Trail of the Lion King

After a couple of days in Reykjavik, we decided to have a drive northish to see a bit more of the countryside. Grundarfjörður is two and a half hours away from the capital in the north of the Snæfellsnes peninsula. As you might expect, it’s a scenic route. There are plenty of mountains, waterfalls and we even saw wild horses fighting.

I know. Fighting horses would have been better.

Grundarfjörður was shut when we arrived. The one hotel wasn’t serving lunch and the best we could manage was a coffee at a small supermarket that appeared to be the meeting place for anyone who had ventured out of their wooden house.

We eventually found a cafe serving food but after paying fifteen quid for a bowl of soup realised why everyone just went to the supermarket or stayed indoors. With the wind and rain getting worse, Jen decided that the high price of lunch entitled her to linger indoors a bit longer and so I left her there and drove around the corner to the football pitch that we’d spotted on the way into town.

It was quite a view.

The game was a fourth division clash between Grundarfjörður in blue and white and Fjardabyggd in red and black. I didn‘t have to pay to get in. In fact I didn‘t even have to get out of my car. Everyone just parked up on a raised ledge and watched from the warmth of their vehicle. That was quite fortunate really as the dashboard was suggesting that it was close to freezing outside.

There were about another thirty cars lined up by the time the game kicked off, with a few hardy souls watching in the open. I suppose the locals have got used to weather like that and I doubt there are many rival attractions on a Grundarfjörður Sunday lunchtime. Or any Grundarfjörður lunchtime.

One of those cars was ours.

Two minutes in and the Grundarfjörður right winger got clear through and squared it for one of his strikers who somehow managed to get his legs tangled up and miss an open goal.

After that though it was all Fjardabyggd chances in the remainder of the first half with the wind seeming to thwart the visitors more than the home defence. Bang on half-time their left midfielder used the gale to his advantage and cutting in from his side of the pitch curled a right footed shot just inside the far post to open the scoring. The goal was greeted by the sound of car horns, presumably in celebration, so there must have been some away fans in attendance.

That’s quite a famous rock apparently.

Fjardabyggd continued to press in the second half amid a few harder tackles flying in. Early highlights included one of the coaches being sent off, presumably to sit in the warmth of his car. That’ll teach him. Then we had a home player calling for what I had presumed was a replacement shirt, but was actually an additional shirt. Fair enough I’d say.

Imagine what it’s like in the winter.

Twenty minutes from time a Grundarfjörður free kick bobbled around in the box before just sitting up nicely for the home centre back who wellied it home on the half-volley to even things up. The goal seemed to increase the niggling fouls and before long we were treated to a handbag session that ended up with one of the Grundarfjörður fellas getting a straight red.

Get into ’em!

A minute from time Fjardabyggd were awarded a penalty. As you can imagine Grundarfjörður, who were a player and a coach down, weren’t too pleased with this. They soon cheered up though when their keeper managed  to keep both the initial shot and then the rebound out.

Just look at those hills.

The joy wasn’t to last though as moments later a cross from the right was headed home from five yards out to give the visitors a two-one victory.

That’s yer lot.

As the car horns greeted the final whistle the bloke who had been sent off came back on to the pitch to remonstrate with the ref. Unfortunately for him Grundarfjörður don’t supply their players with padded jackets and so he stated his grievances whilst wearing a shawl. It’s hard to be taken seriously in those circumstances.

I think that Grundarfjörður might very well have been the most scenic location that I‘ve ever watched a game of football. It was definitely well worth the weather and the pricey soup.

Well, I’m back. I was going to just leave the blog floating around in cyberspace to be chanced upon by people googling penis fish, but I had stuff to write about it and it was easier to do it here than to set a new blog up. So, as I’m not in Korea these days this place is no longer about Korean football, it’s about any sort of football. Or sport. So that’s fairly wide ranging then. We’ll get back into the swing of things with some games from Iceland in the summer.

I’ve often fancied a trip to Iceland, but it’s one of those places that I’ve either been too busy to get to or on the occasions when I’ve had the time there’s been somewhere better to go instead.

A combination of plenty of time off between jobs and a couple of Withered Hand gigs at the Music Mess Festival in Reykjavik meant that finally the time was right and Jen and I landed at Keflavik early on a drizzly Thursday morning.

It took us a while to clear the airport, mainly because of the various insurances I had to consider at the care hire desk. Windscreen chip cover was considered vital by the Hertz staff but they reluctantly conceded that if I fancied a gamble I could probably take a chance on volcanic ash damage. I struggled a bit with the money too, getting thoroughly pissed off with the cash machine at its continued refusal to give me what I later realised had been the equivalent of three grand Sterling.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. Time for the football. There are plenty of teams in the Reykjavik area which isn‘t surprising as most Icelanders live there. I’d picked out a fourth tier game at Augnablik as being the nearest to our apartment but when I turned up half an hour before the reported kick-off time there was nothing more to see than a couple of kids kid booting a ball around on what looked like a school pitch.

Not to worry though, there was a third tier match nearby and with the wonder of that blue dot thing on my phone I was able to turn up at the Hertz Vollerinn Stadium with time to spare. It was a thousand Kroner to get in which by this time I’d learned was just over a fiver in proper money. Despite the stadium sponsor, the bloke in the ticket office didn‘t try to sell me any insurances, nor did he require a hefty deposit in case I scratched my seat.

Here come the teams

IR were in white and blue, whilst the visitors Aegir wore yellow and black. My initial impressions were that the home side passed the ball a little better, but the away side had more fat blokes. Past experience of watching football at its lower levels suggests that the fellas carrying more weight than they should do are usually decent footballers. They have to be really, unless they are related to the manager or owner. Or are indeed the manager or the owner. Or occasionally both.

On this occasion better passing trumped triple XL shorts and the hosts took the lead midway through the first half when Jon Strom beat the offside trap, outpaced the pursuing defenders and sidefooted the ball past the advancing keeper.

The players celebrate with the mascots.

The visitors came close to equalising just before the break when a stumble from IR defender Atli Johannsson let in Milan Djurovic who, with the goal at his mercy, put his shot into the side netting. It was hard to say which of the two players looked the most embarrassed.

At half time I got myself a coffee and a hot dog and wandered around. There were about a hundred and fifty fans there, most of whom seemed to know each other, which isn‘t surprising really.

Discussing the long light nights , I imagine.

At the restart I noticed how many of the shouts from the players were in English. “Time“, “Man On“, “Start Again“, the usual stuff. The players seemed very respectful towards the ref, with very little querying of decisions and none of the mouthfuls of abuse that are part of the game in England. I prefer it like that. If I were a ref I’d book anyone who did any more than raise an eyebrow at anything I did.

From the ‘stand’ behind the goal.

With ten minutes played in the second half the home side doubled their lead when Jon Strom nipped in front of the keeper to poke the loose ball home for his second goal of the evening.

The second goal.

Milan Djurovic made up for his earlier miss when he pulled one back with a penalty twenty minutes from the end but IR saw the game out for a 2-1 victory.

Despite me having completed my aim of seeing each team in the four tiers of Korean football play at home, there was still one team that I hadn’t watched, the Police. They joined the new second tier K-League Challenge at the start of the season, yet for whatever reason ignored all of the empty stadiums around Korea and elected to play their home fixtures at their opponents grounds instead.

That’s a ground hopping nightmare. Do you ignore them? Should you turn up at every one of their opponents stadiums? I dunno, but with only two days left in Korea and the chance to see them take on Chungju Hummel before I left I decided to settle for that.

I took a ninety minute bus ride from Central City. It could have all gone wrong before I started as I was initially sold a ticket for Cheongju instead. After three years I’d thought I was beyond that sort of mishap, although maybe that would have been the perfect way to finish things off, turning up at an empty stadium in a town miles away from where I’d intended.

On arrival at Chungju I bought my ticket for the return journey, paying a little more attention this time and stocked up on fake Hello Kitty Zippo lighters. They’ll never come in wrong as Christening presents.

Catching a cab to the stadium wasn’t without its difficulties either. My usual fallback after trying speaking slower and then louder is to mime the sport involved. It tends to work reasonably well with baseball but the taxi driver seemed less than impressed with my re-enactment of the sort of pass that Bobby Murdoch would have placed just beyond the last defender for Alan Foggon to run on to. Fortunately one of his colleagues must have been more familiar with Charlton’s Champions and he was able to point out that the foreign bloke kicking an invisible cat actually wanted to go to the football ground.

They have a ticket office these days.

I paid five thousand won for a ticket which entitled me to sit anywhere I liked apart from the only section with actual seats. Wonderful. Jen and I had been here for a game the previous season where not only was it was free to get in but you could sit in the Director’s Box if you fancied. That’s progress for you. Over the course of the afternoon I was able to accumulate dust on my trousers from each of the various vantage points that I chose. The locals had all brought bits of cardboard to sit on. You’d think I’d know stuff like that by now.

The main stand with the small central VIP seated section.

I’d estimate that there were about six hundred people watching, including three different groups of Chungju ‘ultras’. One lot of thirty were sat in the main stand, near to the VIP section with actual seats, another twenty or so were stood behind a goal with a further splinter group of five setting up camp twenty yards away.

As the first half progressed the two main groups merged, although the five fans twenty yards away kept their distance preferring to sing their own songs, often in competition with the other lot.

I couldn’t see any Police fans, although there was a family behind the other goal dressed up in Suwon kit. I suspect that they were probably there to encourage one of their players doing his national service with the Police. Or maybe they had been sold bus tickets to the wrong town too and were just making the best of it.

“Next time we are taking the train.”

Chungju were in green shirts and red shorts whilst Chungju were in white shirts and black shorts. If you didn’t look too closely it could almost have been Cameroon against Germany.

The Police have been the stand-out K2 team this season and they looked the stronger side in the opening stages. They took the lead after eighteen minutes when Kim Young Hoo cut his shot back across the goal into the far corner. A few minutes later Jung Jo Gook almost made it two. He turned his defender four or five times before his efforts wore him out and he fired his shot tamely at the keeper.

Chungju had a couple of chances, one from forty yards that the Police keeper almost made an arse of by being too far off his line, and another shot from distance that went just wide of the post.

Ouch.

The tempo picked up in the second half and seven minutes in In Jun Yeon equalised for Chungju with a shot that left the Police goalie Yoo Hyun wrong-footed. I wasn’t too impressed with the keeper and thought him fortunate to be spending his national service playing football rather than issuing parking tickets or admonishing drunken old blokes.

Chungju on the attack.

It didn’t take the Police long to regain the lead though. A free-kick played in from the left ended up in the back of the net. I’m not sure if Kim Young Hoo got a touch or not. If he did, he looked offside to me. He celebrated as if it was his goal though.

That’s on its way in.

A minute later it was level again as Chungju swept down to the other end and Han Hong Gyu crossed for In Jun Yeon to side foot home his second goal of the game. Both players leapt the advertising hoardings to celebrate with their fans.

Two each.

There was more to come and fifteen minutes from time Yang Dong Hyun got the winner for the Police. I wasn’t paying attention and looked up just as the ball hit the back of the net, no doubt after some wondrous twenty pass build-up. However it happened, it was enough to seal the three-two victory for the rozzers.

There was an added bonus after the game when I noticed that the Police team bus was equipped with flashing red and blue lights. Ideal for those high-speed chases or getting to the gimbap shop that bit quicker.

Nee Naa, Nee Naa.

And so that was it. Two days later Jen and I left Korea.

In my time there I’d been to one hundred and eighteen football matches at seventy different stadiums.  I’d seen games in twenty-one different baseball parks, all ten KBL basketball arenas, both of the Asian league ice hockey rinks and I’d watched the horse racing at all three Korean racecourses. We’d hiked in all of the National Parks and most of the Provincial Parks. It’s been a fantastic three years in a country that’s ideal for hiking and watching sport.

Hopefully we’ll come back at some point in the future when there will be any number of new teams and stadiums to tick off. Until then the blog will just sit out there in cyber-space, chanced upon by people googling penis fish, karate bears and the Olsen twins.

Everyone loves karate bears.

Thanks for reading and I hope this record of what we got up to has been either entertaining or informative, depending upon what you were looking for. It looks as if we are off to South Africa next where we’ll continue going to the match and going for a walk. I’m expecting less kimchi, but more lions.

Once I’d started with the Korean ground hopping, I suppose the logical conclusion was to complete their version of the ’92 Club’ and see every team play at their home ground. There are currently fifty teams in the four divisions in Korea, but as the Police play all their games away it’s actually the ’49 Club’.

It’s a frustrating process trying to complete the set in Korea as each season usually involves the introduction of three or four new teams, a relocation or two to a different city and any number of stadium moves. I’d ended the previous year just four grounds short of getting around them all, but when the 2013 season kicked off the total outstanding had increased to ten.

Two months of zipping around the country meant that with just three days remaining in Korea the only club left was Yangju and so that’s where I went on Saturday evening.

A few years ago Yangju was probably all just fields of cabbages. These days it’s fields of cabbages mixed in with a few high rise apartments to cater for those who prefer to travel in and out of Seoul for their vegetables rather than growing their own.

No idea why Abramovich didn’t pitch up here rather than Chelsea.

If you take the subway, carry on one stop beyond Yangju Station and get off at Deokge instead. It’s then a twenty minute walk from Exit Two to the Godeok Stadium. There’s a convenience store just before you get there for stocking up on beer.

It’s up the hill, to the right.

The stadium wasn’t too bad for the fourth tier, mainly because it didn’t have a running track. There were five hundred or so seats running the length of one side of the artificial pitch, with another hundred and fifty in a raised stand on the opposite side. I reckon the attendance will probably have peaked at around two hundred and fifty.

The elevated stand.

The home side were in yellow and black, with visitors Hwaseong in white and blue. Hwaseong have had the better start to the season and looked more confident in possession in the opening minutes but neither side created much in the way of chances early on.

Hwaseong on the attack.

The deadlock was broken twenty minutes in by Hwaseong’s Jeon Bo Hoon. He received the ball close to the penalty spot and despite a Yangju defender clinging to his arm like a kid refusing to leave his Mam on the first day at school, he was able to place his shot wide of the keeper to open the scoring.

Action at the other end.

Once the first goal had gone in, Hwaseong stepped it up a bit and five minutes later Lee Soo Min struck a left footed shot across the keeper and in off the far post to double the lead.

Ten minutes later Mr. Lee got his second and Hwaseong’s third goal with an effort that was almost identical to his first. Yangju had a couple of opportunities from distance but didn’t really threaten and they went in at half-time three down.

A kid with a drum arrived during the  break and sat down near me. I took that as my cue to go and see what the view was like from the other side of the ground.

The main stand from behind the goal.

Despite the score Yangju were still competitive in the second half and if one of their early chances had gone in, then who knows what might have happened. It’s possible. Do you remember Steaua and Basel? Massimo off the bench?

It wasn’t to be though and with twenty minutes to go Lee Soo Min completed his hat-trick with a right-footed version of his earlier goals.

Where I’d sat in the first half.

The rout was completed five minutes from time when with the home defence left stranded upfield Kim Jin Il received the ball unmarked in the box and lofted it over the Yangju keeper for the fifth.

The Yangju subs.

And so that was that. The ’49 Club’ completed with a fourth division game in the middle of nowhere. That’s exactly as it should be.

With all the groundhopping I’ve been doing I hadn’t yet managed to fit in a Jeonbuk game this season and so with our departure from Korea getting nearer I thought I’d nip down to Jeonju and check up on ex-Boro striker Lee Dong Gook.

Jen and I caught the KTX to Iksan. You can go to Jeonju on the train as well, but the World Cup Stadium is out of town and as you need a taxi from either station I think Iksan is just that little bit more convenient. Mind you, the taxi driver did make a point of checking that it was Jeonju World Cup Stadium that we wanted. I’m no idea as to how many fares he would ever have had to other World Cup stadia but I doubt it would be many.

Crunching tackle coming up.

It was busy outside of the ground with the crowd larger than normal as a consequence of it being Childrens Day. That’s the designated day that kids don’t spend in a hagwon memorising quadric equations but instead accompany their parents to a park or a football game.

It looked as if Jeonbuk had put some special deals on to boost the crowd as the lad in front of us in the queue had a coupon that got him in for five thousand won. Jen and I paid fifteen thousand each to sit in the West stand, mainly so that we didn’t have the sun in our eyes. It’s free-seating and so we made our way up to the less well populated upper tier.

The view from our seats.

The official attendance was announced as 23,000ish. I’d have estimated it at about two-thirds of that, but it’s still a decent turn-out. Jeonbuk haven’t had the best of starts to the season and on the back of failing to retain the title last season the crowds have been dropping off.

Seoul brought around two hundred and fifty with them which considering the terrible start to the season that they’ve had is equally impressive. As ever they made plenty of noise.

Defensive header from Lee Dong Gook.

Both sides struggled to impose themselves in the first half, Seoul probably having the best of the chances including a two on one which ended up with Jeonbuk goalie Choi Old Man forcing Dejan Damjanovic wide enough for the shot to finish in the side netting.

Lee Dong Gook didn’t see too much of the ball in the opening period, he won a couple of fifty-fifty challenges and linked up well with Eninho but didn’t have any scoring chances.

A few minutes into the second half Jeonbuk’s Lee Seoung Ki turned former Celtic player Cha Du Ri inside out before beating the keeper at the near post to put the hosts a goal up. Maddeningly he then picked up his second yellow of the game for removing his shirt. The Jeonbuk players argued that he hadn’t taken it fully off but the ref was having none of it.

Jeonbuk players making their point.

The sending off didn’t seem to change the game too much. Jeonbuk, as you might expect, occasionally sat that bit deeper at times but still pressed forward at every opportunity. Seoul hit the post on the hour and at the other end Eninho curled a shot just wide.

Jeonbuk came close to adding a second with a quarter of an hour to go when Lee Dong Gook bore down on goal, held off a determined defensive challenge and squared for Lee Gyu Ro who should have done better than the tame header he directed straight at the Seoul goalie.

Second half goalmouth stuff.

In added time Seoul almost snatched an equaliser but were denied by a great reflex save from Choi. Not bad for a forty one year old. Deep into injury time Lee Dong Gook was subbed. He got a warm round of applause from the home fans and a handshake from the referee. Seconds after he took his place on the bench the final whistle blew.

The one nil win moved Jeonbuk up into fourth place, leaving Seoul just above the relegation spots in tenth position.

Off he goes.

I think that‘s probably the last time I’ll see Lee Dong Gook play. I’ve watched Jeonbuk around thirty times over my three years in Korea and he’s played in almost all of those games, providing me with a tenuous link to Teesside. Mind you, I only actually saw him play half a dozen times or so for the Boro and managed to miss both occasions where he scored for us.

You never know though, maybe he and I will both get to go to the World Cup in Brazil next year. That would be nice.

Hwaseong are one of this season’s new teams in the fourth tier Challengers League. They don’t really play in Hwaseong though, more in the middle of nowhere to the south-east of the city. I’d been hiking on the morning of the game down past Taean and managed to catch a bus to nearby Suwon.

Jen had written down the full address of the Hwaseong stadium in Korean for me and the taxi driver was able to successfully enter the details in his satnav. It showed a journey of around 17km and thirty five minutes. Forty minutes later we were driving at walking pace along farm tracks. I was sure that we were lost and kept showing him a photo of the brand new stadium at Hwaseong. The driver remained equally convinced that the ground would be just around the next corner. He pointed out a hand-written sign stuck to a gatepost that apparently confirmed his belief.

He was right. We turned one more corner and the stadium appeared from nowhere.

That’s part of the main stadium in the background.

The delay in getting there meant that I’d missed the opening twenty minutes. I’d also missed four goals as the score was two apiece. Bugger.

The practice pitch main stand.

The game was on the practice pitch rather than the main stadium, but it was very impressive despite the almost obligatory running track. There was only one stand, but that’s all that was needed. I didn’t notice any fans from visitors Gyeongju, but there were around five hundred home supporters, most of them decked out in what I imagine were complimentary orange scarves.

Hanwha Eagles will want their inflatable sticks back..

Hwaseong were in orange whilst Gyeongju wore their white shirt with the red and green stripes. I’d barely arrived when a Gyeongju forward chased a long ball and put his side three-two ahead.

It was a ridiculously open game with play rapidly switching from one penalty area to the other. Both sides spurned plenty of chances to score until with a couple of minutes to go to half time a Hwaseong striker got clear and slide the ball under the body of the advancing keeper to bring his side level.

Gyeongju on the attack.

A few minutes later the ref blew for half time and to my surprise the players all slumped to the floor. It soon became clear that I hadn’t arrived midway through the first half of a 3pm kickoff game, but midway through the second half of a match that had started at 2pm. Well that would explain the open nature of the game and me having missed four goals. Double bugger as they say. I filed out and went to have a look around the main stadium. Very nice it is, hopefully I’ll get to see a match there sometime.

The real Hwaseong stadium.

As for getting back to Seoul, I took a cab to Osan station. It took half an hour and cost 15,000 won. I then stood for an eighty minute subway ride back to Yeoksam. If you are going to Hwaseong for the football I’d recommend catching a cab from Osan rather than Suwon. Apart from it being cheaper it’s a much more direct route on busy roads and you won’t piss the farmers off anything like as much.

The point each was enough to keep Hwaseong in second place in Group B, whilst Gyeongju climbed to third in the table.