Trail of the Lion King

Whilst we were driving around Lobatse looking for the New Lobatse Stadium we stumbled across a game taking place on a pitch that we subsequently discovered wasn‘t too far from the ground we were after. It was a little out of town, or at least the part of town that had shops and offices. It did have cows wandering along the roads though, so that makes it the best part of town.

Sunday stroll.

I find it hard to drive past a match of any sort without stopping for a while and so I parked up and had a wander over. The pitch wasn’t up to much, not unless you were planning on planting potatoes, but they had nets. They also had around fifty people watching, suggesting that apart from going for a walk with the cows, there’s not much to do in that neighbourhood on a Sunday.

The Covered Stand.

The team wearing red had Pelenge Kicks on the back of their shirts, from which you could reasonably conclude that they had been named by Chris Waddle. I couldn’t see anything on the shirts of the team wearing yellow, so we’ll just call them Yellows.

A count up of the players confirmed that it was eleven a side, but it looked fairly congested. The keeper at my end was wearing number 300 on the back of his shirt, perhaps giving an indication of the size of the squad and his usual place in the pecking order.

View from behind the goal.

One team scored whilst I was watching although I can’t remember which one. It was at the far end though if you want to try to work it out from the photos.

I’m not sure where that goalie is. Maybe they were playing fly-keeper.

There were a few kids having a kickabout behind the goal and I asked one of them if he knew the score.

“Yes“ he replied, and left it at that.

As I was leaving one of the other kids asked me if I had two Pula. That’s around fifteen pence. Tempted as I was to respond in kind with a “Yes“ of my own I gave him the handful of change that I had in my pocket, which was probably no more than a couple of quids worth. He instantly became Mister Popular amongst his mates.

I’d seen an advert in the paper for a farm workers job that paid five hundred and fifty Pula a month and so that loose change was about equivalent to a day‘s pay. Frightening really.

Nice hat, ref.

Anyway, interesting as it was, we still had a stadium to find and so we left them to it

I’d thought that the football season in Africa had finished, but then I stumbled across the fixtures for the first round of qualifying for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations. South Africa didn’t feature, so I assume that they don‘t take part until later in the competition.

Jen and I didn’t have anything planned for the weekend and so I had a look  at neighbouring countries to see if there was a game that we could get to. Swaziland were playing away so that ruled them out. Lesotho had a home game, but the flights were a couple of hundred quid a pop and I thought that was a bit much for a game that didn’t involve the Boro.

Botswana were also playing at home, against Burundi, and as the flights were  a fair bit cheaper that’s what we went for. We booked a room for the Saturday night that was handy for the National Stadium in Gaborone and everything looked all set. Or at least it did until I discovered that the National Stadium had already been booked for the African Youth Games. Bloody kids.The national team’s qualifying match for the Africa Cup of Nations had been put back a day and shunted seventy kilometres out of town to the New Lobatse Sports Centre.

I wouldn’t care, but a similar thing happened last month to Botswana’s game with Swaziland after someone had booked the National Stadium for a car boot sale or something. You’d think that the country‘s football team would get first dibs.

National Stadium, Gaborone.

Still, at least there was something going on at the National Stadium. The African Youth Games appears to be quite a big deal, with fifty four countries represented by a couple of thousand participants. By the time we arrived on Saturday morning though, there were only a couple of athletics events to complete before the closing ceremony.

We couldn’t park near the stadium and were directed to a Park and Ride. The bus driver told us that it would be at least half an hour before the bus would set off and so as it was only a ten minute walk back to the stadium we left him to it.

The stadium looked fairly empty as we approached, with no one going in other than gangs of teenagers in matching tracksuits and accreditation around their necks. A security guard told us that the only way to get tickets was by finding a particular chain of supermarket and buying tickets there. As we weren’t too fussed about catching the under fifteens three thousand metre steeplechase we gave up and had a wander around the market that had been set up nearby instead.

The condom shop seemed popular.

I don’t think that many of the stall holders had made the killing from the games that they’d hoped for. Ticket sales to the public were poor and a couple of thousand teenagers on a trip away from home  are more likely to nick your stock than pay for it.

I couldn’t help but admire a suit that had a strip of animal hide running down the spine of the jacket with more skin decorating the front pockets. I knew that it wouldn’t fit and even if it did I’d struggle to find the right occasion to wear it to, but when the bloke selling it suggested that I try it on I didn’t need to be asked twice.

If only it had been made entirely of zebra hide, I’d never have taken it off again.

With a day to go until the Cup of Nations qualifier we had time to make sure that we had match tickets in advance and so we popped into Gaborone town centre. It seems a safe enough place, although we were targeted by one of those fellas selling paintings to fund a day care centre for one legged orphans. We’ll be able to open our own gallery one day.

I’d read that the match tickets were being sold at Orange shops and so once we’d found one it was easy enough to pick up a couple of fifty Pula seats for the shaded stand.

In case you’ve never seen a ticket before.

We’d booked into a backpacker’s hostel, mainly because it was right next door to the Mokolodi Game Reserve where we’d intended to track rhinos on foot. Unfortunately the rhino tracking was the last thing in my list of things to arrange and they were fully booked. As we were staying nearby we visited the reserve anyway and settled for a two hour game drive instead. We still didn’t see any rhinos.

There were a few giraffes though and as we were driven around I quietly dropped the raisins from my complimentary bag of nuts and raisins for the warthogs to eat.

That bush doesn’t provide much of a hiding place.

I noticed an advert in the paper the next day for some of the livestock on the reserve. It certainly beats your standard gift shop, although we’d have struggled to have got any of them on the plane back to Johannesburg.

They’ll even gift-wrap them for you.

The hostel was ok, mainly because we had the best room, one of those roundel things with a thatched roof. As well as having the only en-suite bathroom on the premises it came complete with peacocks and the fattest pig I’ve ever seen.

I can only hope she was heavily pregnant as dragging your stomach along the floor isn’t a good look. Despite that, we fed her more leftovers than I suspect is healthy.

Fattest pig ever.

Next morning we drove down to Lobatse. We’d planned to call in at some game reserve with vultures but couldn’t find it and so spent most of the morning driving around the town looking for the stadium before stretching out our lunch long enough to read every section in a couple of Sunday papers.

The upside of having not much to do was that we got to the New Lobatse Stadium early enough to get a prime parking space just outside of the turnstiles. The downside, however, was that we had almost two hours to wait until kick-off.

New Lobatse Stadium

We were in the only covered stand and were able to take our pick of the seats to the left of the central VIP section. It’s a nice enough ground in a modern sort of way, the best feature probably being the hills in the background.

Hills are always good.

As kick-off neared we were treated to a dance trio. They roped in someone who looked like a bigwig in the FA at some point and he added to the entertainment by playing air guitar on the stick that the bloke with the robes had been wearing.

You don’t get that at The Riverside.

By the time the game kicked off I’d estimate that there around five thousand fans in the stadium. As ever, they kept arriving throughout the first half and probably a bit beyond that. One of them had brought what looked like a full-sized stuffed zebra. Perhaps he’d picked it up from the Mokolodi Game Reserve.

The zebra arrives.

The standard certainly didn’t seem like an international match with plenty of tackles flying in early on that missed both ball and man. The game was finally balanced at nil-nil after the first leg and it stayed that way throughout the first half, with just the single shot troubling the away keeper.

A Botswana corner.

We had to leave at half time as the change of date meant that we’d have struggled to have caught our flight otherwise. Our quick getaway meant that we missed the Botswana goal that clinched their passage into the second round and a tie with Guinea-Bissau. Who? No, me neither.

If the National Stadium isn’t already booked for some kid’s birthday party we might very well head back and see how they get on in that one.

Saturday was Cup Final day, not just in England, but in South Africa too. Or rather it was Nedbank Cup Final day. I’ve no idea if Nedbank are an international bank, but if they are then they should open some branches in Scotland. I’m sure that they’d be very popular.

It’s a few weeks since I’ve seen a football game over here, what with the trip to the UK and then my kids coming over here for a visit. They’d have been happy to go to a match or two, but unfortunately none of the fixtures fell right. They did ok for wildlife stuff though.

I’m sure those sticks will be adequate.

There isn‘t a permanent venue for the Nedbank Cup Final and the South African FA wait until the finalists are known before announcing which ground will host the game. This year it was the Moses Mabhida stadium in Durban that got the nod. That worked out pretty well for Jen and I as we’d yet to get to that part of the country.

The Moses Mabhida Stadium.

I’d seen plenty of notices in the football paper giving details of overnight coach trips from Johannesburg for Pirates fans. I’m getting a bit old for that sort of thing though, maybe I’ve always been too old for it, and so we took a one hour flight to Durban instead.

Arriving by air allowed us to notice just how green the land around Durban is. It’s a bit of a contrast from the clay and rocks of the Gauteng area. It was a lot warmer than Gauteng too, or at least it seemed like it as we sat out in the hotel garden for lunch.

Our hotel was one of those near the stadium.

It promised to be an interesting final, with Wits University, or the Clever Boys as they are nicknamed, being good enough to have finished third in the Premier league, whilst ‘bigger club’ Orlando Pirates had already lost in three cup finals over the season, including the African Champions League.

I initially wasn’t really sure which team I favoured, either with heart or head. They appeared to be quite evenly matched on the field and my usual preference for the bigger club to come unstuck was balanced against the thought that no team should lose four finals in a season.

It remember how sickening it was when the Boro lost two finals in 1997 and then another the following March, but four in a season? No, you can’t have that.

It was probably the Pirates fans that clinched my temporary allegiance. I reckon that they would rival the Kaizer Chiefs nationally in terms of numbers, but they are streets ahead in the characters that they have turning up at the games. They’ve got that crossed-arm salute too, that even the players did before the game acknowledging their supporters.

A couple of Pirates fans.

I’d read that the 54,000 seater stadium had sold out, but fortunately we’d bought our sixty rand tickets a few days earlier. That’s around three and a half quid. Not bad for a cup final. I put more than that in the donations bucket at the recent Alan Hood Memorial Trophy final and that‘s for teams competing in the thirteenth tier of English football. I suspect that the tickets for the Arsenal v Hull game at Wembley will have been a little more expensive too.

There were plenty of empty seats as we went through the turnstiles with around half an hour to go to kick-off, but the stadium continued to fill up throughout the whole of the first half and beyond. By the end, there were only really the seats in front of the executive boxes that were empty, whilst in places people were sat in the aisles or stood blocking the exits.

The Moses Mabhida stadium is a newish ground, built for the World Cup and whilst it has a fancy arch that you can zipline from when there isn’t a game on, I wasn’t impressed with the distance between the pitch and the stands. It’s as if they planned for a running track, but then just didn’t bother. If you are going to build a football stadium, particularly for a World Cup, then just build a football stadium with the stands close to the pitch.

It’s an arch.

There weren’t many chances early on, with Wits taking the lead half an hour in. At that point the Pirates fans around us seemed to be expecting the worst. It wasn’t surprising really after the season that they’ve had.

I should have taken the camera with the zoom lens.

The Pirates coach is renounced for bollocking his players and on this occasion the half-time hairdryer treatment did the trick. Within eight minutes of the re-start Orlando were level and they quickly went on to add another couple of goals.

There was a collective sense of relief from the Pirates fans as their team ran out the clock whilst the Wits players took out their frustration in a series of scuffles.

Fourth time lucky.

The full time whistle sparked an entertaining pitch invasion as a couple of hundred fans celebrated victory by dodging the stewards and vaulting over the electronic advertising boards. As it is the world over, most of them couldn’t resist holding their arms out ‘airplane style’ as they weaved their way across the turf.

I think that probably brings the South African football season to a close for me. There are a few lower division play-off games still to take place but I don’t think that we will get to any of them. Still, it’s not long to the World Cup.

I haven’t bothered writing about Boro games previously, but with this now being a general sporting blog I thought, why not? The main reason that I record this stuff is to help me to remember what I’ve seen and whilst one Boro game does tend to blur into another these days, it can’t do any harm. There’s also a possibility that the photos could be interesting in twenty years time or so if blogs still exist then.

My son Tom and I drove to Middlesbrough and parked up near the University. It’s where we used to park when the games had much bigger crowds, but as we walked towards the stadium it occurred to me that we could have parked in any number of much closer places. It struck me how few people were making their way to the match. The crowd seemed to have dropped significantly since my last game in September 2013, much more so than the official attendance figures would suggest.

The busker was still at the underpass, despite the likely drop in his takings. Sometimes I give him money. It’s a karma thing, to try to buy us a result. This was a meaningless end of season game though and as a win wouldn’t have made much difference to anything, he got bugger all.

He probably did quite well ten years ago.

The lack of a crowd was just as noticeable at the stadium and we didn’t need to queue for tickets. We didn’t need to give names and addresses either when we bought them, which is a first, I think, since the move to the Riverside.

Tom’s been coming to the match with me, on and off, since his first game at Ayresome Park as a two year old. The attendances and the league position have gone full circle since those days in the early nineties with the glory years in between starting to feel like something that happened somewhere else.

Half past two.

Our seats were in the South Stand, just behind the Red Faction lads. They get a bit of stick from some of the older fans, but I think a lot of them forget just how low the average age in the Holgate was. The Red Faction drummer must have been practicing over the winter as he’s improved a lot. Or else he’d been replaced by someone who can play. Either way, any atmosphere at all in the ground came from that group of a hundred or so kids.

Barnsley on the attack.

There wasn’t much went on in the first half hour on the pitch. Barnsley needed the win to have a chance of staying up, but it was easy enough to see how they had ended up in the relegation area. The Boro weren’t much better in that opening thirty minutes but we managed to create a few chances as the half drew to a close.

Barnsley took an early lead after the re-start, but were soon pegged back. A couple of goals at the death gave Middlesbrough a win that was probably deserved, but of little consequence.

It’s strange, but the win didn’t mean much to me. It might have been because the season was already over, but I’ve a feeling that I just don’t care that much these days. There were too many players that I wouldn‘t recognise if they passed me in the street with their full kit on and that makes it harder to identify with them.

On the way out.

There was no need to try to beat the traffic as having to queue at the underpass is a distant memory, whilst the lack of congestion on the roads meant that we were back in Norton quicker than I can ever recall managing in the past. I suppose that there are certain advantages to end of season games in the Championship.

As you might have spotted from the team names, this one was a bit of a change from watching the likes of the Kaizer Chiefs and Mamelodi Sundowns. Jen and I were in the UK for Easter and I took the opportunity to watch a game between a couple of teams from the Wearside Combination League. Really? Yes really.

To be more precise, it was the final of the Alan Hood Memorial Trophy and that was pretty much the reason for my attendance. Alan was my Dad’s cousin and my godfather. He died in a car crash in 1987 and the Wearside Combination League re-named the former Blind Institute Cup in his memory.

Alan actually played in the first football match I ever went to. He was captaining Easington Colliery and his dad, my great-uncle Jim, took me along to watch. I reckon it will probably have been the 72-73 season, maybe 73-74. Anyway, Alan came over to talk to us as the teams were warming up and told me that the Vaseline on his eyebrows was to prevent him getting cut when head-butting the opposition players. I, of course, believed every word.

After he stopped playing he became a ref and went on to make the Football League list.  I remember watching him reffing reserve games at Ayresome Park and running the line in an old First Division game against Derby.

Alan as a boy, Uncle Jim is back right.

The venue for the final was the Boldon CA ground and so I took a drive up the A19 with my Dad and my son, Tom. There are two pitches, one of which is used by Northern League Jarrow Roofing and the other by Boldon Colliery Welfare of the Wearside League. This game was on the Boldon Colliery Welfare pitch, but it was still a step up from the places where these teams usually play.

Boldon CA.

The sign on the gate stated that it was £2.50 to get in, but it was charity donations into a bucket instead. The trophy was on display as we went in. It’s an impressive looking effort, but so it should be as it’s a full-size replica of the European Cup.

My Dad with the cup.

The setting didn’t really seem worthy of the trophy. You wouldn‘t expect to win the European Cup on a pitch full of dandelions where the grass was a good inch longer than it should have been. There were about forty people milling around when we arrived with the usual old blokes supplemented by friends and family of the players.

We’d got lucky in a way, with the top two teams in the Wearside Combination having made the final. Sunderland Hendon, who were presumably named to avoid any confusion with the Barnet-based Hendon that play in the Isthmian League, were taking on the equally precisely named Sunderland The Alexandra.

No Champions League theme music on this occasion.

Hendon were kitted out in a very Spanish looking red and white stripes with blue shorts combo with  The Alexandra sporting blue shirts and white shorts. The uneven pitch wasn’t the best surface for passing and so neither side really bothered, preferring just to lump the ball upfield at the earliest opportunity.

There was more squabbling than goalmouth action in the first half, with players turning on their team mates whenever a move broke down, Hendon were marginally the better side though and some dodgy defending from their opponents allowed them to go in at the break a couple of goals up.

A couple of those fans look familiar.

By the time the second half kicked off the crowd had grown to around two hundred. An early penalty to Hendon allowed them to increase their lead to three and it looked to be game over. The Alexandra players certainly thought so and started their post-mortem on the pitch rather than wait until they got to the pub.

Surprisingly, they stopped the arguing just long enough to pull a goal back and set up a frantic final twenty minutes. Being frantic generally isn’t enough though and it wasn’t sufficient to compensate for the panic that set in whenever one of them found themselves anywhere near the penalty box.

Championies.

Hendon hung on for the win and we watched them lift Alan’s trophy. I doubt any of them knew who he was or why he wore Vaseline on his eyebrows. We did, though.