I’d had an interesting couple of days leading up to this game with a visit from one of Jen’s American brothers and his wife. We met them in York, showed them the delights of Norton and then spent a couple of days up at Hadrian’s Wall.
We walked a section at Cawfields and called into the Museums at Vindolanda and Birdoswald. If I’d been to Vindolanda when we walked the wall a few years ago I’d forgotten it, but both were well worth a visit.
With David and Jackie having left us for the Scotland leg of their holiday I was free to turn my attention to the Boro game. It had been a poor start to the season for us with just the point against Huddersfield from our opening four games.
I was reasonably confident that we could turn things around though. There’s been a lot of change in personnel and whilst we’ve lost some quality players from last season’s team, once the new fellas gel I’d expect us to start picking up points.
Harry’s cousin Alistair was free for this one and so we were treated to his parkour skills as he scaled every wall and jumped every bollard on the way to the Riverside.
One of the reasons I was hoping for a good performance is to try and convert Alistair. He claims to be a Man City fan, although I view it as a good sign that he’s happy to wear the various Boro tops that one of his Grandads gets him.
My hopes weren’t to be fulfilled though. QPR took the lead just before half time with a shot that could either have been a ‘worldie’ or, more likely to my mind, an outrageous fluke. We had our share of the chances, more than our share in fact, but with a second goal for QPR coming twenty minutes from time, we slipped to another defeat.
I doubt a position at the foot of the table with just a single point from five games will encourage Alistair to switch allegiance but with an international break coming up there’s an opportunity for Carrick to try and sort things out.
In what is now becoming an annual occurrence Jen and I had headed over to Muncaster Castle for Sea Power’s Krankenhaus festival. This was the third one and it has increased in size each time. There were probably about six hundred people there, which is getting close to what I’d consider sufficient.
There were also plenty of dogs, which add to the relaxed atmosphere. Sea Power’s set on the Saturday night had been excellent, one of the best I’ve seen from them. The bear came out of retirement and the evening finished with Martin and Yan crowd surfing during a twenty-five-minute rendition of Lately/Rock in A. It doesn’t get much better.
There were activities taking place on Sunday morning but I thought I’d take a break and drive south for a couple of hours and watch some football. The game I’d picked was at the Leyland Ground, home of the Lancashire FA.
As I entered the car park, I noticed a vintage motor museum next door. I’d plenty of time before kick-off and so had a wander around. It was ok, I suppose, but as I doubt that anyone would ever make a second visit, I can’t really see how it survives.
Back at the football, it was a fiver to get in to see the Blackburn Rovers U21 team take on their counterparts from Leicester in a Premier League Two fixture. That’s the same division that the Boro play in and mirrors the current status of the respective first teams.
I queued in the clubhouse for a meat and potato pie and admired the collection of trophies and caps in a nearby cabinet. I’d no idea if they were obsolete or current, but there was some impressive detailing on some of the older looking ones.
There was drizzle in the air as I took a seat in the main stand opposite to the entrance gate and had a look at the team sheet. I think you are allowed some over-age players in this competition but there weren’t any names that I recognised. Mind you, I’m not actually sure how many players I’d be familiar with from the respective senior squads.
As ever at this level, the crowd was made up of a mixture of fringe players and family with a smattering of die-hards getting full value from their season cards. All this was complemented by an odd-ball who had driven two hours for a game that he had no skin in.
Blackburn passed the ball very slickly, making me wonder if there’s still some Tony Mowbray influence on the way they play.
They missed a few chances and the Leicester keeper made some good saves, but the home side were well on top and went in at the break three goals to the good.
A Leicester goal soon after the restart offered the prospect of a more competitive second half but a fourth goal from the hosts midway through the second half was enough to clinch the victory. I headed back up the M6 for the evening entertainment at Krankenhaus and another cracking Sea Power set.
Whitley Bay is somewhere that I haven’t been for years, possibly as far back as 1982 when I saw The Jam at the ice-rink. Playing rather than skating. My only other recollection of the place is a day trip when I was around ten from some Working Men’s Club on Durham Road. On that occasion I went with my friend Mark and his football. It was a proper casey, with the classic black and white hexagons.
We didn’t have a lot of cash to spend on the rides and amusements at Spanish City but I remember one stallholder wanting to take the ball in payment for a few goes on the game where you threw hoops over bottles. None of the prizes were worth as much as the ball, or at least not to a ten year old, so Mark sensibly declined.
The rides and stalls are just about gone these days, with just the one ride remaining in the area where I remember them and a few more further along the seafront.
Jen and I arrived early and took the opportunity of walking the dog along the coastal path to St. Mary’s lighthouse. It’s a fair distance and we were rewarded with some seal sightings for our efforts.
The reason for the visit was an FA Cup Preliminary Round replay at Hillheads Park between Whitley Bay and Whickham, both of the ninth-tier Northern League Division One. It was eight quid entry and another two for a programme.
Whitley Bay were in one of those dual strips. From the front it looked like a Brighton kit that had been left out in the sun. However, the stripes didn’t extend to the backs of the shirts so they were more like Coventry when you viewed them from behind. Whickham had a similar set-up in black and white, resembling Newcastle from the front and Darlo from behind.
We found seats in the main stand, but it wasn’t a great view with too many stanchions between us and the pitch. There was another stand opposite that was also well populated with more fans seated at picnic tables or congregated close to the bar entrance.
There were just over four hundred spectators, with quite a few of them supporting the visitors.
Whitley Bay were two goals down within the first twenty minutes as a consequence of messing up attempts to pass it around in their own six yard box. I know it’s the modern tendency to play out from the back but at this level I think it’s asking a lot of keepers and defenders who have been brought up to welly the ball away at the first sign of danger.
It got worse for Whitley Bay in the second half when they had a man sent off. They managed to stay in the game until a third Whickham goal at the death finished the tie off and set up a next round meeting with Macclesfield.
The new season hadn’t started well for the Boro with defeats in both of the first two fixtures. I hadn’t seen either match live as I’d been working away but Harry hadn’t been too impressed with the home game.
I’d got back into the country the day before this match and took the opportunity to do something with Harry’s sister Isla. She’s into horses rather than football and so we went for a trek on the moors near Boltby. I’d forgotten how strenuous horse riding can be, particularly if you have a cantering posture that involves standing upright. I was still stiff legged as Harry and I walked to the Riverside twenty-four hours later.
I wasn’t confident at all that we’d take anything from the game. It wasn’t so much that we’d lost a lot of the key players from last season, or that it would likely take their relatively unknown replacements time to settle in. No, it was the presence of former Boro boss Neil Warnock in the away dugout. I don’t know the stats but he always seems to take points from us. His time with us might very well have been due to a desire by Gibbo to eliminate that annual six-point handicap.
The summer recruitment had stepped up in the days before the game with Latte Lath and Engels arriving and starting. Chuba had secured himself a move to Ajax which probably looks a little more impressive than it may turn out to be. Unless, of course, he gets to wear the ‘14’ shirt.
Huddersfield could easily have built on their opening goal, but once we’d equalised it looked more likely that we’d get the winner. Silvera was a handful but struggled to get his efforts anywhere near the target. It finished level which, on past experience, I consider two points dropped by Colin rather than us.
The Bucharest trip was intended to coincide with the Saudi Eid holiday. However, the dates are not something that you can accurately rely upon too far in advance. Apparently, there’s a committee of old blokes who look at the visible shape of the moon and then they announce the start and finish of the holiday a few days beforehand.
Whatever they saw, worked well for me and resulted in an additional day at the end of the holiday. I had no intention of wasting the extra time off and so had a look at how I could rearrange my return flight for maximum benefit. To cut a long story mercifully short, I dropped the Bucharest trip down from a week to five days and Jen and I flew on to Sweden for three nights instead.
It was a destination predominantly chosen for availability and ease of getting there, but also because they play their football between April and November.
We flew into Skavska airport, which is just south of Stockholm and about an hour and a half’s drive from the small house in someone’s garden that we were staying at to the north of the city. It was as well that we had to pass through Stockholm as Jen needed some emergency dentistry and she was able to nab a walk in appointment within a few hours of our arrival.
Stockholm seems a pleasant city. I’m not sure if I’d called in there during one of the interrailing trips in the eighties, but if I had then nothing appeared familiar. It was good to be out in the country though. We saw a bit of the wider landscape from the plane window and it’s all coast, lakes and forests. Yet another place that I could readily move to.
The tooth removal meant that there was no time for a match on the day that we arrived, but I lined up a fixture for the following day in the Division 5 Uppland South league which, despite its name, is actually part of the seventh tier of Swedish football.
On the day of the game we went for lunch at nearby Rimbo, where the only option available was beef with some sort of jam sauce, then went for a walk at Finsta where we followed a trail dedicated to a Saint Bridget. I’d hoped that she was the patron saint for the vertically-challenged, but apparently not. It was a short walk through some woods to a church and then on to a cave and back again. After the heat of both Saudi Arabia and Romania, it was good to be outside in temperatures suitable for mooching about.
We’d driven past the Lundbyvallen ground a couple of hours before the 7pm kickoff and it was a relief to see someone putting up the nets. I’d also noticed a covered stand which, in an afternoon that had seen the odd shower, might well prove useful.
We arrived for the game half an hour or so before kick-off and with the main car park already well populated. We followed the sign to the overflow parking and then wandered down past a club house selling food and drink, taking a seat at one of the picnic tables along the side of the pitch.
Considering that the game was in the seventh tier and in a village that didn’t appear to have even a corner shop, I was surprised to see floodlights. Not that I expected them to get much use in Sweden in June.
Riala were in third place in the table, with visitors Uppsala in second. By the time play got underway there were probably around eighty people in attendance along with a couple of dogs, including a young husky that was keen to be somewhere else.
The standard was decent and by half-time Riala were two counter-attacking goals to the good. They added a third on the hour with an ambitious back-heeled volley that was perfectly executed.
At that stage, it might very well have turned into a rout, but instead the visitors upped the pressure and within ten minutes had pulled two goals back. They pushed hard for an equalizer in the final stages, but it just wouldn’t come. The win meant that Riala drew level on points with their opponents in the battle for the second promotion spot.
Bucharest was hosting games in the U21 European Championships at two stadiums and fortunately I had time to see one at each. This one was at Rapid’s ground, the fourteen thousand capacity Giulesti Stadium that opened just a year ago,
Earlier in the day Jen and I had sought out the Ministry of Interior building. It’s the place where Ceausescu made his final speech in December 1989. That’s the one where the crowd turned against him and despite him offering rises to pensions and social security, seemingly on the hoof, the boos got louder, and he ended up legging it up to the roof before being helicoptered away. Four days later he and his missus were tied to chairs and shot. Sometimes, merely removing your pass to the parliament building just isn’t enough.
We arrived for the game between Spain and Ukraine a good hour in advance, mainly because we couldn’t find somewhere to have our tea on the way. In the end we had to settle for shawarmas from a little takeaway place. They were fine, but with time to spare I’d have preferred something a bit more leisurely.
The fixture didn’t have a lot riding on it other than the chance of avoiding a move to Cluj for the quarterfinals. Both teams had already qualified from the four-team group with maximum points and Spain, with the better goal difference, were in pole position to remain in Bucharest with a draw.
Our seats were down the side, in an area that filled up as kick-off approached. All four stands were open for the fixture, which seemed unnecessary considering that the crowd only just reached the two-thousand mark. There was a smattering of Spaniards, but most of the people in attendance were cheering on Ukraine. I’ve no idea how many of them actually were Ukrainians, perhaps temporarily displaced, but a lot of people knew all the words to the national anthem, which suggests closer ties than simply supporting them on the basis of the political situation.
Both sides had made multiple changes which allowed them to give their first choices a break and some game time to squad members. Spain even played both of their reserve keepers for a half each. The lack of familiarity with each other was apparent early on, particularly at the back for Ukraine, and Spain should really have gone in at the break a goal or two up. As it was, it was Ukraine who took a first half lead with a header as the interval approached.
The right to avoid checking out of their hotel swung back to Spain with an equalizer early in the second half, before Ukraine went back in front with a penalty ten minutes from time. However, with their bags almost packed, Spain nicked a draw on ninety minutes to top the group. The Ukrainian players seemed a lot more devastated than I’d have been as Cluj looks an interesting place for a visit. Although maybe they are travelling there by bus. Either way, both teams are into the last eight.
There’s a big block of public holiday this time of year in Saudi Arabia and so I took the opportunity to head off to somewhere else. I’d been looking for somewhere that was reasonably easy for both Jen and I to get to and, as you might expect, somewhere with some football going on.
I settled on Bucharest, with it being only three to four hours from both the UK and Saudi Arabia and one of the host cities for the UEFA U21 Championship.
On the morning of the game, we had a wander around and called in at a natural history museum. My main interest in these places is usually the bad taxidermy and there were plenty of exhibits with visible bullet holes or stitching that looked as if it had been done by the animal itself. The most interesting sight though was a fossil of some kind of pre-historic mammoth. It dwarfed the elephant and hippo skeletons positioned either side.
Later on, I took a taxi to the Stadionul Steaua. It’s a new ground, so not the one that the Boro played at in 2006. It’s not the place where Steaua plays either according to the taxi driver. It seems that they have been taken over and the majority of their fans are following a phoenix club which plays at the national stadium.
He also told me that he had lived in Blackpool for two years, working at Billy Smart’s Circus. He volunteered that he hadn’t been impressed with English women, believing that their perception of their attractiveness rarely matched the reality and recalled their tendency to drink too much then start shouting and fighting.
I hadn’t expected that the U21 Championship would attract decent crowds, but this game featured one of the host nations and that had created some interest. Ukraine provided the opposition and, on a day when Russian mercenary forces were marching on Moscow, there were plenty of blue and yellow flags being brandished outside of the stadium.
A quick search and I was through a perimeter fence, followed by a well-marshalled queue for the turnstiles to have my seven quid ticket scanned.
I’d not had a drink for more than eight weeks and sadly the best that UEFA were allowing was a non-alcoholic Burgenbier. It tasted ok, but I would have appreciated that buzz that comes from downing your first pint in a while.
My seat was down the side and in the lower tier. A pretty good view really and, I suppose, a benefit of buying the ticket on the day it went on sale. This was the second match in the group for each side with Ukraine already sitting on three points and Romania yet to get off the mark after an opening game defeat. That meant the absolute minimum that the home side needed to stay in the competition was a point.
Ukraine had the best of the first half and managed to get behind the Romanian defence fairly frequently. The home goalie was in good form though and it was goalless at the break.
For the second half I moved to the upper tier behind one of the goals, just for a change of perspective. I’d chosen the wrong end though as Ukraine were doing most of the attacking.
Romania’s hopes of progressing from the group stayed alive until a minute from time when an own goal gave Ukraine the victory. There was some added-time drama when the visitors went down to ten men after some pre-free-kick jostling went a little too far, but Ukraine held on to take the points and qualify for the last eight.
This wasn’t the game that I’d hoped to be at on this date. I’d wanted to be at Wembley to see the Boro in the play-off final. Whilst I didn’t want to tempt fate prior to the play-off semi, I also didn’t want to discover too late that everything was sold out and so I’d booked flights, a hotel and a train ticket for Jen. Sadly, football doesn’t always work out as you want.
Instead, I was back at the Prince Faisal stadium for fourth placed Al-Shabab against fifth placed Al-Taawon. For a change I thought I’d go into the VIP section. At two hundred riyals a ticket it was twenty times more expensive than my usual seat, which is just the other side of a perspex screen. Two hundred riyals is forty-three quid and so it’s not overly expensive by football standards these days. It’s certainly cheaper than the Wembley ticket would have been.
The security guard at the entrance gate seemed a little surprised that I was meant to be there, as did the bloke checking the tickets at the main entrance. Perhaps I just don’t look ‘corporate’. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.
Once inside I was given a silver wristband and an Arabic coffee. One sip was enough to confirm that there’s a good reason why Starbucks don’t sell that stuff. The fella next to coffee guy was holding a container of hot coals and he wafted the smoke at me. Cheers Matey.
That was it for hospitality add-ons apart from frequent offers of tea and water during the game. I’d half expected a buffet or at least someone with a tray of chocolates, but maybe you needed a gold wristband for that sort of thing. As kick-off was only ten minutes away, I followed someone up some stairs to the main stand.
My designated padded seat was close to the half-way line and behind the dugouts. There were some tv screens showing the match on a ten second delay. That actually worked quite well, giving you the opportunity to check how much contact actually occurred whenever someone went down as if shot.
If I’d been a real VIP then I could have sat on one of the settees at the front. They were occupied by people who everyone seemed to know and whenever someone new turned up we had an elaborate fake kissing routine where the two blokes would touch cheeks three times. That’s face cheeks, in case you were wondering. They would then pause slightly before going back for one more.
Al-Taawon went a goal up about half an hour in and at which point I realized that almost everyone in my section was an away fan. At half-time I wandered inside in the forlorn hope that it might be a bit like the old Ayresome Park Hundred Club and that there would be a table with plates of quartered pork pies. No such luck though.
In the second half Al-Taawon rattled in two more goals for a three-nil win. I don’t think the experience was worth twenty times the usual price, particularly as in my usual section I’d have been able to buy a Kit-kat. It’s always good to try something different though.
I’d had my eye on a visit to the Prince Turki bin Abdul Aziz stadium for quite some time. It’s the home of Al-Riyadh who play in the second tier Yelo League. Unfortunately, a lot of their games are scheduled for weekdays and often with a kick-off sufficiently early to avoid the need for floodlights.
This fixture was their final home game of the season and therefore my last chance until August or September. I had been to the ground before, to watch an U17 game on the adjoining practice pitch, but this was my first visit to see a match at their proper stadium.
It had been a good season for Al-Riyadh as they had built on their promotion from the third tier the previous season and clinched a place in the top-tier Saudi Pro-League at the first attempt. It was made a little easier for them by the expansion of the higher division from sixteen to eighteen teams, meaning that fourth place was sufficient to go up. The year had gone less well for visitors Al-Shoalah, who were adrift at the bottom of the table and would be plying their trade in the third tier next season.
Prince Turki bi Abdul Aziz stadium is over in the south-west of Riyadh and twenty-two kilometres from where I’m staying. It’s mainly on roads with a decent flow of traffic though and I got there after a thirty-minute taxi ride and with an hour to spare to kick-off.
The ground is supposed to hold fifteen thousand spectators, although that looked a bit optimistic to me. The capacity had certainly been reduced by the placing of chairs in one of the stands. They looked as if they had been removed from a function room and then covered to protect them from dust.
I was directed to the far end of the covered stand. Apparently, the centre section which had tables and flowers was for VIPs and then the next blocks were reserved for not quite so important people, but still more important than plebs like me. It all seemed a lot of effort for a game with free admission and an eventual crowd of no more than three hundred people. Perhaps they only had two hundred and fifty chairs.
I watched quite a few people arguing with the stewards who appeared to have nightclub bouncer-like powers in arbitrarily deciding if your face fitted or not. I wondered whether putting my black socks over my trainers might have got me in.
Maybe the stewarding was intended to keep out the small group of ultras that had congregated to my left. They provided support throughout the game, although I’d have preferred that they did it without using a loudhailer. The older I get, the less tolerance I have for noise.
At half time I moved across to the stand opposite. It was certainly quieter, but what I gained by distancing myself from the loudhailer guy was offset by the plague of locusts. Did you know that the collective noun for locusts was a plague? Me neither, but somewhat appropriate, I think.
As I entered the uncovered stand one of them kept bashing itself against my head. Only one winner there really. There were hundreds of them on the terracing, some just sat there, others that had congregated near the stairwells a little worse for their encounters with the soles of people’s shoes.
And the match? Well, Al-Riyadh went a goal up mid-way through the first half when a freekick was saved and the rebound nodded in. Al- Shoalah equalized before half time with a shot from inside the box that was perfectly placed just inside the post.
I was expecting Al-Riyadh to prevail in the second half, but I think they might just have been celebrating their promotion a little too thoroughly, if that’s possible over here, and they ran out of steam. Two goals in the last fifteen minutes clinched the win for relegated Al-Shoalah to put a dampener on the promotion party.
I’m a little wary these days when I see age-group or lower tier games listed at the Prince Faisal stadium as I’ve turned up at least twice only to find that the match was taking place elsewhere. This one was a reserve fixture featuring the two sides whose first teams had clashed at the ground the previous evening and as it had been a late addition to the website match listings, I had high hopes that the venue might be correct.
Unfortunately, I had stuff to do and so wouldn’t be able to see the first half, but I thought that if I caught the last half-hour or so it would be worth the fifteen-minute walk from where I stay.
Arriving at the stadium I quickly checked out the practice pitch where there was nothing going on. Moving further around I was able to see into the main stadium and there was actually a game going on. Excellent. I continued around until I reached the main entrance which was open to let people into the sports centre.
All of the gates to the football ground looked to be shut and each one had a policeman loitering. I headed around to the right where there’s an entrance big enough to allow an ambulance in. With the pitch in sight a steward called a halt to my progress and after a short conversation it was established that spectators were strictly prohibited. As was taking photographs. Hmm.
Still, I like a challenge and so instead of returning from where I’d came, I continued around the perimeter until I reached the big open stand that runs along one side of the pitch. I walked purposefully as if I had a right to be there and was ignored by the first steward I saw. Once out of his line of sight, I tried a closed gate. It opened, and I was into the stand.
The sun was getting low and so it made watching and taking photos difficult from that section. I came back out and moved further along towards a fenced off area where there was a steward with his back to me. I dodged up a stairway, taking the six flights of steps that brings you out on the upper tier. This got me past the fence and the steward and allowed me to enter the stadium far enough along not to have to look into the sun.
The scoreboard revealed that Al-Shabab were four-nil up and a quick look around confirmed that I was the only spectator. I watched the action for a couple of minutes and then, keen to avoid any police attention, made my way back down and looked for an open exit. Everything was shut other than the gate that I’d came in by and to get to that I had to complete my lap of the stadium interior, again with a purposeful stride. I exchanged nods and a smile with security on the way out and left them to it.
Trail of the Lion King 