Swaziland v Malawi, Sunday 6th September 2015, 3pm

September 13, 2015

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After deciding to not go any further north into Mozambique than Inhambane, a few nights in Swaziland looked like a good idea. We stayed in the Ezulweni Valley which is between the main towns of Mbabane and Manzini.

Uzulweni is ideal for doing some walking as there are a few marked routes in the Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary. There’s nothing with big teeth in Mlilwane, apart I suppose, from crocodiles, but they seem scared of humans so I don’t really count them.

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There’s plenty of less dangerous stuff though and we got up close to impala and warthogs. We also found a bug that was easily noticeable whilst on the ground but had it been sat in the right coloured tree would have been very difficult to see.

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A couple of days before the game we hiked up to the 1,020m Nyonyane Peak. I don’t think a thousand metres is all that high in Swaziland, but it was good enough to give us decent views of the surrounding area.

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In the distance we could see the Somhlolo National Stadium in Lobamba that was hosting the Africa Cup of Nations qualifier between Swaziland and Malawi. I wouldn’t like to have to watch a game from our seats on the summit as it’s probably on a par with the view afforded to away fans at Newcastle.

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The build up to the game had been dominated by the position of the Swazi manager and one morning the two main Swazi newspapers had led their sports coverage with conflicting exclusives, one revealing that he had signed a new contract and the other announcing that he’d been fired.

He was still there on the day of the game so I’d recommend getting your news from The Times of Swaziland rather than the Swaziland Observer.

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Tickets for the game were E30 (£1.50) a pop and we bought a couple outside from a fella selling them from his car. I’ve no idea if he was official or not but with the game extremely unlikely to sell out I can’t see there being much scope for touting.

We took up seats in the North stand behind the goal, partly because we hadn’t sat there on our previous visit to the stadium earlier in the year and partly because if we looked to our right we could see the Nyonyane peak above the West stand.

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Malawi, in red, started the better of the teams when Phiri’s shot from the corner of the penalty box beat the Swazi goalie at his near post. The goal celebrations revealed that there were around thirty Malawi supporters in the West stand.

The home side levelled after a quarter of an hour when Malawi’s keeper hesitated over whether or not to come for a cross. He eventually made his mind up but then slipped and left Badenhorst a free header into an unguarded net.

The goal of the game came a few moments later when Msowoya put the visitors back in front with a bicycle kick that he’d teed up for himself. Very impressive.

At half-time there were still people arriving, many of them taking up positions in the new East stand to our left. A few fellas were standing on what remained of the open terracing in the corner, watching the game in the traditional way.

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Swaziland equalised in the second half with another unchallenged header and despite plenty of chances at either end that’s the way it stayed. One of the misses was so bad that a fan near us kicked out in frustration and sent his shoe flying.

At the final whistle the Malawi players slumped to the floor as if they’d just lost a cup final so I suspect that they had expected more than a point from the game.

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Maxaquena v HCB Songo, Wednesday 19th August 2015, 3pm

September 11, 2015

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After Tom’s departure for England, Jen and I drove on to Mozambique. The initial plan had been to spend a couple of months driving through Southern Africa, but a job offer that required an earlier start date meant that the trip would be reduced to a three to four-week journey up to Malawi and then back down again through Zambia and Botswana.

The first eight-hour day of driving on the Mozambique roads was sufficient for us to revise the plan to a fortnight at the beach in Mozambique and then a week each in Swaziland and South Africa instead. It wasn’t that the roads were bad, Lesotho was certainly worse, but the traffic meant for slow progress and the Police speed checks would have had us bankrupt in no time.

I only drove on four days in total in Mozambique and was ‘ticketed’ on three of them. Twice when it was unclear what the speed limit was supposed to be and once when my South African number plates suggested a payday. By the third ‘offence’ I’d learned that by pointing out that I didn’t need any paperwork I could have a fifty percent discount on my ‘fine’.

We stayed on the coast, initially at Inhambane and then at Bilene. Both places provided ample opportunities for wandering around the beach watching fishermen and crabs.

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The football took place in Maputo, or rather in a suburb just outside of town. I felt quite lucky to have made the game, particularly as my previous two attempts had failed. On the first trip, a year or so ago, we had got no further than Johannesburg Airport where we were told that new visa rules prevented us setting off.

On the next trip, armed with the correct visas, a combination of an international weekend and some last-minute lower league cancellations meant that we didn’t get to a game.

Third time lucky though. There was a match scheduled at the Estadio do Maxaquene and I knew where that was. However, knowing the venue listed doesn’t necessarily mean that there will actually be a match there and when we turned up an hour or so before kick-off it was apparent that nobody had played there for a while.

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I asked around and was told that the game was actually taking place half an hour’s drive away at the Campo de Afrin. Fair enough. A taxi fare of 800 Meticais (thirteen quid) each way was negotiated and half an hour later we were there.

For a midweek afternoon game it certainly seemed busy enough. I suppose with the ground not having floodlights all the games would have to be over by tea-time, even the mid-week ones. There were lines of people outside selling food, drinks and replica shirts, whilst a steady stream of fans were going inside.

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Tickets were 100 Meticais and as our taxi driver had decided to wait for us we got him one as well. We sat behind the goal, as close as we could to a large palm tree in the hope that we might benefit from some shade. Most people made their way over to the main stand to our left, whilst the open terracing on the opposite side of the pitch was reasonably popular too.

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Maxaquena, in the blue and red stripes, started the game second in the table, whilst Songo, in the turquoise kit were a little lower down. The Mozambique season runs from March to November and so is currently about halfway through.

The right winger for Maxaquena was on the receiving end of some abuse from his own fans that made the old Ayresome Park Chicken Run look like a welcoming and supportive environment. I though some of the fans might come to blows over him, in what seemed to be a dispute over who would get to kick his head in first.

They were, however, all in agreement that the said player would be more at home as a sex worker rather than a footballer. As would his Mam.

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With a few minutes remaining and the light starting to fade Songo won a free-kick on the edge of the Maxaquena box. Someone curled it into the top corner to take the points and really give the home supporters something to cry about.

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Despite having been subbed by that stage, I imagine Bob the Puta still got most of the blame from the fans on the way out.

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South Africa v New Zealand, Sunday 16th August 2015, 2pm

September 10, 2015

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The T20 game between South Africa and New Zealand in Pretoria just about brought Tom’s visit to South Africa to an end. After the rugby the previous weekend we’d spent most of the time in between up at Lake Jozini catching tiger fish. Before leaving Durban though we’d done some sea fishing. It’s the wrong time of year apparently for big fish but we caught some small stuff, including this sea barbel, and had an enjoyable morning not too far out from the shore.

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At Jozini Tom caught a different type of barbel, but it was tiger fish that we were after and we got quite a few of those too. The hooks were baited with frozen pilchards and a small piece of chicken liver. Probably around a third of the bites became successful strikes and some of the tiger fish were a decent size.

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We also had time for a drive around a wildlife park nearby and in what was looking to be a fairly quiet day spotted a group of four cheetahs. I don’t think Tom appreciated what a big deal cheetahs are but in the last two years  Jen and I have probably spent a few weeks in total in national parks and we’d not seen a single one.

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Back in Pretoria Tom and I were able to walk from our hotel to the T20 game at Centurion. We had grandstand seats which gave us the benefit of the shade and they were close enough to a bar to make the drinking easy.

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After watching South Africa’s innings we had a wander around the ground. I still love the idea that braais are encouraged to the extent that free fuel is provided. No way would people ever be allowed to light fires at a sporting event in England.

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Whilst our grandstand seats had been decent, it was good to watch the game from different vantage points. Most of the seating at Supersport Park is on the grassy banks and it creates a relaxed atmosphere where eating, drinking, kids playing their own cricket games and occasionally even sleeping goes on with the main event providing the backdrop and the reason for the day out.

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South Africa posted a decent total, but New Zealand never really threatened to come close. They did, at least, manage to bat out their full twenty overs in a much appreciated effort to avoid an early finish.

 

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South Africa v Argentina, Saturday 8th August 2015, 5pm

September 9, 2015

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Id like to think I’m a pretty quiet person who doesn’t cause any annoyance to anyone. Maybe that’s not the case though. I remember being told off by Johnny Bramwell for talking at the back of a Kloot gig at The Knights in Middlesbrough a few years ago. That’s fair enough I suppose.

Mind you, he told me off at a more recent gig in Crewe as well for leaving before the end. Jen and I had been sat on a sofa right at the front of his Square One gig, but after being there for four hours and getting through a bottle of wine in each of those hours, I was feeling ready for bed.

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Apart from Johnny though, nobody ever tells me off. Except that is for the Afrikaner bloke in front of Tom and I at the Springboks game. Apparently we were laughing too much in our conversation. To be fair, the Kings Park Stadium was like a library, but it’s a rugby game! You go to the rugby for a drink and a laugh. We were only halfway through our first jugs as well, the miserable git.

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Considerate fellas that we are, Tom and I limited the laughing to whenever Argentina scored a try. Unfortunately for Mr Sensitive Hearing in front of us, that was far more frequently than the Springboks or the crowd had been expecting.

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I annoyed the old misery guts a bit more in the second half when I clambered over him to go for a piss, but it’s the rugby, there are generally more people in the toilets at Twickenham than there are in their seats.

He left just before the end, hopefully the Springbok defeat being responsible for his scowl rather than anything we’d done. If I see him at a Kloot gig someday I’ll buy him a beer and we can have a chat at the back.

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Arsenal v PSV Eindhoven, Saturday 8th August 2015, 3pm

September 8, 2015

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I finished my contract in South Africa at the end of July, but as I didn’t have another job to go to we thought we might as well spend some more time in southern Africa until something turned up. My son, Tom, was heading over for a few days holiday in August and as we couldn’t go too far whilst we waited for him to arrive Jen and I headed off to Moloka National Park for a while.

Moloka was good. We stayed in a tree house well away from everyone else with just the various animals that visited the nearby waterhole for company.

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There was plenty of variety including rhinos, which we hadn’t realised were in the park. If we’d known we might not have spent a couple of hours wandering around the bush on foot in defiance of the rules. There were fighting squirrels too that were well worth watching.

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Driving around the Moloka made a pleasant change from some of the bigger, busier parks. I don’t think they allow day visitors and so there were very few other cars. There aren’t any lions or elephants so I suppose a lot of people probably wouldn’t be too keen to visit. One evening we saw meerkats and a bat-eared fox and as we hadn’t yet seen either of those creatures in the wild they trump any of the big five in my book.

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After Moloka we spent a couple of nights on a boat on the River Vaal. Whilst not as remote as the treehouse, we still had the river pretty much to ourselves and just tied up to some rushes in an inlet for the two nights. I did some fishing and caught a carp but as we had plenty of food I put it back.

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We picked up Tom from Johannesburg airport on Friday and drove across to Durban. Jen and I had been there a few times before but we’d always flown. The six-hour drive was fine until the final stages when the rush hour traffic seemed to start thirty miles outside of the city.

The plan for the Saturday had been to watch the Springboks take on Argentina but I’d noticed that the final of an Under 19 football tournament was scheduled for three o’clock in the Moses Mabhida stadium just across the road from the rugby ground. The five o’clock kick-off in the rugby meant that Tom and I had time to watch the first seventy minutes or so of the football first.

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The Durban Tournament is an annual under 19 competition with six top international sides (or rather five plus Celtic) joining the South African U19 National side and a Kwa-Zulu Natal Academy select in a week-long competition.

We’d timed our arrival to coincide with the final between Arsenal and PSV Eindhoven. I’d hoped for a decent crowd, partly because there were twenty thousand people arriving for the rugby who might just pop in, but mainly because Arsenal seem to have a decent fanbase in South Africa.

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Unfortunately the smattering of Arsenal shirts in the crowd was no more than I’d expect to see at a Chiefs or Pirates game and I doubt there were more than three hundred people in the stadium, despite the free admission.

A few rugby fans had wandered over, but by half-time had cleared off back to their car-park braai.

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Arsenal, with Steve Gatting coaching them, took the lead in the first half when one of their kids wellied it home from a good few yards outside of the box. The Dutch lads levelled after the break and it was still even when we left mid-way through the second half.

Whilst I haven’t got around to checking the score, I did see a photo in the paper a day or two later of Arsenal with the trophy so presumably they won it.

 

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South Africa v New Zealand, Saturday 25th July 2015, 5pm

September 7, 2015

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The Four Nations Rugby Championship for the southern hemisphere teams was cut a bit short this season due to the World Cup and so there weren’t the usual home and away fixtures. Fortunately the single All-Blacks v Springboks game was scheduled for Ellis Park and so Jen and I had the opportunity of going along.

Just like last year we stayed in the Maboneng district, an area close enough to walk to the game but with plenty of restaurants that can also be walked to. That’s a rare event on an evening and we took full advantage with a visit to an Ethiopian place on the Friday night.

For a pre-match lunch on Saturday I ordered rib-eye steak, but what I think I actually got was a rib of beef. Either was it was pretty good. I’ll miss steaks like that when we’ve gone.

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We got to the ground early enough to be able to queue for beers. At one stage I think the line was around twenty yards long and four people wide. Best to buy your beers a few at a time then.

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As we sat with our drinks in the concourse, a couple of blokes in their seventies staggered past. One was in a New Zealand shirt, the other in the green of South Africa. They were so ratarsed that they relied upon each other to stay upright. I d like to think that I’ll still getting in that state when I’m their age.

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The game was sold out and we had lower tier tickets in one of the corners. The view was ok, certainly better than last year when we were up in the back row of the upper tier.

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South Africa were coming off a defeat to Australia and put a decent effort in against the visitors. They were leading going into the final stages but that rarely counts for anything against the All-Blacks who, as they so often do, nicked it at the death.

Twenty minutes after the final whistle we were in a roof-top bar making the most of an opportunity for a night out in town.

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Mamelodi Sundowns v Bidvest Wits, Sunday 12th July 2015, 10am

September 6, 2015

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After our trip to Moruleng Stadium for the Maize Cup and the subsequent drive around Pilanesburg, Jen and I stayed over nearby at Kedar Lodge. I hadn’t realised at the time when we booked it but it had a fantastic collection of Boer War memorabilia, better than that of a lot of museums that we’ve been to.

Unfortunately, with arriving late and then leaving early for a 10am game we didn’t get to give it much more than a cursory glance. Maybe next time.

The game was at Dobsonville Stadium, home of Sowetan team Moroka Swallows. I’d been trying to see a match there ever since we’d arrived but the fixtures invariably seemed to be scheduled for an evening and a daytime drive past the ground had suggested that it wasn’t the place to be after dark.

It didn’t really seem to be the place to be at 9.30 in the morning on this occasion either as some protesters had set up a roadblock of burning tyres close to the ground. I didn’t hang around to take a photo, but got one on the way out when just the smoke remained.

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There was a women’s international scheduled for 3pm, but we were there for the 10am curtain raiser, the final of the national under 17 competition. Entry was free on production of a voucher, which someone very kindly handed to us as we approached the turnstile.

The ground was close to empty as we took our seats in the main stand, although I’d like to think that by the time of the main event a few more people would have taken advantage of a free day out.

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Sundowns were in their usual yellow with Wits in navy. Both sides had their share of players who looked far too big to be seventeen, but I suppose that’s the nature of age-group football. You wonder whether the bigger lads are only there because of their size and then whether the smaller fellas will grow enough to have a chance of making it in the professional ranks.

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There wasn’t a lot of support coming from the stands, with the most noise being made by the Sundowns squad members who hadn’t made the bench. They stood and sang for the whole of the second half;

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The game was goalless under a couple of minutes from full-time. With penalties looking likely the Sundowns left winger cut inside and curled a right footed shot beyond the Wits keeper and into the corner of the net. That was sufficient to take the cup and, as far as I was concerned, to finally bring the 2015/16 season to an end.

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Platinum Stars v Township Rollers, Saturday 11th July 2015, 10am

September 5, 2015

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It’s difficult to know sometimes when one season ends and the next one starts. The promotion play-offs from the third tier hadn’t taken place yet so it felt as if it’s still 2014/15. However, with the new South African Premier League season just four weeks away, the Maize Cup certainly had the feel of pre-season about it.

It was a four-team tournament taking place at Moruleng which, by happy coincidence, is very close to Pilanesburg National Park. I’m not one to miss the opportunity of combining a visit to a new stadium with a drive around a national park and so we spent the afternoon in Pilanesburg looking at the wildlife.

Sometimes you see a lot, sometimes you don’t and this had been a fairly quiet day up until late on when half a dozen rhinos ambled past. Rhinos do a lot of ambling, but more often than not they do it out of sight. Or at least out of my sight. On this occasion though we were able to watch them make their way along the edge of a lake, no more than fifty yards ahead of us.

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Prior to the rhinos, I think the most interesting thing we’d seen were some cormorants feeding their young. Or not so young. It seemed scarcely believable that the ‘chicks’ weren’t ready to feed themselves.

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Earlier that day our forty rand tickets had entitled us to watch three games in the same stadium. Two semi finals at 10am and noon respectively, followed by the winners of those games meeting at five o’clock. With Pilanesburg beckoning, we were happy to stay for just the first of those matches, the clash between local Premier League side Platinum Stars and Township Rollers from over the border in Botswana.

Forty rand is generally the minimum pricing for a top-tier game in South Africa and so for those with the staying power the chance to see three games was pretty good value. As a further incentive we were also given a Maize Cup branded beanie and a bag of popcorn each. This almost made up for having our bottles of coke and water confiscated on the way in.

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Moruleng Stadium is very similar to a lot of stadiums in this part of the world, with a single covered stand along one side and an open bowl around the remainder. There’s space for a running track, but it looked as if someone had forgotten to construct it.

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We took up seats in the main stand to take advantage of the shade provided but the arrival of a brass band early in the first half meant that we didn’t spend long in them.

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Rollers, in blue, took the lead after around twenty minutes and then added a second just before the break. They had brought a few hundred fans with them and in the second half we moved to the other side of the stadium on the basis that the fans would be quieter than the band.

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Ten minutes from time Platinum Stars knocked in what I thought at the time was nothing more than a consolation goal. Five minutes later they had another and had forced a draw that had rarely seemed on the cards. The tournament schedule left no room for extra-time and so we went straight to penalties.

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The momentum was with the home side and they won the shoot-out five-four, leaving the Rollers fans to drift out seven hours earlier than they’d been expecting to leave just a few minutes before. A chorus of “Bye Bye Baby” from the home support wouldn’t have gone amiss.

That evening we watched the final on the telly in our nearby hotel bar. I imagine that the Rollers fans will all have been back in Botswana by that time with the complimentary popcorn long gone.

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Zimbabwe v Comoros, Sunday 21st June 2015, 3pm

August 29, 2015

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The second game of our Zimbabwe trip was an African Nations Championship qualifier between Zimbabwe and Comoros. In case you were wondering, the African Nations Championship is a sort of little brother to the better known African Cup of Nations. It is limited to players currently turning out for a club in their home country whilst the bigger tournament is the one that causes your Ghanaian winger to disappear every second January for a month or so.

And if you were also wondering about Comoros, yes, it’s a real country. By my age I should really have heard of all of the countries in the world, but that one had passed me by. Too much emphasis on ox-bow lakes and the like in geography, I reckon.

The drive to the Rufaro stadium took us through some of Harare’s poorer areas and an enormous market where it looked as if you could buy anything you fancied. There was a coffin shop on one corner which, after seeing how the Zimbabweans drove their cars, probably did a roaring trade.

We’d chosen to hire a car despite the warnings that the Zimbabwean Police were likely to issue you with an on-the-spot fine every twenty yards for whatever reason they fancied. We didn’t have any trouble at all with them though and arrived at the Rufaro Stadium with a similar amount of dollars to that which we’d set out with.

There was more than an hour to go to kick-off and the area outside of the stadium was already busy with vendors selling food, drinks and national flags. There wasn’t a car park and so we had to leave the car by the side of the road in the care of a fella who assured us he’d take good care of it.

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Tickets were two dollars each which I thought was pretty good value when you consider that we’d paid a dollar to watch a second division domestic game the previous day. However, there were also some ten dollar VIP tickets and so we thought we’d take a gamble that whatever undisclosed benefits they offered would be worth the uplift.

Initially they appeared poor value with the only noticeable difference between the concrete terracing in our stand and the other three stands was that we had a roof. Luxury indeed, although not really worth five times the price or remotely worthy of the VIP designation.

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As the stand filled up with people who looked like they would have more pressing ways of spending the eight dollar differential between seats in the sun and the shade I started to wonder if we really were in the right place. We weren’t. The VIP section was downstairs and if we’d got there early enough then our ten dollar tickets would have allowed us to cushion the terracing with a thin mat.

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We did get to sit right next to the Extremely Important Person Section which actually had armchairs in it. They were reserved for the various bigwigs from the Zimbabwean government and Football Association, some of whom, somewhat ungratefully, didn’t show up until well into the second half. Maybe they hadn’t been able to resist a browse around the coffin shop.

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The rest of the thirty-five thousand capacity stadium had filled up nicely by that time, with probably around twenty-thousand fans in total spread over the stands.

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The standard, as you might have expected, was a lot higher than the previous day’s game and Zimbabwe had a neat passing game on the artificial surface. They took the lead ten minutes in with a shot from the right.

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It looked as if Zimbabwe might rattle up a hatful but despite the decent stuff in the build-up they were less than clinical in front of goal with one particularly wasteful miss sufficient to cause me to exchange wry smiles with a government minister to my left.

Comoros seemed quite happy to slow things down and keep the deficit to the single goal and their plan worked until the final minute when a scrappy home effort made the game safe. On the way out I was jostled in the crowd a couple of times as if someone was after my wallet, but I managed to hang on to it. The car was still there too, so overall I’d call the day a success.

 

 

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Zimbabwe Republic Police v Ngezi Platinum, Saturday 20th June 2015, 3pm

August 19, 2015

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It’s taken a while but we finally got around to visiting Zimbabwe, or at least got around to visiting Zimbabwe officially. We’d been in Kruger a few weeks earlier and whilst out walking one evening I’d waded across the Limpopo to stand on the Zimbabwean soil on the opposite bank.

There wasn’t much to see or do whilst stood there and so I waded back across before I got into trouble.

Illegal Immigrant.

Illegal Immigrant.

This ‘official’ visit was much better. We flew to Harare and had three nights there before moving onto Bulawayo. The plan had been to catch the overnight train between the two cities but on arriving at Harare station we were informed that there were no sleeper compartments on that night’s train. We caught a flight instead.

Harare Station

Harare Station

We had a further three nights in Bulawayo, staying at the colonial style Bulawayo club. I’ve never seen so many sepia photographs of blokes with big whiskers. We then managed to make an overnight train journey to Victoria Falls. We’d been on the posh Blue Train in South Africa a few days earlier but this journey was very different.

The Zimbabwean train used carriages built in Birmingham in the 1950s and I doubt they’d been cleaned since. We booked a first class compartment designed for four people and whilst it was a bargain at a total of $48 I was never really comfortable. The guard warned us of gangs of thieves wandering the train and suggested that we double lock the door to try to prevent them jemmying their way in whilst we slept. I didn’t sleep as much as I might have done after that advice.

Bulawayo station

Bulawayo Station

The views through the window were spectacular though, or at least they were once I’d cleaned it. In defence of Zimbabweans and their railway, everyone we spoke to was very friendly and didn’t give the slightest hint that they might have murder or robbery in mind.

View from the window.

View from the window.

At Victoria Falls we did just as you’d imagine and watched the water cascading down. We took a boat trip down the Zambezi and Jen ran a Half Marathon in her second best time ever. So, all pretty good stuff.

Victoria Falls.

Victoria Falls.

And what about the football? Well, we got to two games, both in Harare. The first one featured the Police team who are more commonly referred to by their previous name of the Black Mambas rather than their current official ZRP moniker. They play at the Morris Depot ground inside a police compound which was very conveniently situated around five minutes drive from our hotel.

We had to hand over our passports to the armed guards at the entrance, presumably to deter us from getting up to any mischief and then hand over a further dollar each to watch the game.

The Main Stand

The Main Stand

Zimbabwe has used US dollars for a few years now after some pretty impressive inflation left their own currency virtually worthless.

In fact, whilst we were there, the banks were finally getting around to changing the old currency for the new at a rate of so many quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars to one US. We were frequently offered old notes and whilst I bought a few of them I didn’t manage to get a quadrillion dollar bill. The highest I got was a ten trillion dollar note. Hopefully their currency will recover someday and we can retire on it.

"This time next year, Rodney..."

“This time next year, Rodney…”

The Morris Depot had a concrete terrace that went around one side and end with a run-down scaffolding-like stand built on top of it and a further stand opposite. It has a five thousand capacity but that wasn’t remotely threatened by the turnout for this game.

The pitch wasn’t in the best of condition with odd sections of grass that showed more growth than other parts of the playing area in a look reminiscent of those straggly areas that dogs have on their wrists.

View from the Main Stand.

View from the Main Stand.

The battered dugouts fitted in well with the rest of the surroundings, with smashed perspex providing the substitutes little respite from the wind.

It was the dugouts that provided the highlight of the first half when in an attempt to retrieve the ball from the Mambas area one of the away players pushed it so hard that he smashed most of what remained of the perspex. It led to the inevitable spell of  ‘handbags’ before the lino intervened and made all of the subs sit down quietly, presumably with their hands on their heads.

A little maintenance required.

A little maintenance required.

One of the home players hit the bar on the half hour but that was about as close as either side got to scoring. The standard wasn’t great but I suppose that was to be expected with it being a second tier game. All of the matches in the Premier league had been called off due to an international game that weekend.

Good save.

Good save.

Neither side were able to break the deadlock and as we’d managed to avoid getting up to anything we weren’t supposed to, the armed guard on the gate was happy to give us back our passports on the way out.

 

 

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