve ever seen it as Seongnam kicked off in their Watford strips with Tianjin Teda in all white. So, what about our English fella? Well, he wasn’t there. Despite having scored the week before, he hadn’t made the starting eleven. I scoured the subs bench, but he wasn’t there either. Marvellous.

Not there either.

So, that was a waste of time. As for the game, Seongnam went a goal up early on when a glancing header from Han Sang Woon dropped perfectly inside the back post. The visitors equalised twenty minutes from the end with an effort that the Seongnam keeper should have done better with.

This one didn't go in.

I cleared off with ten minutes to go, it was a bit too cold to hang about on the off-chance that Sodje might suddenly appear from nowhere like a Sunday League player who had slept in and missed his lift. Nobody else scored and the game finished one each.

Jen and I had been to Cheongju towards the back end of last season, but this weekend offered the opportunity to see their third division side Cheongju Jikji take on university opposition in the first round of the FA Cup, with a Hanwha Eagles pre-season baseball game the next day in the local baseball stadium. You can’t not take advantage of scheduling like that.

Cheongju is only about a hundred kilometres south of Seoul and the easiest way to get there is on a bus from Dong Seoul. They go every half hour, on the half hour, which had we known we’d have joined the line for tickets slightly earlier than twenty eight minutes past. Matters weren’t helped when a bloke pushed into the front of the queue, justifying his behaviour by the limited time to departure.

We had to run for the bus after getting our tickets and fortunately we boarded it with seconds to spare. I spotted the bloke who had pushed in ahead of us and gave him my best ‘You have brought shame on your ancestors’ stare. I really should learn the words for that one.

It took two hours for the bus to get to Cheongju and after lunch we took a taxi to the Cheongju Yongjeong Football Park. Cheongju are playing there this season whilst their usual Civil Stadium has some building work done to it. I remember when my Nanna had to move out of her house for a year or so in the late seventies. That was so that she could have an inside toilet installed. I’ve been to the Cheongju Civil stadium though and the facilities are fine, so I doubt that’s the reason. Maybe they are adding an extra tier to their seventeen thousand capacity stadium. It’s just what you need when you get crowds of a couple of hundred.

Yongjeong is a fair distance out of town, the journey taking half an hour and costing eleven thousand won. I was a little worried when we got there that I’d got the kick-off time wrong. The players on the pitch next to the entrance were packing their gear away and it looked as if their game might have just finished. It’s not unusual for kick-off times to change and it wouldn’t be the first time I’d been caught out.

First impressions weren't the best.

Fortunately there are three pitches in the complex and the FA Cup game was taking place on Pitch 1, a bit further over.

This helped.

Pitch 1 has the best facilities for spectators. It has a seating for about twenty yards either side of the half-way line with a roof covering the middle section where the VIPs sit. The less important people on either side get wet and have a view that is obscured by dugouts that aren’t much smaller than the stand itself.

The main stand before kick-off.

As the teams came out, we selected a vantage point towards the back which allowed us to see most of the pitch. The home side were in their Man City strip with the Ajou University students dressed up as Fulham.

Pre-match photo.

The complex is set amongst some small hills which provided a pleasant backdrop to the game. I looked around at the rustic setting and could see a few carefully tended grave mounds, some allotments planted with a variety of crops and the odd area that fly-tippers had left knee-deep in shite.

There was rain in the air as the teams kicked off, but it wasn’t heavy enough for me to need to seek shelter with the posh people and FA officials. I’d estimate that there were about a hundred and fifty spectators watching including three women in front of us whom I suspected all had sons playing for the home side. There was also a bloke behind us who spent the whole first half sniggering like Muttley off Dick Dastardly.

Don't even think about fouling one of their boys.

Cheongju Jikji had the best of the opening half hour and the home crowd got overly excited every time the ball reached the opposition penalty area. They had a decent chance after thirty-five minutes but the lad put his shot just wide of the post. Bang on half-time though, Cheongju got the opening goal. There wasn’t even time for the students to kick off again.

Jikji go close in the first half.

I’d hoped that going a goal down would encourage Ajou to be more positive in the second half and that’s what happened. Cheongju absorbed the early pressure but couldn’t prevent the visitors equalising on the hour. I’d tell you what the goal was like, but I was photographing some of the fans when it went in. You can just see the joy or anguish starting to appear on some of their faces.

One each.

Ajou kept it level until fifteen minutes from the end when the Cheongju number twenty-two got on the end of a free-kick and headed his side back in front. The visitors pressed forward again and had a couple of decent chances, hitting the post on one occasion before shooting straight at the Cheongju goalie soon afterwards. The mothers in front of us were in a state of panic and there wasn’t much sniggering coming from Muttley any more.

The view from behind the goal.

With a few minutes remaining Cheongju broke away and the right winger floated a cross into the box where his striker was waiting to put the game out of reach. He had time to direct his header anywhere he fancied and wisely chose to head it downwards. His header was a bit too effective though and the ball hit the ground somewhere near his feet. Luckily it worked out okay for him as the ball ballooned up and over the keeper, ending up in the back of the net.

The two goal advantage was enough to clinch it and Cheongju went through to the Second Round. We had to walk back towards the town for ten minutes or so before we could get a taxi. Whilst Cheongju’s temporary move allowed us to see a game at a different location, I think that I prefer the old Civil ground and I’m looking forward to seeing it with that extra tier.

One of the places where I’ve wanted to see a football match in Korea is at the Olympic Stadium. As far as I can tell, it’s the biggest ground in Korea, South Korea at least, and it’s got that touch of history about it. Apart from that, it’s the nearest stadium to where I live and I see it every time I go to watch the baseball at Jamsil.

The difficulty is that nobody plays there these days. There’s a student game takes place each autumn, I think, some sort of Korean version of the Varsity match, but whenever it’s been on, I’ve been somewhere else.

Maybe they should rent it to West Ham.

Third division Seoul United used to play there, but for the last couple of years they’ve been turning out in Hyochang or Nowon. For some reason though, they decided that what they needed for their first home fixture of this season, was a 69,000 capacity stadium. Woo hoo. Or maybe not. After having my hopes raised, they were quickly dashed when it was announced that whilst the game would take place at Jamsil, it would be on the nearby practice pitch rather than the main stadium.

The practice pitch is on the left, with the floodlights.

Marvellous. I doubt that they would have shunted Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis outside and told them just to run up and down the car park. Still, I hadn’t seen a game on the practice pitch before either, so I thought I’d go along anyway.

It was a sunny day, so I left early and walked there. It’s only forty minutes or so along a straight road that takes you past a few of the big hotels and the COEX centre, following the route of the subway. If I’d actually used the subway then the three stop journey would have taken six minutes, but as I say, I wasn’t in a hurry.

I passed the Art Nouveau City hotel where Jen and I sometimes go for their wine buffet on a mid-week evening. If I’m out of work sharpish, which I usually am, we can be in there not long after half past six and can spend a couple of hours in their comfy armchairs chugging fine wines that are limited only by the need to stand up again afterwards. They have food as well, so it’s a pretty good deal for thirty-odd thousand won and an ideal start to an evening.

We drink on the top floor. Partly because of the view but mainly because that's where they serve the wine.

Anyway, despite choosing to walk rather than get the subway, I was still at Jamsil two and a half hours before kick-off. I was wandering around, as you do, before spotting a bloke stood next to a Seoul United sponsored car. He looked at bit old to be a player, but turned out to be the manager.  We chatted briefly and he told me that after yet another change of plan the game would take place in the main stadium rather than the practice pitch. He also told me that they would win. Only one of those statements turned out to be correct.

The Seoul United manager. He has feet in real-life.

His team were beginning to arrive and in a sign that I’m getting older, they all looked about fourteen. I left him to do whatever managers do two and a half hours before kick-off and went and watched some baseball, a little more excited by the prospect of returning to see a game in the main stadium than a man of my age really should be.

I doubt that any of them were born when the Olympics were here.

Half an hour before kick-off I was back and was pleased to see that a gate to the main stadium was open and that there were people going inside. Not too many people mind. I counted them and reckon that including those in the media section who may or may not have just been sitting there so that they could place their food and drink on the tables provided, the attendance was one hundred and forty. In a stadium with a capacity of almost seventy thousand, that has to be the highest ever ratio of seats to arses at any game I’ve ever been to.

Plenty of space.

The teams came out and lined up before turning to face the Korean flag. It looked as if they were expecting the National Anthem, but it wasn’t played and ten seconds later they sheepishly turned back to the front. Seoul Utd were in a Newcastle strip, whilst Gyeongju had a very imaginative effort of yellow shirts with a green and red stripe. They combined this with blue shorts in what I’m sure was a contravention of some FIFA regulation limiting the number of colours in a kit.

It's still better than black and white stripes.

It was quite a lively opening few minutes with Seoul winning a couple of corners. They were cheered on by their five ultras, one of whom had brought his drum. All their chants followed the same format of shouting a player’s name followed by three bangs of the drum. It’s as well that they don’t have any single name Brazilians at this level, although thinking about it, a lot of them have a three syllable name and so it would still work quite well.

It's like the Gallowgate End in the seventies.

The visitors took the lead after twelve minutes. A deep cross to the Seoul back post was knocked back into the goalmouth where the keeper, at full stretch, couldn’t hold on to it. The Gyeongju striker who picked up the loose ball had time to pick his spot and put his side a goal up.

A quarter of an hour later, Seoul were level. Their number 14 managed to get away from his marker at a throw in and bore down on the keeper whilst a defender snapped away at his ankles like a bad tempered pug. Despite not striking the ball cleanly he still managed to hit it across the keeper and into the corner of the net. One each.

It's on its way in.

There were a couple of other chances before half-time but it remained level at the break. I took the opportunity to switch to the other side of the stadium and bask in the mid-afternoon sunshine. A great plan in theory, apart from it didn’t feel any warmer and I had the sun in my eyes.

Shortly after the re-start, Gyeongju were back in front when one of their strikers was played through the centre and he just managed to get to the ball before the advancing keeper, poking it past him to make it 2-1 to the visitors.

Gyeongju increased their lead on the hour when after a goalmouth scramble in which they should have scored twice before they did, they finally got the ball into the net. It looked at that point as if they might run away with the game. I glanced across at the Seoul manager on the other side of the stadium and wondered if he was mentally revising his pre-game prediction.

See, he does have feet.

Ten minutes from time, Seoul pulled one back to spark what should have been a frantic finish. It wasn’t though, as Gyeongju kept them pinned back in their own half and denied them the chance of throwing everyone forward.

Seoul press for an equaliser, whilst the linesman tries to levitate.

At the final whistle I took the opportunity to walk around the track and then up the 100m home straight. I didn’t cover the ground as quickly as Ben Johnson did all those years ago, but I’d had nothing stronger than a couple of cans of Cass and I’m not sure just how performance-enhancing that stuff really is.

The first day of a new season. Don’t you just love that day? Your team is unbeaten and possibly even top of the league if you support Aardvaark Athletic. It’s a day for optimism. Even for those of us who don’t have a team that they feel too strongly about in Korea, it’s a chance to put the basketball to one side and go to a proper match.

The build-up to a new season had been slightly spoilt for me as I’d just returned from a fortnight in Europe where I’d been able to see some matches in Spain. Fixtures at Real Betis, Sevilla Atletico and Arcos de la Frontera had taken the edge of my appetite somewhat. As a child I was always told not to eat sweets before my dinner, this though was more like eating a Sunday roast before a bowl of cabbage soup.

Real Betis fans celebrating a goal.

Still, football is football and you can’t be sitting in the house when there is a game on. I’d thought about heading down to Jeonju to see Jeonbuk kick-off their season. Lee Dong Gook is in prime form at the moment having scored three times for the national team in the last week, but I was still a bit jet-lagged though and settled for the nearby third division game between Bucheon 1995 and Cheonan.

I say nearby, but it’s an hour on the subway to Sosa and then a fair walk to Bucheon’s thirty-five thousand seater stadium. Yes, thirty-five thousand. Just what you need when you play in a division that rarely has more than two hundred spectators at a match. Although it does mean that you don’t have to worry about getting a ticket in advance.

The ground is signposted from the station and after a ten minute stroll through town you come to a park. The local authorities have very kindly mapped out some hiking trails through it, one of which looked to go pretty close to the ground.

The scenic route.

I had about an hour to spare before kick-off and despite feeling a bit ropey after a late night tackling the jet-lag with wine and cigars, I thought that I might as well take the trail. It was a bit more undulating than I’d hoped and was fairly busy. There were numerous exercise areas along the way including a couple of large temporary buildings. One was full of badminton players, the other sounded as if it was hosting a hand slapping competition. Do you remember that game from when you were a kid where you had to hold your hands out in front of you, palms together? You had to hold them still until your opponent who was trying to slap them made his move. Once he had begun his swing, you could pull your hands out of the way. If you moved too soon, he got a free slap. Well, that’s would appeared to be going on in one of the buildings. Either that or they are now setting up S&M room salons in the woods.

Along the trail.

After one steep climb I reached a viewing platform and was rewarded with my first sight of the stadium. It didn’t look too far away and I was reasonably confident of getting there by the 3pm kick-off time.

That's it there.

The trail brought me out quite close to the stadium car park and I took the opportunity to have a peak through one of the locked gates before finding out where I could get in. Oh dear. No goal posts and the pitch was covered up like a snooker table at a posh wedding reception.

That's not good at 3pm on a Saturday.

I wasn’t too bothered by this, there is a practice pitch behind the stadium which in reality is much more suited to games at this level. A similar situation had happened last year to me at Ansan and whilst I’d been keen to see a game in their main Wa Stadium I did enjoy watching the game from a tightly packed small stand on their auxillary pitch.

I walked around the edges of the ground and could hear plenty of shouting from up ahead. It sounded like I’d missed the kick-off, but again that’s not such a big deal. As the practice pitch came into view I could see people on it. They didn”t look like footballers though. Or at least not footballers playing in an organised game. As I got closer I could see that it was kids having a kickabout or riding their bikes, with a few adults walking dogs.

Not here either.

This was a little more worrying. I’ve turned up a few times in the past to discover a game has been taking place somewhere else and this looked like another of those occasions. I wandered about for a bit trying to find another pitch, but there wasn’t one. After half an hour or so I gave up and headed back to Yeoksam. I later found out that the game had been switched to Cheonan, although I’ve no idea why. I didn’t miss much by the sound of it with the game finishing goalless.

In the game that I should have gone to, Jeonbuk won their opening fixture 3-2, with Lee Dong Gook scoring twice to become the all-time K-League highest goalscorer and to bring his total for the season (and the week) to five. That’s a bit better start to the season than I’ve had.