Archive for the ‘Sausage eating wolves’ Category

Al Sareeh v Al-Faisaly, Saturday 9th November 2024, 8.30pm

December 11, 2024

One of things that that I try to do whenever I’m working away from the UK is to visit the countries near to where I’m staying. It worked especially well when we lived near Kuala Lumpur, and we spent a lot of time exploring the region with a mix of iconic sights and low-level sport.

Nobody would ever think of describing Al Ula as a ’hub’. There are usually around four flights a day, mainly internal and so it takes a bit of planning, and some time off work, to visit just about anywhere. Jordan is one of the places that I’d been lining up for a while. Petra, of course, is a well-known tourist destination and equally importantly, it’s a country where I’d not yet seen a football game.

The trip didn’t get off to the best of starts. I’d booked a hire car from the only agency that claimed to be at the airport, rather than off-site. They lied. After some difficulty tracking the guy that had arranged to meet us, we were taken to the middle of nowhere. I began to wonder if they had a side gig in organ harvesting. When we arrived we were offered a car that not only had more than a hundred thousand miles on the clock, but it looked as if it had spent most of those miles competing in demolition derbies or delivering coal. I couldn’t be arsed to go back to the airport and start the whole process again though and so we took it.

Our first couple of nights were in Amman and we made the obligatory visits to the Citadel and Roman Amphitheatre. They were fine. Of more interest were the pavement pet shops that we saw whilst walking back in the direction of our hotel. I quite like the idea of someone passing by and, on a whim, buying half a dozen week old ducklings.

The next stop was Wadi Rum for a couple of nights in the desert. It’s a four hour drive south from Amman and, as it’s close to the Saudi Arabian border, it’s probably not much further away from Amman as it is from Al Ula. The rock formations at Wadi Rum were spectacular and we spent time riding camels and hiking early in the morning whilst there was still some shade.

Jen and I were also driven around in the back of a pick-up to see rock carvings and places of interest. Lawrence of Arabia featured heavily with stops at his house, a spring that he drank from and a secluded corner where he had a piss.

The camp that we stayed in was virtually empty. On the first night a Dutch couple were there but on the second night we had the entire twelve tent set up to ourselves. Apparently, tourism virtually halted a year ago with the escalation of hostilities in the region. We passed other camps that also seemed deserted and at some of the destinations on the pick-up drive around, we were the only people there.

I felt sorry for the camp owner, who was just a young lad and had clearly made a big investment in his business. He seemed upbeat about prospects, but how do you absorb a year’s worth of bookings just vanishing?

The final part of our trip was three nights in Petra. It was about an hour or so’s drive back in the direction of Amman. Whilst hammering along the motorway I noticed something unusual in the middle lane. I slammed on the brakes and realised just in time that it was a puppy. Fortunately, there were no cars immediately behind me, so I was able to leap out and grab him. He can’t have been more than about six weeks old.

We tried googling animal shelters but that doesn’t seem to be a thing in Jordan. If I’d been in England I’d have kept him, but we eventually decided that his best chances of survival were to be dropped off where there were plenty of people and few cars. We found a spot in the next town and got a few strange looks as we abandoned him, but it gave him a better chance of surviving than he’d had twenty minutes earlier.

Petra was virtually as quiet as Wadi Rum. We stayed in a five-storey hotel right by the main gate which had only five guests. The Petra site was similarly deserted, which was great. Quite often we found ourselves with no other people in sight. On the third day we hiked in from a back gate to the tomb known as The Cathedral and it felt like we had the hiking trail to ourselves.

At times, there were more stray cats and dogs than people. Cats seemed appropriate to be wandering ancient tombs, but the dogs looked out of place. I always think a dog should have a human of its own.

Good as all the tourist stuff was, I needed to tick off a football ground to make the visit complete. There weren’t many options, and the only match of the trip took place on our first night in Jordan. Getting there required a forty-minute drive north from our hotel in Amman to the Prince Mohammed stadium at Zarqa. The roads were poor, as they were in most of Jordan, and I seemed to hit a pothole every few hundred yards.

The fixture was in the Shield Cup and from what I could gather, was being played at a neutral ground. It’s a pity that we hadn’t arrived in Jordan a few hours earlier as there had already been a game in the same competition at the ground that afternoon.

We were able to park at the stadium and had a chat with a lad hoping to pick up some of the passing shisha trade. He mentioned that he was a Liverpool fan then directed us further along the stand to the nearest entrance gate.

There wasn’t a ticket office, or at least not one that I could see and a guy scanning tickets pointed us in the direction of a young lad who he reckoned would sort us out. It seemed that the section we were trying to get into was for the Al-Faisaly fans and one of their ultras had been tasked with buying tickets online for anyone who turned up without having made prior arrangements.

We gave him four Jordanian Dinars each and once he’d downloaded the tickets, he accompanied us to the entrance and the first fella scanned them from his phone. It all seemed a lot more complicated than just handing cash over without involving the middleman, but that’s modern life.

We were then searched, and Jen had two cans of fake coke that we’d bought ten minutes earlier confiscated. When I asked if we could drink them there and then, someone intervened to point out that elderly visitors from abroad would be unlikely to misbehave and we ended up having our drinks returned to us to take into the stand.

We had seats along the side of the pitch, facing the main stand. Prince Mohammed Stadium was built in 1998 and has a current capacity of 11,400. It’s an artificial surface with a running track between the pitch and the stands.

Every now and then a group of Al-Faisaly fans would wander over to chat, checking out who we were, why we were there or explaining to us the difference between ultras and hooligans. One group of young lads even offered to take us out to a restaurant to sample the Jordanian national dish of mansaf.

I think Al-Faisaly were expected to win but unfortunately for the fans around us that’s not how it worked out. Al-Sareer had the better of the chances, but the game didn’t really take off until the final ten minutes when Al-Faisaly had a man sent off and then Al-Sareer took advantage of their numerical advantage to nick a late winner.

More importantly, I’d ticked off a football ground in my sixty-second different country.

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Kendal Town v Newcastle Benfield, Saturday 17th August 2024, 3pm

September 20, 2024

I rarely go to music festivals these days but make an exception for Krankenhaus as it is run by Sea Power and, if nothing else, it means I get to see them play twice in a weekend. It’s held at Muncaster Castle in the Lake District. At least I think it’s the Lakes, although I’m never really sure where the boundaries stop and start.

We’ve camped at Krankenhaus twice before, but the rain last year lessened the enjoyment, especially for Jen, and so this year we returned to a house that we’d stayed in a couple of years ago. We took Soph’s beagle, Henry, and the highlight of the fortnight for him was when four trail hounds detoured from the fells into our garden. He had found his tribe. Unfortunately, it became less of a highlight for him when his tribe found the bone that he’d been enjoying and disappeared up the lane with it. It’s a dog’s life.

On the drive down to Muncaster, we broke the journey in Kendal. And what do you know? There was a football game going on. Who’d have thought that might happen? Jen spent a couple of hours wandering around the town whilst Henry and I took in the FA Cup Preliminary Round fixture between Kendal Town and Newcastle Benfield.

It was seven quid to get in and we settled into the back row of seats behind the goal at the clubhouse end. Henry spent most of the first half sleeping, perking up only if someone carrying a burger or a tray of chips made their way in our direction.

Both sides currently turn out in Division One of the Northern League. Newcastle Benfield have been there for the past twenty years, but it’s a new experience for Kendal Town who were moved laterally at the start of the season from the Premier Division of the Northwest Counties League. I suspect that travelling to the Northeast for most of their fixtures will soon wear a bit thin.

It will be interesting to see how Kendal get on in the Northern League. I’ve a suspicion that the standard is dropping with some many of the former Northern League clubs now making their way higher up the pyramid.

There were four stands dotted around the Parkside Road ground. In addition to the seats behind the goal where Henry and I had taken up residence, there were two stands along the side to our right and a small fourth covered area to our left. Whilst there were a few people in that stand, its main function was for storing lawnmowers.

The Mintcakes should have gone a goal to the good early on from a penalty, but it was struck a little too close to the Benfield keeper and he was able to keep it out.

There weren’t a lot of chances in the remainder of the first half, but just before the break a cross from the left was tapped in by a visiting striker to put Benfield one-up. He celebrated by shushing the home crowd and was rewarded with a volley of abuse, most of which suggested that he might like to promptly return to the Northeast.

At half-time I walked Henry across to the sloped grassy area just beyond the lawnmower storage stand and we watched the remainder of the game from there. The levels of niggle, if that’s a thing, increased and the visiting coach or manager was sent from his dugout to a spot on the rail behind the goal. It didn’t seem to reduce his ability to coach and probably gave him an advantage when Benfield had a corner.

One of the highlights of the second half was when the lino flagged for offside from a throw-in. He got some stick from those still on the Benfield bench for that decision and sheepishly lowered his flag as soon as he realised his mistake.

Kendal drew level with a quarter of an hour to go. I saw the ball crossed into the box but missed the finish as I’d glanced down to see what Henry was rolling in. Fox shit, I suspect.

I was paying better attention when the shushing striker notched his second goal of the afternoon, heading home from close range in added time to put Benfield one step closer to Wembley.

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Antequero v Yeclano Desportivo, Saturday 15th April 2023, 6pm

May 14, 2023

Our week in Spain was mainly spent in the hills between Alora and Antequero. One evening we heard what sounded like wolves howling. I googled ‘wolves in Andalucía’ and learned that there are indeed wolf packs living wild in the region. Pretty good, eh? Some people aren’t keen on wolves, but I reckon that they are just like dogs and I’ve yet to meet a dog that didn’t get on with me. You just give them a treat and ruffle their fur a bit.

My Google search also revealed that there was a wolf park a few kilometres away in the direction of Antequero. We went along and had a look, although there was no fur ruffling allowed. The lady who showed us around confirmed that, if the winds are right, their nocturnal howling can be heard in the area that we were staying. The news came as a disappointment, as I was hoping that I’d see one walking past our cabin in the hope of being fed some sausages.

Anyway, we were back in the same area the next day for some football. It was a fourth-tier game between Antequero and Yeclano Desportivo. The hosts were fourteen points clear at the top of the table with just five games remaining and a win would clinch both promotion and the title. I learned from their website that they were expecting a sell-out and with the ticket office and ground opening an hour and a half before kick-off, we got there early.

There was already a lengthy queue when we arrived, but we were soon able to buy ten euro tickets for the uncovered stand. I turned down the option of a pig’s leg raffle ticket on the basis that with no wolves likely to pass our door Jen and I would have to consume the whole limb ourselves in the three days we had remaining.

El Mauli stadium holds seven thousand and quickly filled up. I suspect that a lot of the crowd weren’t any more regular attendees than we were, but were drawn in by the chance of being part of their team’s history and to catch up with old friends from their match-going days. There was a definite buzz about the place, but very little tension which is just as you’d expect when your team needs only a single point from their remaining five games. It wasn’t Leicester ’88.

Yeclano weren’t there to make up the numbers though, as they were in third place in the table with promotion hopes of their own, albeit via the play-offs. They had brought six fans with them and as many banners as well as a drum and a loudhailer. It was a friendly atmosphere though with no segregation and genuine banter between both sets of fans. The only involvement that the police had was to request that the Yeclano banners be moved so that they didn’t obscure some advertising hoardings.

Antequero were in green and white halves with black shorts and socks, with Yeclano in a sort of knock-off Milan kit. The first half was cagey with few chances apart from one home attack that required an impressive triple save from the visiting keeper.

The deadlock was broken by Antequero a few minutes into the second half, but Yeclano weren’t out of it and always looked to have a goal in them. It meant that the Cava remained on ice until a couple of minutes from time when a second home goal signalled the start of the festivities. It wasn’t my party and so on the final whistle I left them to it. As we drove away, we had to pause to allow an open topped bus to enter the stadium. Clearly it was going to be some evening.

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