Doosan Bears v Kia Tigers, Sunday 5th September, 5.30pm

September 16, 2010

I find it very difficult not to watch live sport if the opportunity is there. Apart from it being an enjoyable way to spend some time, I’m always convinced that if I don‘t go I’ll miss something worthwhile. You know,  like the Boro scoring eight. I was halfway up Great Gable when we did that. Actually, just us scoring these days would probably do me. 

May 2008, as we were beating Man City 8-1. Hard to believe really.

 This baseball game was something that I’d had no intention of going to see up until a few seconds before I leapt off the subway. I’d been returning from a trip to Jeonju where I’d watched Jeonbuk beat Pohang Steelers the day before and the subway route from the bus station back to my apartment goes past the Jamsil baseball stadium. 

Whilst I suspected that there might be a game on I didn’t know for certain as it’s the stage in the season where previously cancelled games are squeezed in here and there and so it was quite possible that the Doosan Bears and the LG Twins could both had been given an away fixture that afternoon. 

I was also quite tired. I’d got through a fair few beers before, during and after the match, followed by a morning spent sightseeing in Jeonju and then four hours stuck in traffic on the bus. If anything, I was looking forward to a bit of a lie down. 

We’d been wandering around the old Hanok village area in Jeonju that morning, marvelling at the recently erected ’historical’ features, a lot of which were revealed to be replicas when you read the small print on the signs nearby. We’d seen a Taesil, which was a stone structure which had once contained the umbilical cord of King Yejong. It didn‘t any more though because, as the accompanying sign pointed out, the pot containing His Majesty’s surgical waste had been stolen in 1928 by the occupying Japanese army, possibly to keep their loose change in. 

Not the King's umbilical cord.

 Then we saw a replica of the building that had once housed the Sillok, a multi-volume book set that recorded daily life in the royal court in the fifteenth century. This too, we were informed, had been destroyed by the Japanese, this time in 1592, no doubt because they were out of toilet paper and couldn’t be bothered to nip down to the 7-Eleven. 

Not a load of rare old books.

 Around the corner were a load of copies of paintings of the various Korean monarchs. No prizes for guessing who had used the originals for sledging down hills on snowy days. 

Apparently it's his head that's the funny shape, not the hat.

 One thing that had survived intact in the Hanok Village was a tree that was reputed to be six hundred years old. I can only presume that the Japanese didn’t realise its significance at any point or else they would no doubt have whittled it down to a pair of chopsticks. 

So, after all of that I had plans for a quiet evening. The schedule changed though as the train drew into the Sports Complex subway station and I saw the KIA Tigers fans get up from their seats and head towards the door. Initially I didn‘t give it much of a thought, then I wondered if I should go as well. I began to think that I was missing out on something and by the time the train had come to a standstill I was stood at the door too. 

Even as I walked towards the stadium, I was still weighing it up. On one hand, I was worn out and had been on my way home. Not only that, but it was an end of season game where the result wasn’t likely to affect anyones play-off position. In its favour, it was live sport, it was a sunny evening and I could get a box of those weird shaped chicken wings from the Burger King stand for my tea. The chicken wings swung it and I picked up a ticket from a tout for a couple of thousand won below face value and headed in. 

Did I mention that we'd had a typhoon?

 Sometimes I do stuff because I can, rather than because I really want to do it. It’s a bit like when you eat a whole packet of chocolate chip cookies just because you have them in the house and even though you aren’t remotely hungry. Still, enough of the inner turmoil and more about the match. 

It was Doosan Bears against KIA Tigers. They are both reasonable teams. Doosan are looking as if they will finish third in the table, whilst KIA will probably finish fifth, just outside of the play-off positions. There was a decent crowd too, certainly a lot more people than there were at the LG Twins v Nexen game I’d been to at this stadium the previous week. 

 

Doosan looked to be starting the game a bit more positively, with one of the Tigers getting out after three strikes in successive balls. It happened again shortly afterwards although I wasn’t too surprised as the lad who was swinging at fresh air had a batting average of about 0.1. 

It turned around in the fourth innings as KIA Tigers hit a couple of homers in quick succession, each was to the furthest part of the ground, just in front of the scoreboard and each one was worth two runs. It meant that by the end of the fourth, KIA had a 4-1 lead. 

Cheerleaders for the Doosan Bears.

 That was where I left it. I’d eaten the odd-shaped chicken wings for my tea and I’d seen about an hour and a quarter which on this occasion was enough. Besides, I probably had a couple of packets of chocolate chip cookies in the cupboard that had been there longer than could reasonably have been expected. 

And you know that whole thing about having to go to the match in case I missed something exciting? Well, I checked the score the next day and with two already out in the final Doosan innings, the Tigers were hanging on at 4-3. The Bears brought their pinch hitter on and he whacked a two-run homer for a last gasp 5-4 victory. 

Bugger.

Posted in Baseball, Dead people and stuff | 3 Comments »

Jeonbuk Motors v Pohang Steelers, Saturday 4th September 2010, 7pm

September 14, 2010

This was another late change of plan. Originally I was going to travel to Cheonan to watch their third division game with Chuncheon. The appeal of that one wasn’t so much the football but the fact that despite it looking as if it was about forty miles away, I could get there on the subway. Some of the lines have been extended way beyond the city and I quite fancied the idea of a subway ride that lasted for a couple of hours and ended up a long way out of Seoul and in the middle of nowhere.

The weather forecast was pretty bad though as a typhoon had arrived and was ripping off roofs and uprooting trees. I always think roofs should be spelt rooves, like with hoof and hooves. Perhaps it is. Anyway, Cheonan don’t have roofs or rooves on their stands to rip off, mainly because they don’t really have much in the way of stands, and for that reason I thought it might not be a lot of fun in poor weather.

Jen suggested that we go to Chuncheon instead. There wasn’t any football but there was a chicken eating festival, some fireworks and a high wire display. Well, I like chicken and fireworks and a high wire show during a typhoon has to be worth watching. So that’s where we went. Almost. We’d been to see an American comedian called Ted Alexandro the night before. He was pretty good with a nice laid back delivery. He wasn’t mean about anyone he shouldn’t have been mean about and he made me laugh. However it was a late night, culminating in tequilla and that meant it was after lunch before we got to the bus station the next day. When we went to the ticket counter, so many people were keen to see tightrope walking chickens letting off rockets that there wasn’t an available seat on a bus for nearly four hours.

Hmm, what to do? Jeonbuk had a game that evening and so we got a bus to Jeonju instead. At least we would have if there had been one. We ended up travelling to Iksan and then taking a half hour connection to Jeonju from there instead. Both of those buses went on time and so we got there about half past four.  We found a hotel which was very nice but a bit dull, with none of the little idiosyncrasies that I’ve come to expect from the Korean Love Motels. It did have ’his and hers’ computer terminals side by side in the room however, perfect for Korean couples on an illicit tryst to update their Facebook status with something like ’Kim Sang Mi is working late with Lee Chang Jae’.   I suppose the most notable feature of the place was that check-in wasn’t until 9pm and so with our tea time arrival we had to pay the afternoon quickie rate in addition to the overnight cost.

We took a taxi to the World-uh Cup Stadium and bought tickets for behind the goal with the Jeonbuk fans. It was the usual formation for the home team with a couple of defensive midfielders and three more attacking players supporting lone striker Lee Dong Gook.

Jeonbuk, in green, had the best of the early play against Pohang, who were wearing a Dennis The Menace style kit. Lee Dong Gook shot just past the post in the opening minutes after a good burst into the box from wide. A lot of the pitch had been relaid after the criticism of the surface for the recent League Cup Final here. Both penalty areas and most of the centre of the pitch was new and it looked to be a lot more solid than the replacement turf that I’d seen midweek at Seongnam.

Brazilian midfielder Luiz Henrique was still missing but his fellow countryman Eninho was having a great game. He fired over the bar from distance after about twenty minutes and then broke into the box and forced a good save from the keeper, getting his shot off despite the chasing defender being all over him. If he had gone down he might very well have got a penalty.

A couple of minutes later he should definitely have got a penalty as he cut in from the right. He was fouled outside of the box and the ref played the advantage only for him to be brought down a couple of yards inside the penalty area. The ref bottled it though and to the fury of the Jeonbuk players gave a free kick for the original offence.

Pohang suffered a bit of a setback after half an hour as Kim Hyung Il was sent off for hacking at Jeonbuk’s Kim Hyung Bum. It was one of those fouls that fell somewhere between a yellow and a red. As he had already been booked the ref was spared that difficult decision and settled for giving him a second yellow that he couldnt complain about.

When Lee Dong Gook put one over the bar after a bit of Vidukaesque juggling with his back to goal it looked as if it would be scoreless at half time. A minute before the interval though, Eninho twisted his way past a defender and was pulled down. It didn’t look a lot more blatant than the previous two appeals, but cumulatively the three together meant that the ref wasn’t going to look the other way again. The Brazilian took it himself and drove the ball home high to the keeper’s left to give Jeonbuk the lead at the break.

At half time Jen happened to mention that when she had lived in Jeonju ten years ago she used to go and watch Jeonbuk. They played at a different stadium in those pre-World Cup days and wore different colours. Mind you, in a rare case of continuity they’ve had their current name since 1994, which is a long time by K-League standards.

As a little half time interlude I’m going to tell you about fan death. Not supporters being struck by typhoon dislodged roofs or rooves, but the Korean belief that if you go to sleep in a room with an electric fan turned on and you don’t have adequate ventilation, then you are in serious danger of not waking up.

They have a few explanations as to why this happens, ranging from the fan using all the oxygen itself, to the fan creating a vortex where no oxygen exists, to hypothermia and even the fan chopping up the oxygen molecules. Fans in Korea are sold with a timer on them and come with instructions recommending its use just in case you accidentally fall asleep with the fan on.

I’m not one to live dangerously, so if I’m using my fan rather than the air conditioning, I tend to leave a window open. Not too far, just enough for a psychopathic axe murderer to force his way in whilst I’m asleep. And that’s enough Korean culture for the time being, the teams are on their way back out.

Mind you, it looked as if Jeonbuk had been sat with the electric fan on in the dressing room during half time as they didn’t look too lively at the restart and a cross from the right was  easily converted by Jung Hong Jeon for the equaliser. This warranted a change of tactics from the home team and the Croatian Krunoslav Lovrek was brought on to partner Lee Dong Gook up front. It worked pretty quickly too, with the Lion King running onto a through ball on the hour and calmly finishing for Jeonbuk to regain the lead.

It got better for Jeonbuk a few minutes later when Eninho got his second of the game after some nice build up play. That should really have been it, but Jeonbuk never really looked comfortable. They had Choi Chul Soon sent off with quarter of an hour to go and that gave Pohang a bit of encouragement. The visitors pulled a goal back in the last ten minutes through Lee Jin Ho and then in the closing stages Kim Min Sik made a very good save to deny Pohang an equaliser.

There was a nice touch at the final whistle when one of the Pohang players, Shin Kwang Hoon came down to the Jeonbuk end to bow to the supporters. He had recently returned to Pohang after a couple of years on loan with Jeonbuk and he got a warm reception.

The win kept Jeonbuk firmly in a play-off spot and just  three points behind leaders Jeju United with nine games remaining.

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Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma v Suwon Bluewings, Wednesday 1st September 2010, 7.30pm

September 8, 2010

When I was at Seongman for the Jeonbuk game the previous Saturday I’d noticed a couple of banners advertising future matches that I hadn’t been aware of. I couldn’t identify the opponents but it was enough for me to check a few details out when I got home. The first game (this one) turned out to be a K-League game against Suwon, brought forward because of Champions League commitments. The second game, a fortnight later, was the first leg of the Champions League Quarter Final, also against Suwon. So with the second leg to follow, that will be three games between the same two teams in a three-week spell. 

Seongnam is easy for me to get to. I left work at a quarter past six and forty minutes later I was at the Yatap subway station. The stop before Yatap is Moran, which is well-known in Seoul for the market that sells both live and cooked dogs. I’ve not been and had a look yet, possibly because they don’t have a football team, but at some point I’m sure I’ll get off the subway there and have a nose around. I won’t be eating any dog meat whilst I’m here though. 

I like to think that I’m quite adventurous with food, which surprises me as I was a picky eater as a kid. In those days I would insist upon eating exactly the same thing for tea every single day until at what must have been approximately yearly intervals I would suddenly tire of it and  move on to something new. I could never predict when a change in habit was coming either which would infuriate my Dad as he had by that time began buying whatever I was eating in bulk. My choices, in no particular order of preference or sequence,  ranged from the fairly normal hot dogs, to pilchards on toast, then a tin of ravioli and for one memorable year or so, date sandwiches. This, as the name suggests, consisted of about half a packet of compressed dates between two slices of Mothers Pride. No butter, though, that would just be odd. I work with a few Omanis these days and they eat a lot of dates. I’ve yet to see any of them put a few between two slices of bread though. 

Not surprisingly, I couldn't find any pictures of Date Sandwiches.

 I eat a lot more varied diet these days.  I’ve already had the silkworm pupa out here and am looking forward to trying the still wriggling baby octopus legs. I’m pretty sure that I once ate half a cat  in Spain too, despite it being described as rabbit on the menu. Dog, though, is a step too far for me. 

I’ve always had dogs whenever my circumstances allowed it. There’s a couple of them living in my house in the UK now, although it’s my daughter who looks after them as I’m never there these days. One of the best things about going home is taking them for a walk in the same fields where I’ve walked with my other dogs over the last forty years. 

When I was about six we got a beagle. We’d been to Hutton Rudby, looked at some puppies and then when I came downstairs on Christmas morning one of them was in the kitchen. Joker wasn’t a very good dog though, if he ever got out of the garden he would run for miles whilst we chased after him. When he couldn’t get out of the garden he would eat the rose trees, yelping as the thorns dug into his mouth, but still not stopping. He was a  bit inbred and he had regular fits  but I regarded him as my dog and I loved him. Especially when he would put his head out of the car window so that his ears could flap in the wind. 

Me and my dog, 1972.

There have been plenty of others between Joker and the present two and I’ve had a lot of pleasure out of all of them. So whilst I know there’s no moral difference between eating sheep and eating dogs, it’s not for me. At least, not until one of the current pair chews my shoes again. 

After my visit to Tancheon Stadium four days earlier I knew my way to the ground and so didn’t need to bother with a taxi this time. The ground is ten minutes walk from the subway, just over the river and it was a great view as I approached in the dusk. 

It's just like a proper photo...

It made me think that it might be possible to cycle down to a game here from my apartment in Yeoksam just by following the river. I might have to look into that and give it a go sometime when there’s a weekend fixture. 

On Saturday I went into the West Stand, so this time I thought I’d sit on the opposite side to get a different perspective. I paid nine thousand won, which is the same as the travelling Suwon fans behind the goal to my left paid. There were about two hundred and fifty of them, compared to the thirty or so Seongnam supporters doing the singing in the North Stand. There were maybe another thousand people in total in the ground. Of all the fans I’ve seen over here I think Suwon are the best. They seem to turn out in bigger numbers and are more vocal that any of the other teams. Fortunately for them they’ve now got something to shout about after a poor start in the league. They sacked their manager, Cha Bum Kun, earlier in the season and since then have put a good run of form together that looks like getting them a play-off spot. 

Suwon fans.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned how the League Championship is decided over here yet, possibly because its taken me a while to get to the bottom of it, but now is probably as good a time as any. 

The fifteen teams in the league play each other home and away for a total of twenty-eight games. At the end of that the teams in the top six go into the play-offs. The higher up the table you finish though, the easier the play offs are. The first stage takes place a fortnight after the end of the season when on the Saturday the third placed team get home advantage against the sixth placed team. The following day it’s fourth at home to fifth. 

The winners of these two ties meet in midweek for the right to face the second placed team and also to determine the third Champions League spot. There are four Champions League places available. The top two in the table qualify automatically and the FA Cup winners get the fourth spot. 

The play off between the team that finished second and the winner of the 3rd/4th/5th and 6th teams takes place four days later, three weeks after the end of the season. I can’t decide whether I think the second placed team would benefit from their opponents playing their third game in a week or whether they would be rusty after their three-week lay-off. 

The winners of this game play the team that finished top of the table over two legs. The first game takes place in the midweek after the semi and then the second leg four days later, a month after the season ends.  I’m looking forward to seeing the play-off games, not least because it extends the season into December when we should get some real football weather. I expect to get to at least four out of the six games, possibly all six if Suwon, Seongnam and Seoul are involved and are at home for the midweek games. 

December seemed a long way off as this game started though, it was as if I was watching a football match in a sauna and my shirt was drenched in sweat just from the exertion of sitting motionless. Seongnam were in yellow shirts and black shorts whilst Suwon were in all blue. 

That's the main stand.

 Both sides seemed pretty cagey, perhaps not wanting to give too much away in the first of the three games. The pitch didn’t help though with some sections of new turf looking as if it had been rolled out just minutes before the match started. The turf quickly bunched up whenever it was trodden on, whilst the ruts elsewhere made control and passing a bit of a lottery. 

Former West Brom midfielder Kim Do Heon was putting himself about for Suwon against another of his former clubs. He had a long-range shot halfway through the first half that went just past the post and a few minutes later he popped up as the last man to get a vital block in. 

The Seongnan Ultras.

It was scoreless at the interval and there weren’t too many highlights on the big screen. Fortunately they also showed the best of the action from the previous game here, Seongnam’s one nil victory over Jeonbuk. It’s great that all the K-League stadiums seem to have the big screens. It puts the Boro to shame with our scoreboard that looks as if it was made in the days when I was still eating tinned ravioli every night for tea and uses the same technology as those 1970’s digital watches that had the red numbers on them. 

The Suwon fans began the second half well with both their large Che Guevara flags getting an airing. On the pitch though it was Seongnam who were on top with Radoncic blazing a chance over the bar and Cho Dong Keon having one disallowed for offside. A couple of players got booked for a flare up near me causing the bloke in front  of me to get a telling off from his young kid for giving the ref a bit of stick. 

"Pack it in Dad"

As the game moved in to the final twenty minutes Seognam missed their best chance to date with Cho Dong Keon squaring for the Columbian Molina who could only steer it past the post. Whilst most of the Seongnam fan chanted his name, the bloke who had just been told off threw some soju fuelled abuse his way and earned another lecture from his son. 

"I SAID, PACK IT IN!!!"

Suwon never looked out of the game though and in heavy rain Ha Tae Goon forced a good save from the Seongnam keeper. Towards the end Suwon were reduced to ten men as Yang Sang Min picked up a second yellow, for shirt pulling. He was a bit unlucky as he was having his own shirt pulled at the same time and had the Seongnam man not gone to ground as if he’d been tazered, the free kick might easily have gone the other way. 

Seongnam on the attack

Seongnam hit with woodwork in the final seconds, but a goalless draw seemed a fair result. Neither side seemed prepared to give anything away and I’m looking forward to the Champions League game between them  on the fifteenth of this month. The point was enough to take Seongnam to the top of the table on goal difference, with Suwon moving ahead of Busan and into seventh place, two points away from a play-off position. For those following the progress of Lee Dong Gook’s Jeonbuk, their lack of a midweek game saw them slip to fifth, three points behind the new leaders but with a game in hand.

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LG Twins v Nexen Heroes, Tuesday 31st August 2010, 6.30pm

September 7, 2010

 

After turning up for a non-existent baseball game the previous Sunday, I carefully checked the fixtures for tonight’s match with a couple of different sources. Although, with Doosan Bears and LG Twins sharing the same stadium you would be very unlucky to get to Jamsil and find that there wasn’t a game taking place. 

Mind you, when I arrived at about seven o’clock at the Sports Complex subway station I was beginning to wonder if it was a case of deja-vu. The game had supposedly started half an hour earlier but I was  a little concerned to find the station deserted. I’ve often turned up whilst the game is in progress and there is usually a steady stream of latecomers. When a match lasts for about four hours, it’s not so important to be there for the start. Fortunately when I got to the top of the subway exit steps I could see the old biddies with the stalls selling beer, gimbap, seaweed and various forms of octopus and squid.  Jen was a bit late and so I got myself a can of beer and went to sort the tickets. I sometimes think the entire Korean economy is kept afloat by four-foot tall grannies with tight curly perms and one of them offered me a couple of outfield tickets for four thousand won apiece. An evening at a sporting event doesn’t come much cheaper than that, but with rain in the air I had to turn her down and I got two for the main stand from the ticket office at twice the price, still good value though at the equivalent of four quid a pop. 

We got inside at 7.25pm and the game wasn’t yet halfway through the second innings. We’d missed a few runs as the score was three each, but there were still another seven and a half innings to go. Plenty of time to relax with a few drinks as the moths fluttered about in the dusk. 

Whilst it might not have been deja-vu in terms of arriving at an empty stadium, it certainly was deja-vu in terms of the teams playing. I’d been here nine days previously to watch LG take on Nexen and it was the those two teams again this evening. That’s one of the drawbacks of an eight team league. I think the regular season fixtures were scheduled to have been finished by now and these games are the ones that had been due to take place earlier in the season but had been cancelled for one reason or another. 

Home fans.

It was quite handy in one way, as I could remember some of the players. The young lad who was the starting pitcher for LG Twins last time was still in the team, although Nexen had a different bloke opening for them. It’s quite strange now that I’ve got a bit of knowledge about whats going on, I’m watching the games differently to the way I did at the start of the season when I just drank my beer and waited for the ball to be hit into the crowd. It helps that Jen knows what she’s talking about, well, with baseball anyway, and she was able to talk me through the batting average statistic this time. It’s a bit like a batting average in cricket really, the higher the better and most seemed to be around the 0.2 to 0.3 area. 

As a beginner I do sometimes wonder if I’m focusing on completely the wrong aspects of the game though. I can remember when I started taking my son Tom to the Boro games as a small kid. He would always ask me on the way to the match who I thought would take the kick off to start the game. Not which team, but which player. Whilst I would try to point out to him that this was of little consequence, he never seemed too impressed that I either had no idea or invariably got it wrong. It tended to make him doubt the validity of anything else that I told him for the rest of the day. 

There was a very low crowd for the game, possibly explaining why the subway was so quiet. LG Twins had a couple of thousand fans but Nexen must have had little more than the players Mams and Dads as there couldn’t have been more than fifty of them in total, despite them being a Seoul based team. Nexen are currently second bottom of the league with no chance of making the play-offs, whilst I think sixth placed LG might still have a slim chance of finishing in the fifth place that prolongs their season. 

Away fans

As the empty beer cans accumulated  I concentrated less on the stats and more on the oddities. The players only have two minutes between innings so I was curious to see how rushed the catcher would be, particularly on those occasions where he was on one of the bases when his team’s batting innings ended. The answer isn’t very rushed at all. They tend to stroll back to the dugout as if they have all day and then slowly put on the protective shin, chest and head guards whilst the reserve catcher gets to go onto the grass and help the pitcher with his warm up. 

We nearly got hit by a ball at one point despite being in the upper tier. It bounced a couple of rows in front of us and made the small kid who got it very happy. Almost as happy as the grown man who had vaulted a fence a few moments earlier after the previous mis-hit into the crowd and beat the kids to the ball, which he then very carefully put into his briefcase. 

 

There wasn’t a lot more scoring with LG drawing level in the fifth innings in bizarre circumstances as the Nexen pitcher managed to send one down that went over the head of the catcher, allowing a player to get home from third as the ball was retrieved. It was still five apiece when in the seventh innings LG took the young kid off and brought in their relief pitcher. He didnt last long though as he was replaced at the start of the ninth, by which time the Twins had taken a 6-5 lead. The third pitcher lasted even less time than the second as with just the one batter out in the ninth he was replaced by the fourth Twins pitcher of the innings. The new lad managed to get the last two Heroes players out meaning that the Twins didn’t need to take their final innings. 

I’m looking forward to the playoffs where hopefully we’ll be back to full houses, players who don’t have their minds on their holidays and coaches who aren’t tempted to give every pitcher on the books a bit of game time.

Posted in Baseball | 2 Comments »

SK Wyverns v KIA Tigers, Sunday 29th August 2010, 5pm

September 6, 2010

I didn’t really have high expectations for this game. The weather had been absolutely atrocious all morning and there were small rivers running down the street outside of my apartment. Incheon, where Sk Wyverns play, is quite a distance from central Seoul though and the weather forecast for there was slightly better.

I’d arranged to meet Jen there, plan A being that we would have a picnic on the grass whilst sitting in the sun watching a bit of baseball. Plan B, if needed, was that we would sit high in the stand drinking beer whilst watching the players dodge on and off the pitch between showers. Either option struck me as being a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

It takes about an hour and a half to get to Munhak and when we arrived it was raining quite heavily. There were a lot of people milling about the entrance to the subway, mainly teenage girls and it turned out that they were attending a concert at the football stadium. I could hear the bands that were low down on the bill and it sounded like the stuff on Galaxy that my daughter tortures me with in the car when I’m home.

I had a wander up to the stadium and it was apparent that the game was off. There was nobody at all visible in the stands and the ticket office was closed. It had obviously been called off quite some time ago. There were plenty of food stalls around the subway entrance so it was on to Plan C. We had a corn dog each and I drank the emergency beers that I was carrying in case of situations like this. Corn dogs, for those who don’t know, are a hot dog that is pushed longways onto a stick and then encased completely in a bread roll. It then has a further layer of breadcrumbs or something on top of that so it resembles one of those hand grenades on a stick that the Germans used to use. The whole thing is deep fried. I know it sounds as if it’s Scottish but I think it’s actually an American snack

After we’d cleared off home I discovered that the website I’d used for the fixtures was wrong and whilst we’d been sat in the rain at Munhak, SK Wyverns had actually been playing a couple of hundred miles or so away in Busan against the Lotte Giants.  Next week I plan to go to the Olympic Stadium on the off-chance that Man Utd might be playing Liverpool when I get there. I’ll take some sandwiches too I think.

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Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma v Jeonbuk Motors, Saturday 28th August 2010, 8pm

September 4, 2010

I’d made plans to go hiking on the day of this game but I slept in and was then discouraged by the weather from doing much else. At the moment it seems as if the rainy season is never ending. I try to only do interesting stuff on a weekend, but unfortunately ended up having to try and salvage something from the day with a trip to the big supermarket Homeplus for some shopping. I wouldn’t normally have mentioned it but I saw something on the way in that I thought you might like to know about. The Chuseok holiday is approaching and it’s quite a big deal over here. People get three days off work and they tend to go back to their home town to pay their respects to their dead ancestors.

If they have any live ancestors they usually give them a present and this years ’must have’ gift appears to be a Spam Box Set. You can get them in various sizes depending, I suppose, on the amount of respect you have for the intended receipient. Some of the more extravagant boxes include bottles of what I’m guessing is a suitable dressing for tinned chopped pork.

Happy Chuseok

After the excitement of a trip to the shops I took the forty minute ride on the subway to Seongnam’s ground. It’s actually the closest K-League stadium to me, so it’s a little surprising that it’s taken me six months to see my first game there. I wasn’t quite sure of the directions once I got out of the subway so I thought I’d take a taxi. The first three drivers that I tried appeared not to understand Tancheon Soccer Stadium, nor my mime of an exquisitely crafted chip into the top corner. When I got into taxi number four I realised why the others weren’t interested. We turned the first corner thirty yards away and I could see the stadium just ahead. It was no more than a ten minute walk.

The view on exiting the taxi.

I bought a ticket for the west stand for twelve thousand won on the basis that it had the biggest roof. The rain was still coming down and I wanted to be sure of staying dry. If I’d taken the option of joining the fans behind the goal then I could have got in for seven thousand won. The players were about to come out onto the pitch as I took my seat and a guard of honour was waiting for them, complete with balloons in the team colours.

Guard of Honour with balloons

The balloons were released as the players stood for the National Anthem and they floated a couple of hundred feet up into the air. Unfortunately the weight of the rain slowed the ascent of the balloons and then as they got wetter it caused them to drift back down again and litter the pitch. The ref had to stop proceedings at one point and enlist the help of a player to burst them.

Away they go, although not for long.

The stadium looked as if it used to be the classic multi purpose sports facility, with the pitch inside an athletics track, an open topped oval bowl and one big covered stand. A recent refurbishment though had added a roof to the rest of the oval and it had continued around to protect the people sitting in the lower tier of the main stand. It looked a bit odd and I think it would have been  better if the main stand had been left as it was. The roof on the lower section seemed to unnecessarily restrict the view, both of the sky and of the areas of the pitch that were obscured by the stanchions.

The main West Stand with the new lower tier roof and the Jeonbuk fans in the South Stand.

The pitch was in a terrible condition. Some areas were grassless and rutted as if someone had been tractor racing on them, other parts had been patched by new turf  that looked as if it had been freshly laid over the top of the existing surface. It cut and bunched up whenever anyone went within five yards of it.

Lee Dong Gook was captaining Jeonbuk. He was wearing a fluorescent orange armband reminiscent of the one I was given as part of a road safety campaign as a small child. If only I’d been able to see into the future all those years ago as I played football in the playground with the orange armband on my duffle coat, I could have imagined I was Lee Dong Gook rather than Georgie Best. He was wearing fluorescent orange boots too, something that would have would have been deemed akin to witchcraft if I’d turned up at Fredrick Nattrass Junior school wearing something similar in 1971.

Jeonbuk, in their white away strips,  played with their usual five man midfield formation,  Lee Yo Han and Sung Jong Hyun sitting deep and Eninho, Kang Seung Jo and Kim Hyung Bum supporting lone striker Lee Dong Gook. Seongnam, who were in yellow shirts and black shorts played a similar system with former Partizan Belgrade striker Dzenan Radoncic leading the line.

A Seongnam corner, attacking the South Stand.

Not a lot happened in the first fifteen minutes or so, Jeonbuk had a couple of long range shots, but I think both teams were struggling to adapt to the state of the pitch. There was plenty of support from the travelling fans, most of the three hundred or so that had made the trip were in their usual green shirts and they kept up the singing throughout. Seongnam had about fifty fans in the north stand, but they didn’t really make much of a contribution. There were perhaps a further thousand people in total shared between the east and west stands.

As the half went on Seognam seemed to be adjusting to the conditions better than Jeonbuk, who I felt were missing the influence of Luiz Henrique in midfield. The home side should have gone ahead after twenty six minutes when one of them broke from midfield like Alan Foggon used to do but then after a neat one-two put his shot over the bar in a finish that was more like Billy Woof. It was a temporary reprieve for Jeonbuk though as a couple of minutes later Radoncic took a pass on the edge of the box, turned well and put Seognam one up.

1-0.

I missed the build up to the goal unfortunately as I was trying to see what television programme the bloke sat in front of me was watching on his mobile phone.

I think it was what the Koreans call 'Dramas' and we call 'Soaps'.

It should really have been 2-0 to Seongnam a few minutes later when all Kim Jin Yong had to do was square the ball to Radoncic, but he greedily had a shot. That was it for the first half apart from a yellow card for Jeonbuk midfielder Lee Yo Han when he slid in two footed and might easily have got a red.

At half time we were treated to the sight of the groundsman trying to repair the large patch of new turf near the tunnel whilst being hindered by fans or sponsors standing on it to take part in a competition to see who could hit a thirty yard pass nearest to a target. Quite why they couldn‘t have moved out of his way and shot from twenty seven yards instead wasn’t wholly apparent and the turf didnt look much better as the second half kicked off.

That'll help the new turf settle.

There were a few chances in the second half, Lee Dong Gook played a nice lobbed through ball for Kim Hyung Bum which brought a good save from the keeper and Radoncic nearly added to his first half goal with a shot from out side the area that Jeonbuk keeper Kim Min Sik managed to tip onto the inside of the post. The Columbian international Mauricio Molina had a decent opportunity for Seongnam only to put it wide when clear through on the keeper, causing him to welly the advertising hoarding behind the goal in frustration.

Seongnam attacking the North Stand end.

Jeonbuk, despite moving Sim Woo Yeon up into attack from central defence, never really looked like scoring and it remained 1-0. The Senognam fans in the north stand celebrated at the end by lighting a flare as they moved ahead of Jeonbuk and into second place in the table.

Celebration time.

The defeat meant that Jeonbuk slipped back down to fourth position, although they were within three points of new leaders Jeju United.

Posted in Football | 2 Comments »

LG Twins v Nexen Heroes, Sunday 22nd August 2010, 5pm

August 30, 2010

 

After the previous days failure to see the game at Chungju and to even get to the foot of Woraksan I was quite determined to see some sport and do a bit of hiking. The sport was easy, LG Twins had a home fixture against Nexen Heroes at Jamsil that evening and picking that baseball game would give me plenty of time to get up into the hills first. I didn’t want to risk even the slightest chance of getting lost and so I played it safe and took the subway to Dokwabi where I could hike the same route on Bukhansan that I’d done almost six months earlier soon after arriving in Seoul. 

 My main recollection of that first hike was that it had been incredibly slippy underfoot. There had been a layer of snow and ice on a lot of the ground then and if I hadn’t been generously lent a crampon by one of the other walkers in the group I doubt I would have got around. This time though, any difficulty was likely to come from the extreme heat. The newspapers were warning against any outdoor activity whatsoever and I hoped that would cut down the numbers of other hikers on the route. 

 I left my apartment just before nine and by ten o’clock I was at Dokwabi. The subway journey, despite being twenty one stops, was easy enough as I got a seat early on. Once again I was entertained by someone taking advantage of the captive audience and giving a sales pitch. The product this time looked to be a couple of small elastic bands which the purchaser could slip over the ends of the arms of a pair of glasses and which would prevent their glasses from falling off no matter what the situation. The salesman demonstrated their effectiveness by fitting them on to his own glasses and then violently shaking his head. It worked well and he sold a few packets of them to the short sighted for a thousand won each. I like watching these demonstrations, mainly to try and work out what the product is supposed to be. This one was quite straightforward though and it helped the journey pass a little quicker. 

 Once at Dokwabi, I noticed that the number of hikers leaving the subway didn‘t seem to be any less than the last time I’d been here. Obviously I wasn’t the only one to assume that the heatwave warnings were meant for other people only. 

The remoteness of the mountains

 I hadn’t bothered packing anything to eat, working on the basis that there are always plenty of food stalls at the foot of any hiking trail over here and I would be able to pick up some gimbap or dumplings, maybe even a bowl of roast potatoes. Not this time though and I was reduced to calling into a small and not very well stocked convenience store where the best I could manage was a peanut butter sandwich and a packet of custard creams. Hopefully I wouldn’t need rescuing at any point as I’d be a bit embarrassed trying to explain away my poor preparation. 

 It took me three quarters of an hour to reach the first peak, Jokduribong. It is only 370 metres high but it was quite steep and the heat made it hard going. 

That's Seoul behind me.

I sat at the top for about half an hour, appreciating the cooling breeze and the views across Seoul. It was a little misty though and whilst I could see the World Cup Stadium I couldn’t pick up my office block south of the river. 

It's all out there somewhere.

There were a few pigeons wandering around and I thought I’d share my peanut butter sandwich with them. They seemed to have a much higher opinion of it than I did and before long there were about twenty of them at my feet, fighting over the crumbs as I tried to feed them all. It reminded me of a trip to Wembley with my junior school to see a schoolboy international thirty five years earlier. We’d arrived by train in London in the morning, popped into Downing Street to have a gawp at the front door of Number 10 (in those days it wasn’t closed off to the public) and then we’d gone along to Trafalgar Square to feed the pigeons before going to the match. I can remember having at least one pigeon on each arm eating out of my hands and another on my head, no doubt feasting on my nits. 

I kept the custard creams hidden away.

 Anyway, none of these pigeons sat on my head, they just ate the bits of sandwich as quickly as I could throw them to the ground. 

I retraced my steps for a while and dropped down in to the valley before making my way up Hyangnobong. At 535 metres this was a bit higher than Jokduribong and just as steep. There were a few sections that were scrambles rather than trails, some of them with railing or ropes to make it a bit easier. The route upwards provided good views of Jokduribong and in particular of the climbers who were making their way down. I couldn’t work out whether they had brought their own ropes to abseil with or whether they were making use of permanent fixtures. It made for an interesting break though as I watched them from across the valley. 

Jokduribong from the other side, you can see the abseilers if you look closely.

I got to the top of Hyangnobong at about noon. Or rather I got as close as I was allowed to get, with the actual peak being barriered off. At this point I had to decide whether or not to carry on to the next peak, Bibong, or to descend towards Tangchundae. Last time I’d been here we’d continued to Bibong but it had been a lot cooler then and I’d had more in my backpack than a packet of custard creams. I decided to head downwards. 

It took me about an hour and a half to reach the bottom, passing some raised platforms on the way that were occupied by groups of blokes drinking soju and makkgeolli. I also saw a few butterflies too, none of which were familiar to me. Once at the bottom I just hopped onto the nearest bus and waited until it stopped outside one of the subway stations before getting off. The system here makes doing things like that easy. I have a transport card, pre-loaded with money, that I just have to touch against a pad as I get on and off a bus. It means I don’t have to tell the driver where I want to go to, which is particularly useful for occasions like this where I don’t know where I want to go to until I see it out of the window. 

So, with the hiking out of the way I had the baseball to look forward to.  Jamsil is only three stops from my apartment and I was able to leave in plenty of time. I picked up a ticket from a tout outside for ten thousand won which might have been just below face value. At those prices, it’s not so important. It was for the red zone though, which is the lower section, beyond first base, prime territory I reckoned for being knocked out cold with a stray baseball. 

Even busier than the hiking.

I was in my seat in time for the National Anthem. Everyone stands for it and most of the people, including the players, put their hand on their heart ’American style’. I couldn’t help but wonder whether that small minority of people who are born with their heart leaning more to the right than the left use the other hand or whether it’s more a symbolic thing. As I’ve no idea which side my heart is on I just stood politely with my hands by my side. 

The National Anthem.

It’s probably about time that I shared a bit more of the knowledge that I’ve gained about how baseball works. I’d sussed the scoring fairly easily, as well as when the players are out, how ’strikes’ and ’balls’ work, and I’ve covered all that in an earlier report, but what I wasn‘t sure of at that time was what all of the players did. How many there were, whether they all batted, how the substitutions worked? Well, I think I’m getting to the bottom of it. 

When a team fields, they have nine players, a pitcher, a catcher (wicket keeper for cricket aficionados), a fielder who covers first base, a fielder who covers third base and two fielders who hang around near second base. I think it depends upon whether or not the batter is right or left-handed as to which of them stands closer to the base. The other three players loiter in the outfield waiting for the big hits that evade the close in fielders. There are plenty of subs in the dugout in case any of them pick up an injury. 

This bloke fancied himself as a bit of a cheerleader.

Of that fielding nine, only the pitcher pitches. If he turns out to be having a ’mare’, he will be replaced by a different specialist pitcher from the subs bench. Once a pitcher has been subbed he can‘t come back on again. Or so I believe. When it’s the fielding teams turn to bat, all of them apart from the pitcher get a turn. The pitcher is replaced by a ’pinch hitter’ who only has to bat, not field. Easy life for him then. 

What surprised me is that the best batter doesn’t open each innings like in cricket, although I suppose the difference is that you only need three of them to be out for the innings to be over. Whichever of the nine batting players was due a turn next when the innings ends will get first turn in the next one. It all seems very fair really. I think the away team always bats first. 

Something I noticed about the catchers is that they both wore number forty-four and that they were both a little sturdier than the other players. I don’t know if this was coincidence or if that’s how catchers are. A bit like the way that ice hockey goalies are bred to be about four-foot tall and a similar width. 

The LG Twins starting pitcher, twenty year old Choi Seong Min, was actually playing as the starting pitcher for the first time and he did pretty well lasting until almost the end of the sixth innings before being substituted with only one Nexen run on the board. The Nexen starting pitcher didn’t do nearly as well and he was hauled out of the attack in the third innings with his team already 5-1 down. The big lead for the Twins meant that they could afford to experiment a bit in the last three innings and they tried a total of three relief pitchers, I suspect to give them all a bit of game time. 

LG Twins starting pitcher, Choi Seong Min.

If I remember rightly, Sam Malone out of Cheers was a relief pitcher. It must be quite a daunting role as you tend to be called upon only if the other team is hitting your starting pitcher all over the park. And that reminds me, I once got refused a drink in the Cheers Bar in Boston,  for not having any ID despite being twenty-three. It might have been different if any of them had known my name. 

Thats enough of how the Korean baseball works for now. The stuff that goes on in the crowd is much more interesting. Between innings there is usually something to watch despite there only being a two minute turnaround. More often than not it’s couples being made to kiss on demand to their intense embarrassment. Occasionally though, like today, there’s a little gem. The entertainment on this occasion involved small children being lined up for a head shaking competition. Each had a digital monitor attached to his or her forehead and they then had to violently shake their skull from side to side whilst the monitor counted the number of times that their brain revolved in its cerebrospinal fluid. They did all take a small prize back to their seats where I imagine they sat quietly for the rest of the game contemplating a future selling elastic bands for spectacles in subway carriages. 

I think he finished third.

It’s all made even better by the people who supply you with food and drink. Blokes with big containers of draught beer on their backs walk around keeping you topped up. Old biddies balance trays on their heads that contain cans of beer and a few snacks.  It all makes life very easy. 

None of this queueing in the concourse malarky.

And in a final score roundup, LG Twins finished up easy 6-2 winners. Whilst all this was going on an injury time goal gave Jeonbuk a 3-2 win over Daejeon Citizen leaving them in third place in the table, a point behind leaders Gyeongnam. Lee Dong Gook didn’t score and was subbed at about the same stage of the game as new pitcher Choi Seong Min had been for the Twins. Following their FA Cup quarter final exit last week Jeonbuk have a League Cup Final against Seoul to look forward to on Wednesday. Unfortunately for me it will be played in Jeonju and so I’ll not be able to get there.

Posted in Baseball, Cerebrospinal fluid, Hiking | 3 Comments »

Hummel Chungju v Yongin City, Saturday 21st August 2010, 5pm

August 28, 2010

After their mid-season break the second tier National League teams were back in action this weekend so I had a few more options when choosing a match to watch. What swung it for Chungju wasn’t the potential quality of the football or the undoubted attractions of the town, but the fact that it’s right next to the Woraksan National Park and I wanted to get a bit of hiking in. I hadn’t been out in the hills for a month and Woraksan had a couple of interesting looking peaks that I fancied having a wander up.

Woraksan, near to Chungju

It all seemed quite a straightforward plan. I could catch a bus from Seoul Central City Station, watch Hummel Chungju take on Yongin City at three o’clock, then get a bus to Deoksu which is the village at the bottom of the hill, stay there overnight before spending the next day hiking and then making the return journey back to Seoul.

The first stage went well. It would have been an easy mistake to have bought a ticket to the much more popular Cheongju or even Cheongdu or Cheongdo. But I didn‘t. By carefully writing the name of the town down on a piece of paper and then handing it over at the ticket counter I managed to buy a 10,900 won ticket for the right destination on the ten o’clock bus. I even managed to pick up an English bus timetable for future reference. Obviously by that I mean a Korean bus timetable written in English; an actual timetable for the buses in England might just be a little less useful these days.

Central City Bus Station, Seoul.

It was a hot morning and as ever in Seoul there were a lot of Korean girls with extremely short skirts. A female western friend mentioned to me that its not unusual for western girls when they first arrive in Korea to look at the length of the skirts that the local girls wear and as they are much shorter than most western women would feel comfortable wearing themselves, to think of the local girls as ’sluts’. Conversely, she said, the Korean girls would never dream of wearing a low cut top and when they encounter western girls showing a bit of cleavage, they too would think ’sluts’.

I can‘t help but smile at the idea of two girls, each comfortable with their own culture, passing each other in the street and each of them thinking the same unsisterly thoughts about the other. As for me, I’m happy to cast an appreciative but discreet glance at  nice legs and nice tits, so the cultural differences work out quite well in that respect.

The hundred and thirty kilometre journey took two hours and I arrived at Chungju at noon. I had a look around,  picking up a couple of maps at the tourist information office and was pleased to see that the stadium wasn’t too far away. It was just a case of following the line of the river and then turning right at the big Buddha statue. I took my time in the heat and arrived at the stadium at one o’clock. There was an event going on next door to it that seemed to be a cross between a summer fayre and a market. There was a stage area where a bloke with a microphone was entertaining the crowds and there were stalls selling everything from seaweed to second hand power tools.

The seaweed stall

There was a Hite beer promotion too, where a van with a large plastic bottle on top was drawing a long queue of people who were being given the chance to win a variety of prizes, mainly beer, by spinning a wheel. I watched for a while and just as I was moving on I was shepherded into the queue by a tourism official. I didn’t really want to win anything that I’d have to carry up the hills the next day and I didnt fancy a drink either as I’d had a heavy week and was keen to have a day off.

A chance to win free beer

The previous night I’d been out with the lads from work and the night before that I’d been to the opening of an art exhibition with Jen. I’d never heard of Lee Hyun Joon whose stuff we’d gone to see, but as they were giving away free beer all night he’s now my favourite artist. If I’d called it a night after the exhibition it would have been fine, but we went on to a Japanese bar where I polished off a large carton of chilled sake too.

These tables were exhibits, but you could sit at them to drink your free beer. Very nice.

It was a bit of a relief therefore when the Hite people ran out of prizes and I was able to make my excuses and move on to have a look at the stadium. It’s quite similar to a lot of the older grounds over here, an oval with a running track and a small main stand that was the only part with a roof. It had a capacity of seventeen thousand and I watched through a gate as a couple of groundsmen watered what looked like a very good pitch.

View from inside the open gate

Unfortunately it turned out that I’d been given the wrong kick off time again, as a banner over one of the entrances was showing a four o’clock start. That wasn’t much of a problem, but I was keen to get out of the heat whilst I waited and so I went for a wander into the park next door and took refuge on a bench under a tree. With over an hour to go until kick off I stretched out on the bench and went to sleep. I was woken by a phone call at a quarter to four. It wasn’t for me, but like a lot of the calls I get it was for Ronald, the bloke who had been allocated my phone number prior to me getting it. It’s normally a bit of a nuisance, but as it served as an alarm call I was quite grateful for once.

I went back to the stadium, expecting a little more activity by now, but it was just as quiet. I hung about until about half past four and with no activity whatsoever thought I’d try and find out what was going on. Perhaps it was a five or a seven o’clock kick off.  I went into the ground via an open gate and walked around the running track towards the half way line. One of the two groundsmen who had been watering the pitch had gone but the remaining one was coiling the hoses. I mimed kicking a football and gestured at the pitch only for him to give me that crossed arm gesture that the bloke in my local takeaway invariably does whenever I turn up at around half past ten and they have no food left.

Never mind, at least I'll be able to walk up those hills.

Despite the internet listings and the banners outside the ground I didn’t take a lot of convincing that the game wasn’t going to happen. A complete lack of people anywhere inside or near the ground, coupled with the absence of nets suggested that something had gone wrong somewhere and I walked off towards the bus station. When I got there I called in at a PC bang and checked the Hummel Chungju website. According to that the game was definitely on but with a five o’clock start. Well, it was quarter past now, so what to do? I decided that I couldn’t just clear off without one last check and so I hopped in a taxi and went back up to the ground. Sadly, but not entirely unexpectedly, it was just as deserted as it had been forty five minutes earlier and so if the game was going ahead at 5pm, it must have been taking place somewhere else. I got another taxi back to the bus station, hoping that I wouldn‘t see a sign anywhere suggesting a kick off time of 7pm. I couldn’t keep turning up at the stadium every hour or so just to watch the grass grow.

I didnt get to sit here.

Still, the football wasn’t the main reason for the trip and I had the hiking on Woraksan to look forward to. I called back into the tourist office to find out where the bus stop for Deokju was. She pointed it out and then wrote the times of the buses down. The next one went at quarter to nine the next morning, getting there after ten. With all that messing around I’d missed the last bus of the day. Just perfect. Or not. That meant I’d have to find somewhere to stay in Chungju instead and then I’d have a pretty limited time the next day to get up and down the hill to fit in with the bus back.

I’d just about had enough arseing about for one weekend by this time and so I got myself a ticket for the next bus to Seoul and headed home. I checked later and the game had gone ahead but at a stadium just outside of town for some reason. This tends to happen fairly often in Korea. For what it’s worth, Hummel Chungju won 3-2.

Posted in Football, Hiking | 4 Comments »

Suwon Bluewings v Jeonbuk Motors, Wednesday 18th August 2010, 7.30pm.

August 24, 2010

Attending this Korean FA Cup quarter final was a bit of a bonus as when I’d discovered a few days earlier that it was a 7.30pm kick-off I’d as good as decided that getting there was not really possible. I’d been to Suwon a week previously for the South Korea v Nigeria game that started at 8pm and only just managed to make that. The half an hour earlier start for this game meant that it didnt really seem like a feasible proposition. I couldn’t quite get it out of my mind though and deliberately didn’t plan anything for that evening, keeping my options open in case I decided to give it a try.

What finally convinced me to go was that when I looked out of my office window at a quarter to six, it was pouring down. Not only that, but all of the three umbrellas that I currently own were in my apartment rather than under my desk. Bear with me, it does make sense. Well, more sense than a lot of stuff I do.  I remembered that the first time that I visited Suwon it took me an hour on the subway and so I thought to myself that as I don’t have to go outside of my office block to get to the subway, I could be at Suwon for around ten past seven without the prospect of the soaking that walking from the office to my apartment would bring about. Clever, eh? Perhaps. I might just have been delaying the inevitable encounter with the rain and I’d also no idea how long a taxi would take to get from Suwon subway to the Blue Wings Stadium, but in a classic piece of the short-term thinking that influences most of my actions these days I gave it a try.

It all went very well to begin with. I left the office bang on six o’clock and by ten past I was on the first train. I was at Sadang for twenty past where I made the first of two line changes and at ten past seven I arrived at Suwon where I was pleased to discover that it wasn’t raining. So far so good. There were a line of taxis  waiting outside of the station and I was fortunate to get a driver who was aware that there was a football stadium in Suwon. Actually there’s two stadiums, but as I was going to the more famous of them I wasn’t worried.

The plan fell apart as we hit the rush hour traffic and we crawled along with the game having already kicked off and me alternating between looking at my watch and peering at the skyline trying to catch a glimpse of the distinctive winged roof of  Suwon’s ground. Ten minutes after kick off we arrived there after what was close on a half hour taxi journey to cover perhaps three or four miles. He dropped me at the south east corner of the stadium which was an error on my part as I should have remembered that the ticket office was over at the north west corner. I walked the length of the winged west stand, noticing the Jeonbuk fans behind the goal in the south stand.

It's a great roof.

A couple of touts approached as I got near to the ticket office and offered me seats in the east stand for five and ten thousand won respectively. Normally I would have taken one of them but as I just wanted to be inside the ground as quickly as possible and I didn’t want to have to walk to the other side of the stadium, I  knocked them back and went to the ticket office instead. Fortunately there was no queue, less fortunately they told me that you had to be a membership card holder to sit in the west stand. I bought a ticket for the east stand for twelve thousand won and set off for my walk around the stadium, trying not to catch the eyes of the smug looking touts on the way past.

By the time I got into the ground the clock on the scoreboard showed that eighteen minutes had gone and that the game was still goalless. Lee Dong Gook was back up front for Jeonbuk, having missed the last two games due to his suspension for elbowing a Busan defender in the chops a couple of weeks earlier. There wasn’t really much of a crowd, with the upper tiers virtually empty. Jeonbuk looked to have brought a few hundred fans with them whilst Suwon had a very good turnout behind the north stand goal.

After recovering from his sore elbow, Lee Dong Gook is back leading the line.

The FA Cup winners qualify for one of the four Champions League spots over here and so it carries a bit more of a reward than just the glory of winning the trophy. ’Just the glory’ sounds a bit glib, I’d love the Boro to have `just the glory’ of winning the FA Cup. For the first few years of our existence we had never got beyond the last eight, the first one hundred and twenty one years to be precise and my childhood was littered with losing quarter finals at places such as Birmingham, Orient and Wolves. It was the Riverside years before we managed to get to semi finals and even once the final itself. But we’ve never won it and it doesnt look too realistic a dream for us in the near future.

We had a great chance a couple of years ago with the big boys having been knocked out and only a home tie against Championship side Cardiff between us and a Wembley semi final. Lee Dong Gook was still at the Boro then, but he was out of favour by that time and didn’t even make the bench in what was one of the most disappointing Middlesbrough performances that I can remember.

I’ve just googled the team from that day and we had some really useful players then, streets ahead of the ones that we have now. It was a team that was more than capable of beating the other semi finalists Portsmouth, Barnsley and West Brom and lifting the trophy.

Schwarzer, Young, Wheater, Huth, Pogatetz, O’Neil (Johnson 59), Arca, Rochemback, Downing, Alves (Mido 46), Sanli.
Subs Not Used: Turnbull, Boateng, Grounds.

But, whatever. It’s gone. Just like Birmingham, Orient and Wolves, all games that, perhaps with the optimism of youth, I had also expected us to win and ended up disappointed.

It was a scrappy remainder of the first half at Suwon with a few yellows being handed out, mainly to the Jeonbuk players. Luiz Henrique had a real go at the ref at one point, who you could see was desperate for the ball to go out so that he could call him over and book him for dissent.

Green Army.

Ten minutes before half time Suwon took the lead with a Kwak Hee Ju header after a disputed free kick was floated into the box. The Suwon fans behind the goal celebrated by bouncing up and down, similar to the way that Rangers do, edging a yard or two from side to side as they did it. They also waved their flags, two of which had the face of Che Guevara on them. He seems pretty popular at the football over here, Jeonbuk had no fewer than five flags with that iconic image on them.

Five Che's for Jeonbuk, two Che's for Suwon.

At half time I went in search of something to eat, having not had anything since lunchtime. It was fairly meagre pickings with a large bag of crisps being the best option. One of the differences that I’ve noticed between home and over here is the way people eat their crisps. In the UK we tend to open the packet at the top, the show-offs amongst us occasionally squeezing the bag to pop it open. In Korea though, crisps are eaten from the side of the packet, with a vertical tear being made and then the bag held longways. Just an observation.

The second half wasn’t much better than the first. I moved into the upper tier and closer to the Suwon fans as that was the end that Jeonbuk were attacking. The home supporters kept up a good level of support throughout the half with songs to the tunes of Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and Yellow Submarine amongst others.

View from the upper tier.

 Lee Dong Gook didnt really have any scoring chances, although on the whole nor did his team mates. Each side had a man sent off as the consquences of all the early yellows took effect and as the time ticked away Jeonbuk gradually threw more men forward. In the dying minutes they were playing with a line of four strikers as well as Lee Dong Gook roaming just behind them. The remaining four outfield Jeonbuk players had to somehow cover all the midfield and defence positions between them and some quite sizeable gaps opened up as they pressed for an equaliser. Inevitably Suwon broke away and in injury time Yeom Ki Hun added the second goal that sealed their semi final spot.

Two Nil and its all over.

As I left the ground at the end I was approached by a teenage lad who asked me if I was Joe Johnson. As the only bloke of that name that I’m familiar with is a fifty odd year old snooker player I was happy to confirm that I wasn’t. This tends to happen to me quite a bit, being mistaken for someone else. At the baseball game at the weekend I was asked if I was the pitcher’s Dad. It’s as if a foreigner wouldn’t be at a sporting event unless he had a specific reason for being there, other than wanting to watch the game.

Surely some mistake.

I checked for other famous Joe Johnson’s on the internet afterwards, doubting that mid-eighties snooker stars would have much of a fanbase over here and uncovered an American basketball player that seemed much more likely to have been the object of the lad’s question. Although that particular Mr Johnson was considerably younger and taller than me. Considerably blacker as well, come to think of it.

I can see the resemblance.

Having extricated myself from the autograph hunter I found myself surrounded by a group of younger lads, maybe ten or eleven years old. After the usual “Hello, how are you? You are very handsome“ that I’m sure they learn at school as the standard greeting to people from out of town, they asked me “Do you like Suwon?“.

“Jeonbuk“ I replied, to which they laughed manically and danced around, pointing at me whilst chanting “Loser, loser“. I think I preferred the simplicity of the old days where a local would ask you the time and if your accent gave you away as a visiting supporter, he just kicked your head in.

For the journey back I waited at the bus stop that I’d used the previous week and asked the driver of the first bus if he went to Seoul. “Sadang“ he replied to my delight.

My bus.

Sadang is only ten minutes away from my apartment on the subway and with a half hour bus journey to get there I was back home an hour after the final whistle. I’ll remember that for next time I want to go to Suwon and it’s not raining.

Posted in Football | Leave a Comment »

Samsung Lions v Hanwha Eagles, Sunday 15th August 2010, 5pm.

August 22, 2010

The regular baseball season is drawing to a close and so I thought that whilst there’s still time I would try and get to see a game at a stadium that I hadn’t yet visited. There are eight baseball teams in the league, but as Doosan Bears and LG Twins share the Jamsil Stadium there are only seven different ball parks. Actually that may not be true as I’ve a suspicion that one of the teams from the south might play their home games at more than one stadium. Anyway, I’ve been to four of the stadiums so far and as Lotte Giants were playing away I was left with a choice of Samsung Lions or KIA Tigers.

Samsung Lions play in Daegu and when I found that the Daegu K-League team were also at home on the same day it was an easy choice to make. The football was listed as kicking off at four in the afternoon, with the baseball starting an hour later. I’d been to watch Daegu before and their stadium is only about thirty yards from the baseball park, so it seemed a pretty good piece of scheduling. I could watch their match against Pohang Steelers and then call into the baseball game which by that time should be no more than a couple of innings old.

Jen asked me if I’d like to accompany her to a barbecue that a friend of hers was having near Gyeongju on the Saturday and as Gyeongju is only an hour away from Daegu it all fitted together very nicely.

We got the bus from Seoul to Gyeongju late on Saturday morning. It was meant to be early on Saturday morning but when we turned up to get the tickets it was two and a half hours until the next departure. The silver lining was that it enabled me to get an overdue haircut. It’s probably thirty five years since I’ve been for a haircut with someone else and in those days I used to go with my Dad. To my frustration the barber would invariably direct his questions to him rather than me. In that mid-seventies era when it was a major source of embarrassment at school to have even the lobes of your ears exposed, you did not want the barber checking with your oblivious to fashion father as to whether he had taken enough off yet.

Generally over here, I get by in the barbers with a combination of mime and gesture and I’ve tended to survive. However, once the hairdresser realised that Jen could speak Korean, it was as if I was six years old.

“Does he want it grading at the back?” and “Should I shampoo it for him?” were asked and answered without any reference whatsoever to me. I half expected to be told to visit the toilet before I left and to be given a lollipop for sitting still. The shampooing was very enjoyable though, with my head being rinsed for a couple of minutes with cold water. The temperatures in Seoul seemed to have taken another step upwards lately and I could quite happily have foregone the barbecue, the football and the baseball and just remained in the barber’s chair all weekend with the cold water washing over my head.

The bus to Gyeongju took four hours and then we had another short connection to get to Doug’s house out in the countryside. Unfortunately our late arrival meant that the original barbecue had finished and the guests departed. Doug was a great host though and we spent a few hours with him and his girlfriend, eating and drinking in his front garden miles from anywhere, with a backdrop of the hills and his dog at our feet. Doug grows his own vegetables, makes his own cheese and had apple makkgeolli to supplement the beer. Whilst I love my life, every now and again I get a glimpse of someone elses and can’t help but feel that I’m missing out somehow.

The view from Doug's front garden.

At about ten o’clock we got a lift back to Gyeongju and checked into the nearest hotel to the bus station. This was quite a fortuitous choice as it’s the best hotel I’ve stayed in over here so far. For the connoisseurs of the idiosyncrasies of Korean love motels our room was on the top floor and had a six foot wide circular skylight above the bed so that we could look at the stars if there wasn’t much on telly. It opened and closed with a remote control and seemed a little like the sort of gadget that a villain in a James Bond film might use to launch missiles from an island hideaway. The room had disco lights in the bathroom and a small dance floor that also came complete with its own multi-coloured light show. We couldn’t quite work out how to switch off the flashing dance floor lights and so had to resort to covering it with a towel to diminish the effect. It had the usual love motel staples of a big flat screen telly and computer, plus the added bonus of a complementary bottle of red wine. I searched in vain for a humidor full of havana cigars but had I found them they would not have seemed out of place.

The dancefloor.

The next morning we went for a look around Gyeongju. It’s a town that seems to have a predilection for barley bread, with a shop selling it every five yards or so. We were going to look at the tombs rather than visit the bakers though, and in particular Cheonmachong, or the Heavenly Horse Tomb. This was the grave of some unknown royal from Silla kingdom and it had been excavated a few years previously giving visitors the opportunity to have a wander about inside. Disappointingly all the artifacts inside were replicas which made the sign stating that visitors should show respect towards what was an empty fake coffin a little bemusing. On the plus side, however, it was air-conditioned and so well worth the visit regardless of the authenticity of the artifacts.

The real stuff is in a museum somewhere.

We had a wander aroound the rest of the park, which resembled tellytubbyland, and looked at the other unexcavated tombs before getting the bus to Daegu where I had spicy tuna bibimbap for lunch.

Tinkywinky, La La, Poe and whatever the other one was called.

 This version of the rice dish was different to those I’ve had before as it’s eaten hot. It’s known as dolsot bibimbap and served in a red hot stone pot that I did my best not to burn myself on. Its an interesting variation and I quite like the way that the rice gets a bit crusty where it’s been in contact with the hot stone bowl.

We walked to the stadiums only to discover that the time of the football game had been changed and both matches now started at 5pm. Bugger. There was a large banner advertising the football and you could see where a patch saying `5pm’ had been stuck over the previous `4pm’. Quite why they couldnt coordinate the start times to accommodate fans who would like to see both games baffled me. The last time I’d watched Daegu, the conclusion of the baseball game coincided with half time in the football and the Daegu commercial staff were trying to entice the baseball fans into the football match for free. This time though, it was one or the other and as I’d seen Daegu play in their stadium before I decided that I’d rather watch the baseball.

After the previous weeks visit to the outfield at the Jamsil Stadium I thought it would be quite good to be a bit closer to the action and we got seats in the posh bit right behind the catcher for twenty thousand won each. They were front row and with a table in front of us for food and drink. The only downside was that it looked as if the roof didn‘t quite extend far enough to protect the first couple of rows if it rained. However, it was hot and sunny so I wasn’t too concerned.

On the way in we were given a bottle of chocolate water each. Yes, chocolate water. I’d heard of chocolate milk before, but this was a variation on those bottles of water that are usually flavoured with fruit or possibly more likely just sugar. I tried it, out of curiosity, and it was terrible. I like chocolate and I like water, but together, I dont think it will catch on. Fortunately there was another freebie, apple juice, to take away the taste and if that didn‘t work there was plenty of beer for sale.

The stadium was probably the smallest capacity of all those I’ve been to and there were plenty of empty seats. Samsung Lions are pretty much certain of their play-off place and perhaps Hanwha Eagles aren’t much of a draw. The home fans were loud enough, singing along at one point to Slade’s `Cum On Feel The Noize‘.

Like a lot of the games I’ve been to recently, the innings were being rattled through at a fair pace and within three quarters of an hour we had already seen the first three of them. It would have been even quicker had it not been for a lengthy delay for treatment after the batter had mistaken the catcher’s hand for the ball and tried to hit it out of the stadium.

Hanwha had the best of the early play including picking up a run when successive hits deep into the outfield that were both caught were in the air long enough to allow the bloke on first base to eventually make it all the way home. By the fourth innings though a Samsung home run had put the home side into a 3-2 lead.

At six o’clock it started to pour down with absolutely torrential rain that had the players running for the dugout and Jen and I scurrying to the back of the stand. Ground staff were quickly out with tarpaulins but the water was lying in pools around each of the bases. After a while I managed to get a glimpse of the Daegu game in the football stadium next door. The players were still out there, but it looked as if all of the fans were in the concourse.

I was waiting for the announcement that the match would be abandoned when the rain started to ease off and within a few minutes a combination of the drainage and blokes with brushes had cleared most of the water away. At seven o’clock we were off again. The only problem for us was that our front row seats were still ankle deep in water. Again the staff did the business and the excess was soon swept away and the seats and table dried off. We got another forty five minutes of action before the next thunderstorm arrived with the scores level at four apiece. We moved further back again, this time taking the seats of some people who had decided that enough was enough. A tramp had come in off the streets, more for a bit of shelter than the prospect of seeing the remaining innings I imagine, and he occupied his time by collecting up the uneaten fried chicken that people had left in their hurry to get away. He didnt seemed too interested in the chocolate water though.

We waited for the next lull in the rain and at half past eight we headed off to get the KTX not knowing if the game would be completed or abandoned. As we neared Seoul the baseball scores came up on the screen in the carriage and one of them had won 5-4. I don‘t remember which team won, but then I didn‘t really care. It’s still all about the occasion with baseball for me at the moment, rather than the result.

Posted in Baseball, Dead people and stuff, Haircuts | 3 Comments »

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