Trail of the Lion King

I’ve occasionally wondered if Norton should have been my team rather than Middlesbrough. After all, It’s where I’m from. Unfortunately for the Northern League side, I’d never heard of them when Jack Charlton was making the Boro the talk of the playground in ’73 and their chance was gone forever. I don’t even recall ever having gone along to see them play before and so the eleven o’clock Boxing Day fixture with Billingham Town was a chance to put that right.

I parked up by the Cricket Club and made my way along the side of the cricket pitch. This was all familiar territory. We used to go into the club as teenagers to play snooker. We’d also sneakily use the fruit machine and if we were caught and thrown out we’d amuse ourselves by creeping through the back gardens of the houses overlooking the cricket field.

That’s where you go in.

I paid my fiver entrance money and bought a programme for a quid. The pitch itself was also familiar to me as it’s where I used to play Sunday League as a fourteen year old goalie for Barmoor Boys. My recollection is that we weren’t very good, more a bunch of friends playing for fun in contrast to some of the much more organised teams in the league. I remember letting fourteen in one week, which seems a lot, but the following week my replacement let in twenty one. I found an old diary recently in which despite conceding another eleven goals that day the entry recorded that “I played excellent”. I’m sure I did.

I turned out a few times on the same pitch a dozen or so years later for the George and Dragon. It was around the time that the Boro got to Wembley for the Zenith Data Systems final. I didn’t stick at it though. I was fine going back to the pub afterwards for a couple of pints, some cheese cubes on sticks and the chance to lose my cash on a blind card, but was less enthusiastic about the football post-mortem. I struggled to think about the game whilst it was actually going on, I certainly didn’t want to have to listen to someone moaning about everyone’s mistakes once it was over.

The stand.

There’s a cafe behind one goal and a covered stand to one side. Neither of those were there in my day. I was chatting to a fella who watches Norton regularly and he pointed out former Boro keeper David Knight in the home goal. I remember him from the FA Youth Cup winning team of 2004 and I think he had a couple of spells at league clubs after leaving the Riverside. His best quality these days, I was told, is his willingness to stand up and spread himself rather than commit early when faced with striker in a one on one. I suppose it’s all those years of coaching.

Lookng up the touchline.

There was a further Middlesbrough link in the Norton manager Andy Campbell. He got the biggest cheer of the morning for slipping over when returning the ball to the pitch.  I’m not sure that anything he ever did at the Boro was appreciated to the same extent.

Norton are in yellow.

My friend Paul turned up midway through the second half with the best excuse for a late arrival yet. He’d had to go and have his sparkly nail varnish removed prior to us going to the Boro v Forest game that afternoon. We’ll leave it at that.

His emergency manicure meant that he missed the only goal of the game, a lofted ball into the box early in the second half that just seemed to scrappily ricochet off someone into the Billingham net. A couple of wild tackles aside, that was about the sum of the entertainment. It was a decent morning out, but I’m glad that Big Jack turned up at the Boro at just the right time to draw me in.

One of the things that I like about going to the match is getting there. I’d been wondering which of the fixtures in the Istanbul area to pick for a Sunday early afternoon game when I spotted one at Pendik. It was only around thirty kilometres from where we were staying but would involve a bus ride down to the ferry port, a boat trip from the European side to the Asian side of the Bosphorus and then a train to within a few minutes of the ground. Sounds like an adventure. I’m sure Michael Palin has made simpler journeys stretch to a whole television series.

It started well enough, in that we got on a bus that was heading in the right direction. We didn’t get off it as quickly as we should have done though and we ended up further away from the Eminonu ferry terminal than where we’d started from. No problem, just head for the sea. As we walked through some of the quieter streets we spotted a kebab place that appeared to serve sheep skulls alongside the more traditional dishes.

I’d recommend the choice on the right.

After twenty minutes of walking we still hadn’t reached the sea, but were able to hop onto a second bus that dropped us right outside the place where the ferries depart to Karakoy. The fare across the Bosphorus was only forty pence and you can use the same transport card that you use on the buses.

Our boat.

I spent the twenty minute crossing outside. I like feeling the wind on boat journeys, similar I suspect, to those dogs that stick their heads out of car windows. I don’t usually slaver as much as most of them though. It gave me the opportunity to see the Istanbul skyline too, on both the European and Asian sides.

The European side.

At Karakoy we disembarked in search of the train. It turned out that there wasn’t one. A fire at the station a few years ago meant that the trains now don’t start until Pendik and in order to get there we’d have to catch another bus.

Getting off at Karakoy.

The 16b was the one for us and Pendik was the fifty-fifth destination of the sixty-four stop route. We had an hour of following the coast and winding along high streets before arriving in Pendik. By now it was raining and so rather than wander around for a while trying to find the ground we hopped into a taxi for the last half mile.

It was fortunate that we hadn’t tried to make our own way to the ground as it was hidden among some high rise apartment blocks. The taxi driver had done well to get us there considering that up until then he’d had no idea that there even was a third division football ground in Pendik.

We were dropped in the wrong place though and initially a group of policemen wanted us to do a half circuit of the ground to the street that had the access to the turnstiles. One of them then took pity on us  and persuaded his boss that it might be quicker for him just to escort us through the barriers than attempt to give us the correct directions.

Turkish Cop of the Year 2014.

The helpful copper may very well have been regretting his actions a few moments later when he discovered that we didn’t have tickets. Well why would we? I’d expected a crowd of around two hundred in what apparently was a ground with a four thousand capacity.

He was too involved to just abandon us by this time though and approached another one of his superiors to get permission to let us in without tickets. That fella paused his game of Candy Crush just long enough to give a grudging nod and we were ushered past the queues at the turnstiles to a small door guarded by yet another policeman. Once he’d had the situation explained to him, he knocked on the door and we were allowed in. Brilliant. Don’t ever criticise the Turkish Police to me.

The view from our free section.

We were in an open terraced area to the right of a covered stand. The three other sides of the pitch didn’t have any access for spectators, just a wall with a fence above it. I couldn’t see into the covered section but it didn’t seem as noisy as the area we were in.

Pendik fans to our left.

There was a decent view of proceedings for anyone who lived in the surrounding blocks of flats, but nobody seemed particularly interested. With the rain getting heavier the only activity from the flats seemed to be women removing the washing from their lines and taking it back inside.

Just like executive boxes.

I went up to the back of the stand for a better view and got chatting with a fella up there. Chatting is probably a little overstated considering the language difficulties. He said something to me in Turkish and I pointed out that I only spoke English. He asked me my team, but didn’t seem to have heard of the Boro.

I had a rabbit to pull out of the hat though and mentioned that Tuncay Sanli had played for us. That did the trick. He was a good player according to my new-found Turkish friend. Good, I thought, if good means getting simple minded fans on your side by running around like a headless chicken before letting your team down by showboating with eye-catching but futile fancy flicks and backheels.

More Pendik fans.

And the game? Well, the away team took the lead on the half hour when a free-kick into the box was headed home only for Pendikspor to equalise a few minutes later with a close-range tap-in. The rain was getting heavier though and so we cleared off at half-time, missing the second half winner for the visitors.

I’d never been to Turkey before and so decided to have a few days in Istanbul on the way back to Teesside for Christmas. It’s an interesting city and I reckon that the cooler December temperatures and the lack of holidaymakers made it just the right time to visit.

Jen and I did most of the touristy things. We took a trip down the Bosphorus, wandered around the Blue Mosque (it’s rubbish) and visited the Grand Bazaar to buy some Turkish Delight. The real stuff with pistachios in, not the chocolate covered nonsense they flog in England. We saw Bob Geldof in the Grand Bazaar having a cup of tea, but politely pretended not to recognise him.

I also had a wet shave and a haircut, which was a lot cheaper than I’d expected. He cleaned my ears with cotton wool and once they start doing that I always anticipate a big bill. To complete the authentic tourist experience we were scammed by taxi drivers and pestered by every carpet salesman in town.

That’s not us.

As you might have expected, I’d checked out the football fixtures even before booking the flights, and the first opportunity for a game was at Galatasaray. What I hadn’t discovered was that a membership style scheme has been introduced this season in Turkey and that thwarted my efforts to buy a ticket online in advance.

To gain entrance into a top division Super Lig ground you need a Passolig card, complete with photo and passport details. I‘d read a few scare stories on the internet but in reality it was all quite easy. Jen and I took a trip out to Galatasaray’s Turk Telekom Arena a couple of days before the game and a bloke in the ticket office knocked me up the necessary card and sold me a ticket in around fifteen minutes. The card, which is valid for five years, cost me thirty five lira (a tenner) whilst my seat in the upper tier was fifty lira (fourteen quid). The most expensive seats were going for three hundred lira.

The Turk Telekom Arena.

On the evening of the match I caught the subway from Taksim Square. There were plenty of fans on the train wearing Galatasaray colours, in fact most of their fans were kitted out in some form of maroon and orange, even the old blokes. That made it easy for me just to tag along, get off at the right stop and then get on to a free shuttle bus that went to the stadium.

The bus ride only took around five minutes, quicker than the time it took to close the doors whilst as many people as possible tried to squeeze aboard.

Kebabs and meat balls.

The bus dropped me close to the stadium and I walked past the scarf, water and various types of food sellers. The ticket office was a lot busier than it had been a couple of days earlier. I doubt I’d have been too popular had I left it until matchday to obtain my Passolig card.

One hour before kick-off.

I was searched three times on the way in and had to hand over all of my coins at the final frisking. This restriction had the subsequent disadvantage of meaning that when I paid for a seven lira coffee with a ten lira note I couldn’t be given any change. I was handed a chocolate bar instead. Maybe there is some system whereby the Passolig card can be also used for payment inside the ground. If there is though, nobody told me about it.

My top tier seat was one of those ‘safe standing’ ones where you can ignore your seat and lean instead against a railing in front of you. The whole top tier was like that. The lower tier, including the section behind the goal where the hardcore supporters stood, were all conventional seats.

Above me, there were heaters built into the stadium roof. Heaters! They made it warm enough not to need a coat on a December evening.

Safe Standing

As kick-off approached I realised that the attendance wasn’t going to be that high, with the stadium no more than half full. I suppose it wasn’t too unexpected  in the run up to Christmas and with the visitors being less of an attraction than some of Galatasaray’s more traditional rivals.

The fans that had turned up were impressive though and it seemed that almost all of those in the stadium joined in, rather than just those grouped together behind the goal. As we awaited the arrival of the teams the stadium announcer played that ‘war-chant’ song and everyone held their scarfs aloft and waved them back and forward. Next we got a scarf-twirling song and then something to the tune of Karma Chameleon.

The singing continued throughout the match, pausing around me only when Mersin took an early lead against the run of play. Nobody from Galatasaray seemed too bothered at that stage but the hundred or so away fans in the top corner of the ground  celebrated as if they had been playing next goal the winner.

The natural order was temporarily restored when the bloke who had just scored for the visitors sliced a speculative cross into his own net to make it one each.

Galatasaray on the attack.

Mersin hadn’t read the script and were soon back in front via a penalty. The people around me were less happy with this development and a few squabbles started breaking out. I’ve no idea what the two factions were arguing about but having seen the Boro being booed off at half time when winning and a season card being thrown in anger at the manager in our UEFA Cup Final season, it could have been anything.

Two fellas were especially angry and were it not for the dozen or so people between them, were intent on murdering each other. The best thing was that they looked like brothers. Not just any old brothers either, but those two brothers out of The Proclaimers. I was hoping that the people holding each of them back would decide just to let them scrap. That’s something I definitely would walk five hundred miles to see.

Meanwhile, down on the pitch, Wesley Sneijder seemed equally pissed off with events and after picking up a booking for complaining about the penalty he spent the rest of the game looking for a second yellow and an extended Christmas break.

At half time I got myself some meatballs and another chocolate bar in lieu of change before moving to the other end of the stand to take a seat in the front row. This safe standing malarky is all right in theory but I’m getting on a bit and like a sit down now and again.

View from the corner

Galatasaray won a penalty of their own early in the second half. I thought the striker was quite clever about it, poking the ball past the keeper and inviting the contact. The successful spot kick probably prevented the Proclaimer boys from resuming hostilities.

For the remainder of the half almost all the crowd was cheering Galatasaray on. I’ve rarely seen this before. Do Galatasaray fans who have grown tired of singing just stop going? I remember going to Villa in the season that they won the league and being amazed at people in the main stand joining in with all the singing, although in hindsight if the Boro were about to win the league we might just get a peep out of the West Stand.

Mersin Idmanyurdu held out until the last ten minutes. It’s just occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t have been abbreviating their name to Mersin. It might be like referring to Port Vale as Port. Anyway, whatever I call them, they were on the receiving end of a well worked late winner that was tapped in at the back post.

The win took Galatasaray back to the top of the Super Lig. So, not that much to fight about really.