Trail of the Lion King

Sometimes things don’t work out the way that you expected. The initial reason for us being in Durban had been to see a Sharks Super Rugby game that ended up being played in Christchurch, New Zealand. Oh well. On the other hand though, sometimes things work out very nicely and this ended up being one of those times.

The SAFA Second Division is a competition that I’ve struggled to get to grips with. It’s the third tier of league football in South Africa and gets virtually no coverage either online, in the papers or on the telly. I can’t even find out which teams play in the various regional leagues, never mind  the fixtures or results. This weekend though, I got lucky as the play-offs for promotion to the First Division took place whilst we were in town.

If you were thinking that the end of July seems a bit late to be holding the play-offs, you’d have a fair point. As there is such minimal coverage though, I’ve no idea why they wouldn’t be concluded until just a fortnight before the new season starts.

The winners of each of the nine regional Second Division leagues had spent the past week in Durban. They had been divided into two groups with the plan being that the winner of each group would earn promotion. The two group winners then got the chance to play each other to determine the overall Second Division Champions.

The final was scheduled to take place on Sunday at 3pm in Umlazi, a township a few miles outside of Durban. That gave Jen and I the opportunity to stroll along  the seafront beforehand in the winter sun.

You can see the new World Cup stadium in the background.

The beaches at Durban are busy from early morning with surfers, blokes with metal detectors and people taking their dog for a shite. There were few sunbathers, but I imagine it’s packed in the summer.

The highlight of the morning was watching what I assume was a crane of some sort catching and then taking its time to eat a large grasshopper.

Only one winner in that battle.

After an outdoor lunch we set off for the King Goodwill Zwelithini Stadium. If you hadn’t already guessed it’s named after the current King of the Zulus. I’d hoped that he might have made an appearance, after all, it’s not every day your stadium hosts a Second Division play-off final.

His Majesty had other things to do though, spending the weekend out of town marrying his sixth wife in a ceremony that was expected to accommodate four thousand invited guests and up to forty thousand gate crashers. He should be fine for toasters after that.

The new Queen and a couple of her bridesmaids.  Nice frocks.

We didn’t have to look too hard for the stadium, with it being right next to the Mangosuthu highway. Parking was easy enough too, as we just drove into the VIP car park giving the security fella a cheery wave on the way in as if we parked there every day of the week. Using the car park also enabled us to skip the turnstiles as it had direct access to the stadium. I’m not sure if there was an admission charge for everyone else, but it looked as if people were just wandering in.

The Zwelithini Stadium had been tarted up for the 2010 World Cup, as the intention had been for it to be used as a training pitch. I don’t think it got used in the end, which isn’t surprising when you consider the number of more convenient alternative pitches in Durban itself.

The improvements consisted of a main covered stand and concrete terracing around the other three sides. It looked as if people would have just stood on the grass banks before then.

The main stand.

With both teams normally playing their home games a few hours drive away, I wasn’t expecting much of a crowd. As usual, people were drifting in throughout the first half and I’d estimate that there were around three hundred or so altogether.

We were sat in the main stand and there were definitely a few people nearby supporting Cape Town All Stars, although they might very well have been squad members who hadn’t made it into the dugout for the final.

On the other side of the pitch there were a handful of Highlands Park fans. One of them had lapped the pitch beforehand splashing the grass with what looked like Coke. It was in a Coke bottle anyway. In hindsight, it might very well have been some sort of ‘holy water’. There’s a spring we drive past on the way to Pretoria that people collect water from for use in church services and I suppose it’s more likely that it was something like that rather than actual Coke. Who knows though.

Highland Parks fans.

We had a few potential WAGs turn up too, although they did seem far more glamorously dressed than they’d need to be to bag a Second Division footballer.  I’d have thought that they might have been better off crashing the King’s wedding in the hope of catching his eye and becoming bride number seven. The going rate for a royal bride is twenty cows, which I reckon would be beyond most of the lads on the pitch.

Incidentally, I was chatting with a women at work about the payments for a bride. Lobolo, they call it. It’s usually paid in cows, although quite how appropriate that would be if you lived in a block of flats I don’t know. Maybe you could keep them in the bride-to-be’s old bedroom.

She also told me that when negotiations get bogged down the budding groom might offer a sheep or even a chicken to up the price a little without having to stretch to a whole extra cow.

Highland Parks on the attack.

With promotion already clinched for both sides I was hoping for an entertaining game. There was a fair bit of money at stake though with a million rand destined for the winners and half that for the runners up. That’s serious money at this level. In fact it’s far higher prize money than that available in the First Division.

When the sponsorship was announced there were a few tongue in cheek comments that choosing to yo-yo between the first and second divisions would be a decent business plan for the First Division teams.

I’d settle for some of the sponsor’s money being spent on a website listing the fixtures.

View from the main stand.

The standard of play wasn’t bad, not too dissimilar to that of the top two divisions. Both sides kept it tight at the back with the only chance of any note in the first half coming when one of the Cape Town players clattered a long range shot against the bar.

Nobody got any closer to scoring in the second half and at full-time it went straight to penalties. Cape Town All Stars held their nerve and claimed the trophy with a 5-4 win. I’ll look forward to seeing both of the sides in the First Division in two weeks time.

This game was quite a late addition to our trip. Originally we’d just planned on seeing the two games in Natal but when another of the FIFA sales windows opened I couldn’t resist buying a couple of tickets for Italy’s clash with Costa Rica in Recife.

Initially I didn’t give much of a thought as to how we’d get from Natal to Recife, after all it’s only one hundred and eighty miles. Once I’d delved a bit more into it though it turned out that there weren’t any flights that fitted with what had to be a day trip, there isn’t a train connection between the two cities and the bus wouldn’t get us there in time for kick-off.

That pretty much left driving and so when we passed a car hire place in Natal a few days earlier we popped in and ended up not only with a car, but with the fella who worked there agreeing to drive us there and back for eight hundred Brazilian reals. That’s around two hundred and twenty quid, which struck me as fair enough, particularly when I recalled that having to get a taxi home from a Boro game in Blackpool nearly thirty years ago cost over a hundred quid.

On Friday morning we left Natal at around half past seven. The first three hours or so were relatively easy enough and we made good progress passing pineapple stalls, people riding donkeys and any number of cows wandering around and, I suspect, up to no good.

Did you know that cows bear grudges against other cows? They have little cliques too. That’s worth remembering next time you see one stood by herself looking miserable whilst the rest of the herd are frollicking around on the other side of the field.

One we arrived in Recife everything slowed down. We followed the signs to the stadium through heavy traffic for two hours before we finally broke free of the congestion and arrived at the Arena Pernambuco which is situated just off a dual carriageway in the middle of nowhere.

There wasn’t anywhere to park and the decision to hire a driver paid off as he was able to drop us at a service station ten minutes walk from the ground.

There’s the stadium.

We had Category Two tickets for behind a goal, but unfortunately it was the goal that was right around the other side of the stadium and with kick-off approaching we had to get a move on.

Matters weren’t helped by one of the security fellas suspecting that Paul’s sun cream was some sort of explosive device. Paul was initially asked to prove that it wouldn’t go off with a bang by eating some of it, but managed to negotiate a compromise whereby he would apply some to his nose.

“Just eat it”

We reached our seats just as the teams were walking out onto the pitch. They were pretty good, high up but under cover. Whilst it didn’t look like there was any prospect of rain it was better to be sat in the shade.

I’d estimate that as the game kicked off a third of the seats were unoccupied. I’m not surprised though as we can’t have been the only ones who underestimated the time necessary to get from Recife city centre to the stadium. There were still people arriving over an hour into the match and I suspect quite a few spent the entire game still in their cars and inching slowly forward.

We had a couple of Costa Rica fans behind us who spent the entire game abusing the opposition, the ref and, I suspect, their own team with shouts of “Puta”. I’d love to have heard how they’d have behaved in a dispute with an actual prostitute.

The view from our seats.

Whilst the beer was easy to buy early on, by half-time the queues were prohibitive. Fortunately we were able to take advantage of the bloke doing the rounds with a barrel on his back. Well done, FIFA.

By this time Italy were a goal down and Ballotelli had been subbed. That was a shame as there is rarely a dull moment when he’s around. Even with him off the pitch, I kept casting the odd glance over towards the Italian bench in case he decided to let a few fireworks off.

With their star man withdrawn Italy couldn’t manage an equaliser. The win took Costa Rica through to the next round and briefly stunned the two fellas behind us into silence.

Fans behind the goal.

Our journey back to Natal was little different to the outward trip. Two hours of crawling along followed by three hours of high speed. The main difference I suppose was that we had a couple of crashes. After the second of them our driver revealed that he’d only had two hours sleep the previous night. Oh good.

And so that was it for Paul and I, another World Cup over and done with.

I rarely think in any depth about much at all, but I gave some some thought as to the way in which the four year World Cup cycle marks the changes in your life. When we went to the Germany in 2006, I travelled from my apartment in Ferrol, Spain.

By the time South Africa rolled around four years later, I was living in Seoul, South Korea. I liked enough of what I saw of South Africa during that 2010 tournament that when the chance came to live there I took it and have been in Gauteng for the last nine months.

I doubt that Jen and I will still be in South Africa when the next tournament takes place in four years time but I’d like to think that wherever we are, I’ll be making my way from there to Russia for the 2018 World Cup.

When we bought the tickets for our two World Cup games in Natal it was before the draw had taken place and so in theory we could have seen any teams. Apart from Brazil that is, who as hosts had their route to the final mapped out. Oh, and the likes of Scotland of course, and all those other those diddy nations that don’t go to World Cups anymore.

As luck would have it we followed the Ghana v USA fixture with another clash of the titans, Greece against Japan. Whatever. It’s a World Cup and so it’s all good.

We’d had two days off between the games and that meant seeing a bit of Porta Negra. It’s a seaside town just outside of Natal and I suppose you could liken it to what Seaton Carew is to Hartlepool, albeit without the penny arcades. Less dog shit too.

Porta Negra has got a decent beach that was popular with surfers. I suppose when you are on that top corner of Brazil you’d expect to get some pretty big waves coming in.

Just like Seaton.

There were also plenty of bars and restaurants in Porta Negra and with three games a day to watch on the telly we got around a fair few of them. The food that we had varied from those lumps of meat that are skewered on a large metal spike and carved at your table to tapioca from a street stall.

The atmosphere was good everywhere, nowhere had any hint of trouble going on and the people couldn’t have been friendlier. I like that about World Cups.

Another game, another bar.

When it was time to leave for the Natal stadium we decided not to bother with the shuttle bus and instead accepted a lift from a fella who offered to drive us there for a total of thirty reals. That compared very favourably with the hundred reals each we’d paid for the shuttle three days earlier, although we did still have to find our way back to Porta Negra after the game.

The wannabe taxi driver dropped us close to the stadium at around three thirty. Our plan was to watch the England v Uruguay game at four o’clock on a big screen inside the ground and it all worked reasonably well. The gates didn’t open until bang on four and so we had half an hour or so of milling around outside with mainly Japanese fans. We did see a few Greek supporters but they were heavily outnumbered.

Mount Fuji hats were popular.

It didn’t take long to get through security and we were soon watching the England game on a big screen. It was sponsored by Budweiser but luckily we weren’t forced to drink their beer. There was a Brazilian beer, Brahma, on sale as well and so we stuck to that.

I thought FIFA managed the whole alcohol situation extremely well. Simply selling the stuff puts them ahead of UEFA who only serve non-alcoholic beer at the Euros. They also allow you to drink your beer in your seat. English FA take note. To round things off they have beer fellas walking around with a barrel on their backs for when your cup is running low.

So, whilst they might be incompetent and corrupt they have got the odd mitigating point.

Suarez behaving himself.

As expected England lost again and we made our way up to our seats. This time we were down the side of the pitch, almost at the back of the lower tier. These were Category One tickets costing a whopping one hundred and seventy-five dollars each.

Despite the price our seats weren’t far enough back in the stand for the roof to cover us.You’d think Category One would at least mean you stayed dry. It briefly rained a couple of times during the match, just long enough each time for me to put my coat on and then have to take it off again within a few minutes.

The view from down the side.

Aside from the neutrals, it was mainly Japanese fans in the seats around us. There was also a big section of them behind the goal to our right. Most of them brought and blew up plastic bags in the way I recall Lotte Giants supporters doing in Korea, although this lot didn’t loop the handles around their ears and wear them on their heads like the baseball fans.

I only spotted a couple of small pockets of Greek fans. Maybe the financial crisis is still taking its toll over there. Or maybe they just didn’t fancy their team’s chances.

Whilst I hadn’t seen anyone selling tickets outside before the game, a fella in front of us was trying to shift a couple for the upcoming Japan v Columbia tie. It didn’t look like he had any takers though.

That’s the way to advertise.

As for the match, well you might have seen it. Japan did more of the attacking, but struggled once they got inside the box. As soon as Greece went a man down they dropped even deeper and settled for the goalless draw.

Japan fans to our right.

Paul and I were sharply away after the game in the hope of beating any further rain, We picked up a lift in a minibus taxi for twenty reals each and forty minutes after the final whistle we were back in Porta Negra.

It’s that time again. The World Cup. As I’m someone who finds it hard to drive past a kickabout by the side of the road without stopping, the only place for me to be this time of year was Brazil.

My flight from Johannesburg departed just as the tournament was kicking off and by waiting until the final boarding call I was able to watch the first half of the Brazil against Croatia game in an airport bar. I suppose, with the flight going to Sao Paulo, I shouldn’t have been surprised when there was a collective groan as Marcelo scored his own goal to put the hosts behind. Understandably there was a more positive reaction on the plane when the pilot eventually revealed the final score.

My onward destination was Rio, where I met up with Paul. He doesn’t watch much football these days, but he knows a good time when he sees one and a World Cup tends to fit the bill.

We didn’t have any live matches scheduled for Rio and even failed to make it to the Fanfest on the Copacabana Beach, choosing just to watch the games in a bar instead.

The first of many.

We did have a wander along the Copacabana before the football started and a brief paddle in the sea.

Just like Ronnie Biggs.

In the early morning at the beach there are still people sleeping rough on the sand. The police didn’t seem interested in moving anyone on and in addition to those who looked like they regularly spent the night outside there were many more who were probably new in town for the football.

There were also plenty of sea-front joggers, getting their training in before it got too warm. I was a little surprised to see Stuart Pearce run past me, although not as surprised as I was when he calmly overtook anyone who got in his way rather than scything them down from behind.

That saves a hundred and fifty quid a night.

Paul reckoned that you can’t visit Rio without going to see that big Jesus statue. Surprising really, as he already had a very good view of it from his top floor hotel room. As I’d been allocated a room with a view of a storage yard I was quite happy to head out and have a look before the football started.

It’s a complicated process to get all the way to the top, involving three separate buses or taxis and two different ticket offices. We lost patience before the end and so viewed it from a distance. It was close enough.

A rare view from behind.

Our first live game, Ghana v America, took place on a Monday night in Natal and so on Sunday afternoon we took the three-hour flight north. Natal didn’t look very impressive as we were driven through it after dark in a taxi, but that was okay as we were actually staying a little further along the coast at the seaside resort of Porta Negra.

The surrounding area had been affected by torrential rain over the previous few days, resulting in landslides, sinkholes and the cancellation of the Natal Fanfest. We didn’t see any of that though in Porta Negra, mainly because we spent the early part of Monday watching football on the telly in a bar.

A different bar.

Our hotel had organised a shuttle to the game. I didn’t see any Ghanaians on it but there were plenty of USA supporters. I’m fine with Americans. I’m even married to one.  Maybe I’ve just got lucky though as the ones on the bus spent the majority of the journey whooping and hollering.

They even cheered as the bus set off and applauded when it arrived in the drop-off car park. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such excitable adults. If they ever win the World Cup I imagine a few of them might spontaneously combust. It would probably have been kinder to all concerned if someone had put eyeless hoods over their heads until we got there to try to calm them down.

We had a ten minute walk to the stadium, past a couple of busy bars. There wasn’t much in the way of security forces, certainly nothing like the presence that the UK media had focused upon. There rarely is though. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a football tournament that wasn’t preceded by the suggestion that we were all likely to be murdered or locked up. Or both.

Natal security.

Admission to the stadium was well organised, with a barriered queuing system funneling people towards the gates. The game was sold out but there were fans outside trying to offload spare tickets. I didn’t see anyone buying but I got the impression that prices wouldn’t be high. They looked like fans trying to get rid of extra tickets they had been stuck with rather than touts after a profit.

Whilst I might have been a little less than impressed with the hoo-ha on the bus, I couldn’t fault the USA fans for their enthusiasm for dressing up. Most were in team colours, the exceptions tending to be those in fancy dress, notably a top quality Vegas-period Elvis.

The Arena das Dunas.

It seemed like there was rain in the air and after witnessing the downpour on the telly during one of the earlier games at this stadium I was quite worried about the potential for drowning during the game. The tickets that we had were only Category 3 and so I wasn’t too confident that we’d be under cover.

The stadium has a roof, of sorts, but it appears to be more for show than for the benefit of the fans. If you were in the back few rows then I dare say you’d be fine, but most other places and you’d be in trouble. It looked okay in the poshest section where the roof will have covered the FIFA delegation and media seats.

We got lucky with our cheap seats, if you can call ninety dollars cheap. We were behind a goal but right up in the top corner. If it were to rain and providing the rain just came vertically down then we’d just about get away with it.

For those who like looking at tickets.

I’m amused at how much the rain bothers me these days. It wasn’t always like that. I remember going to watch the Boro at Oldham in the eighties and it pouring down all game. I was stood in the uncovered terracing behind the goal wearing a sheepskin jacket that may just have been briefly fashionable in certain circles, albeit fifteen years previously. That coat must have gained about three stones in weight by the time I got back to my car and when I removed it from the boot the following day it had dried solid and could stand up by itself.

Our seats were part of what looked like a temporary stand and so I assume that they will be removed after the World Cup to give Natal a stadium of a size appropriate for its needs. That’s fair enough. A full smaller stadium always beats a half-empty larger stadium for me.

View from the top corner.

As you may have seen on the telly the US took a very early lead. I did wonder how the fans from our bus will have reacted. Less than a minute into the World Cup and they’d already scored. Maybe they thought the scoring in football might turn out like basketball after all.

Ghana struggled to get back into the game until someone finally realised that what they needed was a Middlesbrough player on the pitch. With twelve minutes to go they unleashed Albert Adomah. Four minutes later Ghana had equalised.

“Boro Boys, we are here”

I like it when I see a Middlesbrough player at the World Cup. Paul and I were there when Stewie Downing come on as a sub against Trinidad and Tobago in Germany and then again when Chris Killen (remember him? Thought not) turned out for New Zealand four years ago.

Unfortunately Albert’s influence was fleeting as America went straight back up the other end and scored the winner. Typical Boro.