Trail of the Lion King

Jen had arranged to spend a month in the States, primarily to do some dog sitting for her sister who was going on holiday. As the work I’m doing can all be done remotely I thought I’d go along as well. We started off at her Dad’s house in Mississippi where the highlights were cutting down a couple of trees with a chainsaw and taking his dog Roscoe for a walk.

Soccer-wise, the season was drawing to an end, and I don’t think that there are any local sides in the MSL or the second-tier leagues anyway. The college season was just about done too but I was just in time for a women’s university fixture between LSU and Arkansas.

It was free to park at the LSU Soccer Stadium and free to get into the game. They even gave me a complimentary ‘fanny pack’ for turning up. Once inside I got myself an enormous coke and a sausage Po Boy, which is really just a hot dog in a bun.

I took a seat in the main stand and watched the two sides warm up. Both of them had massive squads. LSU had twenty-six outfield players and four goalies. Arkansas must have had an injury crisis as they’d only brought twenty-three players.

The home side were in their traditional purple with the visitors in white. Both sets of players wore their shorts a lot tighter than in the English game and hitched up in the style favoured mainly by teenage girls and Glen Hoddle. Sepp Blatter would no doubt have been pleased.

Another noticeable difference to English game was that the scoreboard clock counted down and was paused whenever there was a break in play for VAR checks, yellow card admin or injuries. We also got a greater involvement from the stadium announcer who, in case any of the crowd were blind, would advise the reason for a break in play with “Offside, Arkansas” or “Free-kick, Tigers”.

We were treated to a twenty-odd strong brass band that every now and then would go walkabout through the stand. I suppose if you have to practice the tuba, you might as well do it whilst watching a match.

The game was only half an hour old when we got four Razorback subs and one from LSU. Ten minutes later another Razorback was swapped as were three Tigers players. The substitutions took no time at all as the oncoming player sprinted on with a bib in hand, gave it to the subbed player who similarly sprinted off the field. I liked that.

I lost track of the total number of subs throughout, but it was more than eleven for each side with some players coming back on and some subs only getting a few minutes pitch time before returning to the bench. I’m aware of rolling subs in the over-forties leagues in England but hadn’t expected it here.

The game was goalless up until the a few minutes from time when LSU took the lead with a header. I thought that would be enough to clinch the victory but Arkansas equalised pretty much straightaway to take a share of the points.