Horseracing at Aintree, Friday 12th April 2024

August 11, 2024

I’d booked tickets for a couple of days at the Grand National meeting last summer, soon after the football fixtures came out confirming that the Boro had an away game. These days I rarely know what I’ll be doing ten months into the future but sometimes you just have to make your plans and see if they work out.

As it turned out, the Grand National meeting coincided with a few days of public holiday in Saudi Arabia and so I headed back to the UK for a short break. Jen and I broke the journey to Liverpool with an overnight stay in Sheffield for a Paul Weller gig at the City Hall.

He was great, as ever. I’m not overly keen on long gigs, but the twenty-nine-song set flew by. He drew heavily on new stuff, which I’m fine with, playing just the two Jam songs and three from the Style Council days. He could quite easily have played an entirely different twenty-nine songs from his back-catalogue with no drop in quality. Who else could do that? Could McCartney get away with just two Beatles songs and three from Wings? And if he did, could he swap out the entire rest of the set for twenty-four different solo songs to those he usually plays? I doubt it.

It was amusing, as ever,  to see all the old blokes dressed as Weller, or even better, with their Weller haircuts. Dressing like Weller is fine as most of the stuff that he wears is more than decent clobber. But don’t do it at one of his gigs, fellas, you’re not cosplaying at a Star Trek convention. Save it for popping out to Aldi.

Next morning we drove across Snake Pass to our hotel in Chester. I picked it because it was a reasonably easy journey by train to the racecourse. The hotel looked ok from the outside, but it was one of those places that caters primarily for coach tours and so wasn’t up to much. I felt sorry for all those American tourists calling in there between Loch Ness and Stonehenge.

After dropping off our bags we caught the train to Aintree. It soon filled up with smartly dressed young people pre-gaming on Echo Falls rose. Our tickets were for the Princess Royal Roof, which is somewhere that Paul and I had watched the National from back in 2008. It seemed a lot busier on this occasion, despite it costing over a hundred quid and it not even being Grand National day.

It was Ladies Day and so a certain amount of dressing up went on. I’d been expecting to see some Peaky Blinder blokes, but that fashion seems to have slipped into the past. There was a good atmosphere about the place although the next day I read reports that some fighting had gone on.

The drinks were expensive. Maybe I’m getting out of touch, but over twenty quid for a pint of Worthingtons, a can of wine and a lemonade mixer struck me as outrageous. As did the scrum to get served. We switched to champagne at eighty-five quid a bottle from a dedicated bar instead, which didn’t seem too bad in comparison to the individual drinks, and I could buy it without having to stick my elbows out.

With just the one winner all day I avoided the scrum at the pay-out counters too.

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Olympiacos v Ferencvaros, Thursday 15th February 2024, 7.45pm

August 10, 2024

With my visa issues resolved and a return to Saudi Arabia imminent, I had a few meetings to attend at the company head office in Athens. As you might have expected, I checked out the possibilities for taking in a game during my three nights in town and got lucky with a Europa Conference League fixture at the Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium.

The match had sold out and so I picked up a thirty-euro ticket on the secondary market for fifty-two euros from Viagogo. I caught a train to the Piraeus area of Athens and arrived at a busy stadium a good hour before kick-off.

What I hadn’t realised was that all Greek football had been played behind closed doors for the past two months due to some violent incidents. This was the first game after the decision to allow the return of spectators. However, a new rule had been implemented that required everyone to show ID that matched the name on their ticket.

As my digital ticket had come from the secondary market it had something like Dave Zeus on it, whereas my passport, as you might have anticipated, was in my real name. I was turned away at my turnstile when I claimed that I didn’t have any ID with me.

I called Viagogo, but there was no answer. Fortunately, someone tipped me off that if I took out a membership in my own name for ten euros, I could use my shiny new membership card to buy a forty euro ticket. That’s what I did and was soon inside the ground. Ironically, the steward on my new turnstile didn’t check to see if my passport matched. Once he saw that I had ID he just waived me through.

Perhaps I should have tried that initially. On the plus side, Viagogo were very apologetic and had refunded my initial ticket price before we reached half-time.

There was a great atmosphere inside, which isn’t surprising when everyone had gone two months without going to a game. I was in the main stand with the home singing section behind the goal to my right. Ferencvaros had a section in the corner diagonally across from me and were celebrating a goal with less than a minute gone.

A VAR intervention brought the Hungarian joy to an abrupt halt and instead caused the sort of reaction around me that an Olympiacos goal would have done.

Ferencvaros had ex-Boro loanee Mo Besic on the bench and he remained there until there were just ten minutes to go. It wasn’t an inspired substitution as within sixty seconds of him coming on the home side went in front.

There were no more goals and the Olympiacos win meant that I was able to successfully leg it for the first available train at full-time whilst everyone around me celebrated the win.

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Middlesbrough v Bristol City, Saturday 10th February 2024, 3pm

August 9, 2024

After the Ireland trip, Jen and I took the ferry back to Holyhead and then the train to Manchester. We stayed overnight so that we could go to the Sea Power gig at the Albert Hall. It’s a great venue and, as always, they put on a decent show.

Next morning we travelled on the TransPennine Express to Thornaby. That’s a grand sounding name for what is a fairly mundane train. It was on time though and we had seats so they can call it whatever they like.

We were back early enough for Harry and I to get to the Boro game. Alistair missed out as he was at a party somewhere and as I didn’t have a car, we were happy to accept a lift from Tom. That meant a bonus couple of pre-match pints for me at the fanzone bar.

The game didn’t go well. Bristol City scored early on and then added a second within a minute. We looked as if we’d pulled one back with ten minutes to go, but it was ruled offside. An added time consolation from Sammy Silvera wasn’t actually much consolation at all.

The defeat left us in twelfth place, only four points off the play-offs, but with a lot of other teams better placed. That’s likely to be my last Boro game of the season and it looks pretty nailed on that we’ll be in the Championship again next year.

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Bray Wanderers v Shelbourne, Monday 5th February 2024, 3pm

August 9, 2024

Ireland does well for public holidays with ten compared to the UK’s eight. They even manage to squeeze a couple in between New Year and Easter. One of them, St Patrick’s Day, I knew about. That’s pretty much a partying day around the world. The other is for St Brigid’s Day.

For what it’s worth, St Brigid would appear to be famous for giving stuff away, ranging from all the family butter, which in our house would be a maximum of two packets, to her dad’s sword. Presumably she couldn’t find the butter knife. I’m not sure that sort of behaviour merits a public holiday, but it gave me the chance to watch a weekday game in the afternoon rather than the evening. That’s always welcome.

I drove down to Bray, which is half an hour or so along the coast in Wicklow. We travelled along the same route and then a bit further the following day for a couple of nights in the countryside which was fine. It included a visit to some jail from the olden days and if the weather had been better might well have involved some hiking.

This afternoon was all about the football though and a game in the group stage of the Leinster Senior Cup between Bray Wanderers of the second-tier First Division and Shelbourne of the top-tier Premier Division.

It was five euros to get into the Carlisle ground, which I later discovered has been hosting sporting events since 1862. It may very well be the oldest ground that I’ve ever been to. I’d check it out but I’m loathe to add to my stats lists. I already keep records of far too many things and, if you’re not careful, that sort of behaviour can easily end up with you weighing and cataloguing your turds.

I initially took a seat in the covered stand down one side. There was uncovered seating opposite and level standing behind each goal. There had been a ‘Fun Day’ earlier and so there were a lot of kids milling around, presumably having had their fun and now having to stay and watch the game.

I spotted one young lad wearing an Al-Hilal shirt with Neymar Jr. on the back. As I doubt that he’s a diehard Hilal supporter, it shows the way in which players are followed these days, rather than, or as well as, clubs. His mate sported a more traditional Mo Salah Liverpool top and I wondered whether he too would be wearing the shirt of a Saudi Arabian club before long.

Bray took the lead midway through the first half when some fella switched the ball from his right foot to his left and having opened up the opportunity, curled his shot into the corner of the net.

Three minutes later the home side doubled their lead with an equally good effort. This time it was a shot from outside of the box that ended up in the top right-hand corner of the net.

I watched the second half initially from the stand opposite and then leaning on the barrier at one end. There were no more goals and Bray, somewhat against the spirit of St Brigid, held on to what they had and took the points.

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Horse Racing at Leopardstown, Sunday 4th February 2024

August 8, 2024

The sporting events were coming fast and furious over the bank holiday weekend. There was a horseracing festival at Leopardstown, and I’d booked tickets in advance for day two.

The night before we’d seen Depeche Mode at the Dublin Arena which was a very convenient two-minute stroll from our hotel. Jen is more of a fan than I am. They are not a band that I’ve listened to much, but I liked some of their early Vince Clarke era stuff when I was a kid and they’ve had enough hits over the years to keep my attention.

Next morning we caught the tram to somewhere near the racecourse. It was packed with people dressed up. I’ve never really seen the need to go to the races in the sort of clobber that you’d wear to a wedding. Mind you, I barely see the point of it for a wedding either.

There were double decker shuttle buses waiting at the final tram stop to ferry people to the course and despite there being a crowd of around thirty thousand, it was all very straightforward to get in and out.

We’d paid forty euros a pop for regular tickets, which were fine. We had access to the parade ring and to a terraced standing grandstand. There were plenty of bars and I didn’t ever have to wait long for my next Guinness.

In a stroke of luck, I was able to watch the Boro’s game against Sunderland on the telly between races, although I missed our no-doubt well-taken goal on the hour and then their spawny equaliser towards the end.

I was less fortunate with the horses despite having spent half-an-hour or so making my selections that morning. I seem to recall just the one winner, which wasn’t at big enough odds to counter all of the losers. Jen picked some more on the basis of their names and they did no better. Perhaps we need a new system.

With rain imminent, we skipped the last race to avoid any bus or tram queues and were soon back in the city centre to continue celebrating the bank holiday weekend.

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Newington Youth v Newry City, Saturday 3rd February 2024, 3pm

August 7, 2024

As Dublin isn’t too far from the Northern Irish border, I took the opportunity to tick off football country number sixty-one with a visit to the Newry Showgrounds. It was an easy drive, and I was there early enough to park up close to the ground and wander past the nearby Gaelic football stadium to a petrol station that sold gloves and hats. It’s chilly in Northern Ireland in February.

The game was listed as a home fixture in the Irish Cup for Newington Youth, despite it being at Newry City’s ground. Maybe they’d switched venues for some reason. Newington are a club in the second tier of Northern Irish football with Newry in the top tier.

Newry City are fairly new, having been formed when Newry Town went bust a few years ago. They still play at the same ground though and it’s the place where Pat Jennings used to play for them back when they were Town. I liked Jennings. He was my favourite footballer until I discovered the Boro and Jim Platt took his mantle.

It was ten quid admission, and I was given an Irish tenner as change from my English twenty. Anxious not to be stuck with it I soon offloaded it for some raffle tickets and a tray of chips with curry sauce. The ground holds seven and a half thousand in theory, but it’s dropping to bits and currently limited to just two thousand. I don’t think that capacity was threatened for this fixture.

Newington showed more intent early on, but it was Newry that took the lead after a quarter of an hour, hitting the lower league team on the break. Newington were level within ten minutes though when the Newry keeper somehow managed to let a back post header slip underneath him. I doubt that Mr Jennings would have conceded that one, even at the age of seventy-eight.

Newington went ahead on the half-hour with a close-range tap in. The Newry fans were furious and blamed the lino for keeping his flag down. He did seem reluctant to get involved in the offsides, which is not really something you want from a bloke running the line.

I watched the second half standing behind the goal as Newington had numerous chances to put the game to bed. They didn’t take them though and after one effort went wide, a girl near me exclaimed “Shiver me timbers” in a similar tone that I might use when uttering “FFS”. It was worth the trip for that alone.

It finished two-one, and it was Newington that went through to the next round.

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Liffey Wanderers v Bangor Celtic, Friday 2nd February 2024, 7.45pm

August 6, 2024

With Jen back home from the States, we decided to take a trip to Ireland. A choice made primarily because my passport was away at the Saudi Arabian Embassy for a visa update, and I could travel to Ireland using my UK driving licence.

We took the train to Holyhead and then with a combined ticket caught a ferry to Dublin as foot passengers. It was all very easy.

Dublin was busy despite the time of year, and it seemed that most people knocked off work for the weekend at around ten o’clock on a Friday morning. I was happy to do the same and we wandered around the touristy bit around the river, mixing with the stags, hens and those who simply fancied a mid-morning Guiness.

I’d never been to Ireland before which is odd given its proximity and the fact that Ryanair used to fly from Teesside Airport. That meant that my first game would tick off another country in which I’d watched football, bringing my score up to sixty.

Whilst that seems a lot, most people who have followed their country home and away for a few years would probably have seen games in more countries. It’s only really when you’ve watched games in around a hundred or so countries that it becomes anything out of the ordinary.

The match was at the Irishtown Stadium, but on the astro pitch outside rather than in the stadium proper. It was a third-tier game with around eighty people braving the cold and the lack of anywhere to sit down. There was plenty of shouting, both on and off the pitch, but with little of it directed at the ref. I like that.

Wanderers were the better side, but it was competitive until the last ten minutes when two late goals sealed a three-nil win.

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Seaton Carew v Durham FC Corinthians, Saturday 27th January 2024, 2pm

August 5, 2024

After the latest European trip I had a few days back in the UK and took the opportunity to pop along to Hornby Park at Seaton Carew for an eleventh-tier game in the Wearside League Premier Division.

Seaton Carew is somewhere that I always associate with being at Hartlepool College of Further Education forty years ago. I was on ‘day release’ from work and if we didn’t spend our lunch break in the pub opposite the college, we would head in to Seaton Carew and play that Track and Field game in the arcades, the one where you made the character sprint by hammering down on a button as fast as you could.

Hornby Park seemed familiar too. I think it was the ground where my son played his first game for an under eights side. That was a wet day with a muddy pitch and he relished the sliding in that would likely result in a red card these days. Just like Hartlepool College, that, too, all seems such a long time ago.

Most of the spectators were loitering in the clubhouse and I was the first person to head out to the pitch. I was quickly followed by the fella who took the gate money and I handed over my three quid.

Industry provides the backdrop to the football. I should probably know what a lot of it is, but I’ve never really paid much attention to that sort of thing. There were some wind turbines out at sea, which I quite like. I accept that some people see them as an eyesore, but they’ll be gone when technology moves on and it will all return to how it looked for thousands of years.

This fixture was sixth v third, with Seaton in black and white and Durham in red and black. The home side got off to a great start with a goal in the first minute that they just about walked in. High winds made play difficult, but Durham seemed to adapt better by keeping the ball on the ground as much as possible.

Seaton looked to have clinched the points with quarter of an hour to go when the Durham keeper’s clearance bounced of the arse of a striker and was tucked away.

An away goal in added time direct from a corner created a bit of late interest but there wasn’t time for Durham to add to it and Seaton held on for the win.

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KS Tirana v Korabi Peshkopi, Wednesday 24th January 2024, 1pm

August 4, 2024

Albania is somewhere that I’d always wanted to visit. I remember Attila the Stockbroker rattling on about it forty years ago and it sounding like a place that appeared to be a further forty years back in time.

Life moves on though, and whilst I passed a roadside shepherd on my taxi ride from the airport to Tirana centre, everything else was just as you’d expect in a modern capital city.

The place was so spruced up that I wondered why so many Albanians head for England. I had a chat with a bloke in a market who sold me what he assured me was top quality wine, albeit in a plastic bottle. He reckoned that despite the appearances of being a place on the up, the economy was in a bad way. Three of his brothers had already moved to England to work in a car wash in Leyton and he had firm plans to join them.

I had a choice of games in the last sixteen of the Cup, unfortunately both taking place at the same time.  A barber that I went to suggested that I see his team, Partizan. They are the big club in town, but have a modern stadium and were an arse on to get to. Instead, I picked KF Tirana who were within walking distance of my hotel and play in a ground built in the mid-fifties.

I got there early. Too early, as it happened, as the ticket office hadn’t opened. I killed a bit of time with some lasagne for lunch before returning to hand over three hundred Leks for a ticket in the main covered stand. That’s two and a half quid.

I paid a further twenty leks for a paper wrap of blackened sunflower seeds from an old fella with a bike outside the entrance. When I look at the photo now, I reckon that he was younger than I am. FML as the bairns say. I usually like sunflower seeds, particularly if I’m not the one sweeping up, but removing the husks from these was a chew on. Literally. I tried eating the whole lot for the extra fibre but soon gave in.

It seemed as if just the one, covered, stand was open, with the rest of the ground empty. There was a grassy area behind each goal and that space to my left had been used for car parking. It reminded me of Stamford Bridge back when we relegated them.

The pitch looked as if it had been used as a car park too, with plenty of faded and bald areas.

Tirana were in white with Korabi in a red and white kit. The home side went in front just before the half-hour mark with a headed finish from a floated free-kick. It’s a shame they couldn’t have taken their time over it as two minutes later twenty Tirana ultras arrived in the corner to my right, on the far side. They were dressed mainly in black, hung up their ‘Tirana Ultras Forever’ banner and let off some flares.

At half-time they cleared off again. Perhaps their late arrival and early departure was some form of protest. Or maybe it’s just the latest ultra fashion. Who knows? At least they saw a goal in their short time watching as Tirana had added a second on the break.

I did spot a few of them sheepishly coming into our stand during the second half, presumably having made whatever point they were making. Tirana added a third shortly after the restart and that’s the way it finished.

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SSD Vis Pesaro v Carrarese Calcio, Sunday 21st January 2024, 6.30pm

August 4, 2024

Pesaro is a seaside town with an old centre and some interesting buildings. There wasn’t a great deal going on out of season, but it was fine for a wander around. On Sunday morning I stumbled across a flea market and whilst there were all sorts of things that I could easily have bought, I limited myself to a few records and a couple of table lamps which the fella had to rewire and, to my surprise, actually worked when I got home.

The main reason I’d picked Pesaro though was that there was a third-tier Serie C fixture on the Sunday evening at the Stadio Tonino Benelli. It’s home to Vis Pesaro, holds just under five thousand and is approaching its centenary, although it was tarted up around ten years ago.

It was an easy walk from my hotel and whilst I initially couldn’t find the entrance for my twenty-five euro seat in the Tribune Central, two friendly coppers were happy to give me directions.

Less friendly were the home fans drinking outside the ground. I’d taken what I thought was a discreet snapshot when I heard shouting. I ignored it until it got so loud that I had to turn around. By that time a couple of fellas had run up the street to tell me that it was forbidden to photograph ‘ultras’. They demanded that I delete the evidence of their existence with the sort of whinging usually reserved for when their Mam’s don’t serve spaghetti hoops for tea.

I made a show of deleting a picture, safe in the knowledge that I’d another couple of shots in the bank and went on my way.

Once inside I bought a proper espresso for a euro and was given a free team sheet and a two page A2 programme. Most people used them as protection from the pigeon shit on the seats. At half time I got myself a Heineken, just because I could, and took pleasure in drinking it at my seat.

I was in the stand that catered for old people and kids. The away fans from Carrarese were penned in to my right and the main home singing section, including those whose souls I had captured and now owned, was opposite.

This was a promotion clash with Pesaro in sixth and Carrerese two places above. Both teams managed to hit the bar and the keepers acquitted themselves well but ultimately neither side could make the breakthrough and it finished goalless.

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