I’m gradually working my way through the Northern League, although with promotions, relegations, resignations and lateral transfers for geographical reasons, it seems a never-ending task. Today’s game was in the Second Division at the Eastbourne Community Stadium in Darlington.
Home side Darlington Town are new to tier nine, having won the Wearside League last season. Chester-le-Street United have been at this level for three seasons now and from what I read online, appear to exist for the purpose of showcasing young footballers hoping for a career in the game. I might be wrong, but I think they are full-time with the players investing in their future by paying to play. They regularly take on the academy teams from clubs higher in the pyramid.
It was six quid to get in. Having turned sixty, I was tempted to ask what the age for concessions was, but I let it go. Anyway, it doesn’t feel right to be paying a reduced rate whilst I’m still gainfully employed.
There was a raffle for a basketful of booze, much of which looked like repurposed unwanted Christmas gifts. I bought a ticket anyway, despite suspecting that if I won, many of the bottles would go into a cupboard and remain there until I could re-gift them myself.
I took a seat in the small covered stand along one side and behind a sausage dog. There were also a couple of even smaller covered stands on the opposite side that might each have accommodated fifteen or so standing spectators.
It was a cold day, and I was glad that I’d nipped up to the loft before the game and looked for the big coat that I’d bought when living in Moscow. In the inner pocket I discovered a ticket from a 2021 Moscow Dynamo game, which might have been the last time I’d worn it.
The visitors took the lead ten minutes in when a corner wasn’t cleared, and someone bravely stuck his head amongst some flying boots. Chester-le-Street’s good start was undermined fifteen minutes later when one of their players was sent off for what looked like an off-the-ball elbow.
At half-time I nipped out to the burger van where I saw a kid try to salt his chips only for the cellar top to come off and deposit the entire contents of the container into the tray. He reacted as if nothing untoward had happened and nonchalantly walked away with his food as if he always went for an equal ratio of condiments to chips.
Darlington Town struggled to make an impression on the game after the break. The visitors should have gone two-up mid-way through the half when they were awarded a penalty, but it was blazed over the bar. There was some home pressure towards the end, but Chester-le-Street held on for the three points.
This month marked the fiftieth anniversary of my first Boro match, a home win against Birmingham at Ayresome Park. My second Boro game was actually fifty years to the day, a Boxing Day victory over Sheff Utd. Fifty years feels right for both those games as I was only a kid. What does seem strange though is that I only watched games at Ayresome for twenty years and we are now approaching the thirtieth anniversary of the move to the Riverside. Time moves much more quickly these days.
It’s moving quickly for Harry too as this was his last day as a thirteen-year-old. It barely seems any time at all since I rocked up at North Tees after he was born with some mince and mash for his Mam.
We got to the ground early enough to catch up with Tom and his mate Murgy in the fan zone. There were long queues for the bar, but Murgy very generously gave me a can of Stella from a carrier bag-full that he had brought with him.
It all started very well with Doak putting us one up early on and then Azaz adding a couple more. With half an hour gone we were three up and quite a lot of the away fans were streaming out for an early start back down the A19. Wednesday had a couple of chances towards the end of the first half, but when they went off at the break my main interest was whether we would emulate the 8-0 result against them from the Charlton’s Champions season.
It all went tits up after the restart. Latte Lath had an easy opportunity to square it to Doak for a fourth but took the shot himself. Wednesday went straight down the other end and pulled one back. Even then, I wasn’t worried and was disappointed that the announcer didn’t troll them by referring to their goal as a consolation.
They quickly scored another, Rav got a red, new keeper Sol Brynn knacked his shoulder and suddenly it was three-each. The momentum was all with Wednesday for the last half-hour and from what had seemed a certain victory I finished up relieved to see us hold on for a point. I suppose that after fifty years I shouldn’t really be surprised by such a turn of events.
I was due back in the UK for Christmas and New Year, but with the Usyk-Fury re-match scheduled for the 21st December I delayed my return for a couple of days and rerouted my flight via Riyadh. I’d learned my lesson from their first fight about the difficulty in getting a taxi after the fight and this time I booked an apartment, or rather a ‘studio’, a ten-minute walk from the Kingdom Arena.
I’ve a feeling that I might have been the only person to ever stay for two consecutive nights in that building as most of the other rooms appeared to be occupied by couples renting them by the hour.
I’d bought my ticket well in advance on the secondary market, but by fight night there were still plenty on sale and it clearly hadn’t sold as well as the first bout. As last time, there were plenty of Brits around, with groups of blokes all dressed identically in tight polos, tailored shorts, running shoes and those little trainer socks. I wondered whether that’s how people dress now back home or whether that’s their ‘Dubai’ clobber.
My ticket was for the floor area this time and posh enough to give me access to a lounge where there was a constantly replenished supply of little cakes. There were free drinks too, although the queue for a coffee was sufficiently long that when I needed an early-hours caffeine boost it was much quicker to nip outside and buy one instead.
My seat was close enough to the ring for me to be able to watch the action, but as the seating wasn’t banked, I was glad of the screen above the ring that enabled me to miss nothing when people in front of me decided to stand up or go for a wander.
I’d delayed my arrival to watch the Boro draw with Plymouth, but even so, I only missed the opening undercard fight. Most of the supporting fights went the distance, with a shocking ‘home’ decision in the Fisher v Allen fight. The timings were running late until rising heavyweight star Moses Itauma managed to get things back on schedule with a first-round knockout in the penultimate bout. I was especially pleased about that as I had an early morning flight, and I didn’t want a delay to the main event to eat into the time available for sleep.
I found the main event a lot harder to score that their first fight as so many of the rounds seemed very close. I had it as even after twelve rounds, so was surprised at the announcement of a unanimous 116-112 decision, whichever way it went. I suppose that’s how it works though when the rounds are close. You could have a 120-108 shutout where one boxer just nicks every round as opposed to a 114-114 draw where one fella absolutely dominates for six rounds but narrowly loses the other six.
Anyway, as you know, Usyk took the decision and retained his belts. I doubt that I’d bother going to a third fight as it’s hard to see a different outcome.
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.
Jen and I had a week in Jordan planned and when looking at the flight options it made sense for us to meet in Dubai and then fly on from there. I’ve never really understood the attraction of Dubai, other than as a hub for going somewhere else. It’s a place where I’ve spent time doing some consultancy in the past, but other than drinking overpriced pints in the sunshine, I’ve never really found anything worthwhile to get up to.
We stayed down by the Marina, which has plenty of shade from the nearby skyscrapers. That made it ok for an early morning walk before the temperature rose sufficiently to make it uncomfortably warm.
I had the option of going to a lower-level football game, but it was a fair distance outside of town and would have finished quite late. We headed for the races instead, mainly due to it finishing slightly earlier than the football but also because it had the added benefit of plenty of bars. We’d got lucky in a way, in that this was the first meeting of the season at Meydan.
I’d bought tickets in advance for an enclosure managed by a pub-chain, McGettigan’s. Presumably that’s a name concocted to sound as Irish as possible. Basic admission was about a tenner, but we paid another fifty quid each or so for a wristband that allowed unlimited drink for a three hour timeframe.
There wasn’t any gambling, or at least there wasn’t for me as I couldn’t access my UK bookies account. Other people seemed to have no trouble placing a bet by phone, but I suppose as they lived there then they were up to speed on all the dodges.
Instead, there was ‘competition’ with a cash prize for anyone who could select the winner in, I think, six races. A sort of placepot, just without the variable pot. It seemed very popular, but I didn’t find out about it until after the first race had gone off.
After a month in Saudi, I made the most of my wristband and it was a pleasant evening sitting drinking as the sun went down. It reminded me a little of when we used to live in Seoul and we would pop down to the baseball after work. Then, as now, we had no real interest who won, the sport was there simply to provide a backdrop to the unwinding. It was just as well really, as we didn’t pick a winner all night.
My trip to Riyadh had been based around football, but with my flight back to Al-Ula not departing until the evening of the following day, I had some spare time. The main activity in Riyadh seems to be shopping and I’ve little interest in that.
Fortunately, there was a race meeting going on and so after lunch I took a taxi to the King Abdulaziz racetrack. I can’t remember how much I paid to get in, but it wasn’t much. The stands were impressive, although well over the top for such a small crowd.
The facilities were impressive too, and I had a choice of eating from one of a handful of stalls or picking up something from a counter inside the main stand. I initially watched from a seat in a large stand and then moved down to a picnic table next to the track for a different perspective.
I was a little worried about getting to the airport on time, so only stayed for the first four races. That was sufficient though to get a feel for the place. I imagine that for the big meetings there would be quite an atmosphere and I’d be interested in experiencing a race meeting where nobody has been drinking.
My taxi from the Kingdom Arena dropped me outside of Al Shabab Club Stadium with twenty minutes to go to kick-off. I’d already bought my ticket online for forty riyals, which is around eight quid.
I was welcomed by just about everyone who caught my eye. Maybe I stand out as an elderly Brit. I was also asked at least twice if I was there ‘to watch Ronaldo’. Truth is, I’ve little interest in him. If anything, his presence just makes it harder for me to get tickets and clogs the pavement up with people who might only go to a game once or twice a year.
Al Shabab Club Stadium is nominally forty years old, but it was just about fully re-built a couple of years ago. The new version holds fifteen thousand, but even with Ronaldo making an appearance, the capacity wasn’t tested.
My seat was along the side, about level with the edge of the penalty area. We were all given a large plastic flag to wave and some of us also received a goody bag containing stickers and a badge. I gave mine to the very polite small kid behind me who I suspected might have appreciated them more than I would.
Al Nassr had a few hundred fans behind the goal to my left and probably a fair number dotted around the rest of the stadium. Their season has got off to a poor start, albeit unbeaten, but too many drawn games has seen them slip behind leaders Al-Hilal. Al-Shabab were still in touch at the top end, but realistically wouldn’t be challenging for the title.
For those with an interest in how Ronaldo got on, he was ok. Just ok. He didn’t move around much and left the pressing to others whilst trying to ignore the frequent and tiresome chants of ‘Messi, Messi’.
Nothing of note happened until twenty minutes from time when Laporte put Al-Nassr a goal up. The visitors thought that they had added a second six minutes from time, but with the home fans streaming out it was chalked off by a VAR check, causing a lot of those Al-Shabab fans to make an about-turn and head back to their seats.
Their return appeared justified on ninety minutes when an own goal levelled the score. It wasn’t to last though and Al-Nassr were awarded a penalty seven minutes into added time. Bizarrely, there were chants of ‘Ronaldo’ from many of the fans around me who to all intents had previously appeared to be supporting the home side.
Ronaldo made no mistake from the spot to move one nearer to his target of a thousand goals. You’d think that would have been it, but with twelve minutes of added time elapsed a VAR penalty was awarded to Al-Shabab for a challenge that had taken place a good two minutes earlier. With the home fans holding their breath, their penalty came back off the post and was hoofed away with the final kick of the game. I’m glad I didn’t leave early.
On the way out I struck up a conversation with a teenage Shabab fan. He was bemoaning the lack of investment in his team and the unfairness of only having seen his club win one league title. I pointed out that in fifty years of watching the Boro, I’d never seen my club win the top division and that even if I’d been a hundred years older it would have been no different.
There’s not a great deal goes on in Al Ula, certainly as far as sport is concerned, and so I decided to take an overnight trip to Riyadh. The attraction was the chance to see two Saudi Pro League games at grounds where I hadn’t previously watched football and which were taking place no more than a fifteen-minute taxi ride apart. Who could pass up that opportunity?
I flew in on a lunchtime flight and checked into a hotel where I was given a room without a window. If I’d been there with Jen or staying for a few nights I might have asked to move to something a bit posher, but as I only there for one night I decided that I could live with it. I slept very well in the absence of any natural light, so maybe I should specify a windowless room in future.
My hotel was within walking distance of the second game and so I took at taxi to the Kingdom Arena for the first match. It’s the venue where I watched the Tyson v Usyk fight back in May and, just like on that previous occasion, I was dropped off a long way from my entrance.
Al Hilal’s App is a nightmare to navigate. So much so that I was unable to use it to buy a ticket. Instead, I utilised the secondary market, paying one of the tout sites double the rate for a seat behind the goal that had a face value of sixteen quid.
Block 21 turned out to be the home fans section. It was free seating and as kick-off drew nearer everyone was forced to budge up and fill any empty places. Flags had been left on our seats in anticipation of a pre-match celebration of Al-Hilal’s sixty-seventh birthday.
There were a few fans from Al-Feiha behind the goal at the other end and some more sparsely populated areas along each side of the pitch.
The visitors had Chris Smalling at centre-half. Some of you, although not many I imagine, will recall that he was briefly on the Boro’s books as a teenager, before quickly having his contract cancelled due to homesickness. You’d think Saudi Arabia would be more different to adjust to than Middlesbrough was, but maybe he settles somewhere new a lot easier these days.
Smalling didn’t really look fit to me, and I’d imagine someone with a decent turn of pace would just have to run around him, although he’d no doubt be useful throwing his weight around at set pieces.
Al Hilal had most of the possession and the chances. They scored their first goal after five minutes and should really have been out of sight by half-time. Two further goals in the second half were enough to clinch the victory.
The easy win kept Al-Hilal at the top of the table and in pole position to retain their title. I skipped the post-match celebrations and legged it outside where I was able to hop into a waiting taxi and make the short journey up the road for my second game of the evening.
Paul and I went out to Qatar for the 2022 World Cup and saw games at five of the eight tournament stadiums. I’d assumed that having ticked the country off my list, I’d be unlikely to add to my total of Qatari stadiums visited.
What I hadn’t allowed for was a missed flight connection that left me with twenty-four hours kicking my heels in Doha before my rescheduled onward flight.
A quick check on the Futbology App revealed that there were a couple of games within a manageable distance of my hotel. The fixture I selected was in the Qatari Stars Cup, which I think might be a tournament that exists to keep busy those players who hadn’t been called up by their countries during the international break.
I bought a thirty-riyal VIP ticket online and took the subway to the Suhaim bin Hamed stadium. It’s a lot smaller and older than the grounds I’d been to during the World Cup, dating back forty years and accommodating a maximum crowd of twenty thousand.
After a quick glance at the trophy cabinet, I took my seat in the main stand. Nothing about the experience struck me as being for VIPs and I might as well have paid ten riyals for what would have been a similar view.
I got chatting to a couple of Al-Ahli fans who very kindly pointed out the German international Julian Draxler and some other guy who had played for PSG. They also told me that they’d been at the same stadium for a Diamond League athletics meeting earlier in the year that had attracted a capacity crowd. There were barely a hundred people watching this fixture.
Perhaps the low attendance was due to neither of the teams regularly playing at the ground. One of the competition quirks is that neutral venues are used. That’s great for groundhoppers, but a likely irritant to most regular supporters.
Neither side seemed to over-exert themselves. Al-Shahaniya took the lead in the first half and Al-Ahli equalised soon after the break. This stage of the competition is a mini-league and both sides looked content to avoid defeat.
On my return drive to the airport the next morning I passed the World Cup stadium that incorporated shipping containers into its design. I’d thought that it had been dismantled immediately after the tournament but from what I could see it was still intact. If I get another flight delay in the future, perhaps I’ll get the opportunity to see a game there too.
I had some university stuff to do in Chelmsford the first weekend in October and as it’s a shortish journey by train from London I thought it an ideal opportunity for Jen and I to spend a few days in the capital and do some touristy things.
We stayed in Camden, just around the corner from KOKO, the music venue that used to be known as Camden Palace. I’ve seen a few gigs there over the years, including Bruce Foxton almost forty years ago. Our apartment overlooked some wasteland, and a highlight was watching a fox napping in the early morning sunshine.
We got up to the usual stuff like drinking in Soho and some less usual stuff such as an absinthe lecture and tasting in Hackney. It was an educational way to pass an hour or so and I came away with a better knowledge of the drink than I’d started with. I doubt I’ll change my regular nip from whisky, but I quite liked the arse on of dissolving sugar into the absinthe by dripping liquid onto a spoon and then into the glass.
We also went on a mudlarking session close to the Millenium Bridge. It’s a popular area for poking about in the mud, so I’d no real expectations of discovering anything valuable on the riverbank. I found a few sheep teeth, some clay pipe stems, various small pieces of broken pottery and an Elizabethan two-shilling coin dating back to 2017.
Best part of the trip was a Dee C Lee gig at KOKO. She was touring her new album with fellow Style-Councillor Steve White on drums. They were joined by Mick Talbot for Paris Match meaning that only Mr. Weller was missing for a full reunion. I’d initially been hopeful that he’d turn up and sit in for a couple of songs as Mick did, particularly as his daughter Leah was providing the support, but he didn’t show. It was probably better that way as it was a good gig in its own right, and his presence would likely have overshadowed everything else.
Sports-wise, we didn’t get up to very much. There was the option of visiting Crayford and Romford dog tracks, but in the end, we settled for a football game at The Valley in the Women’s second-tier Championship. We started our match-day journey early on the Sunday morning at Westminster Pier and took a boat trip along the Thames to Greenwich. It was all very interesting, and I picked up a few snippets from the commentary about the history of the buildings that we chugged past.
After arriving at Greenwich, we visited the Cutty Sark and then Greenwich Observatory. Both were busy and provided elevated views of London along the Thames and then from the top of the hill in Greenwich Park.
It was around an hour’s walk from Greenwich Observatory to The Valley, through estates that reminded me of my year living in Plumstead in the mid-eighties. We arrived with time to spare and as I’d bought hospitality tickets in advance for twenty-one quid a pop, we were able to head inside through the main entrance and take the stairs to the 1905 lounge.
We had some Coq au Vin with mash and watched Scottish football on the telly before making our way outside to the padded seats in the Director’s Box. There wasn’t much of a crowd with virtually as many in hospitality as in the rest of the main stand.
Expectations seemed to be for a home win as Charlton were sitting at the top of the league with a perfect four wins from their opening four matches.
Sunderland clearly hadn’t read the script though and quickly went two up, before Charlton pulled one back on the half-hour. It looked as if the Mackems had clinched the points when they added a third goal twelve minutes from time. Charlton weren’t done though and scored twice in the final stages to level the score at three-each. I thought the result fair, although as you’d expect, the home players and fans were clearly happier with their late point than the visitors were with a point that I’m sure they would have taken had it been offered beforehand.
The return trip was a little quicker as we were able to catch a bus back to Greenwich Pier from close to the ground. With minimal waiting for the penultimate boat of the day we were soon back at Westminster Pier.
Trail of the Lion King 