Trail of the Lion King

I’m currently working remotely for three weeks each month. That means I can indulge myself every now and then by travelling to see some football outside of the UK. This trip centred around a fortnight in Budapest. It’s a place that may more usually be the subject of a weekend break, but I quite like the idea of spending a bit more time in one location. My plan was to tick off another couple of countries where I’ve seen a game and so the day after we arrived in Hungary, Jen and I drove north to Slovakia.

I’d earmarked a game in Velke Ludince, a small town that, due to my concerns about being able to work out how to pay for toll roads online, was around two hours away. Once we were out of Budapest we travelled mainly through countryside on minor roads.

There were a lot of roadside memorials and a lot of cyclists. I’ve no idea if there was any correlation between those two observations. We arrived at the ground in good time, only to discover that the grass was four inches long and there was no sign of life. Oh well. It’s not the first time that I’ve found myself in that kind of situation.

Plan B was a third tier fixture half an hour away from Velke Ludince on the outskirts of Komarno. I wasn’t particularly confident of that game being on either as I hadn’t been able to find any conclusive confirmation on the social media of either team. Nevertheless, it was a better option than simply heading back to Budapest.

As we approached the ground, I found myself stuck behind a fire engine that I eventually realized was also heading for the game. I’m not sure how often a blaze breaks out at football these days but maybe there’s a pyro culture in the Slovakian lower leagues.

There were a couple of women stood behind a table at the entrance gate and, despite my lack of Slovak vocabulary, we were eventually able to establish that whatever they were selling wasn’t admission tickets and that it was free to both watch the game and park the car. We parked up and took seats in the main stand.

Hurbanavo Stadium is a picturesque ground, with trees on two sides and a church just behind. The woodland had resulted in a generous covering of leaves on the pitch. There was a smaller stand on the opposite side to us that was designated for visiting fans and some curved raised standing behind the goal to our left. It looked as if there had once been a running track around the playing area. A few picnic tables and some small sections of banked seating filled the space between our stand and the pitch. There was even a scoreboard to our right.

There was plenty of action in the first half with Komarno taking the lead after around twenty minutes or so from a stooped glancing header. It may very well have taken a deflection on the way in. Slovan Duslo drew level on the half-hour after Komarno failed to clear a floated free-kick into the box. The equalizer revealed that quite a few of the people sitting around us were away fans.

Komarno stepped up the pace a little in the remainder of the first half and added a couple more goals before the break. The first came from a shot from outside of the box that I felt the visiting keeper should have done better with. There wasn’t much that he could have done about Komarno’s third goal though. A diagonal run that ended with a shot cut back to the opposite corner left him wrong footed and gesturing at his defenders for not getting a tackle in earlier.

I’d noticed that food and drink were available from somewhere around the main stand as people kept returning to their seats with beer, coffee and snacks. At half-time Jen and I headed downstairs to a small café that had a selection of hot and cold food.

We didn’t really know what anything was, so just pointed. We ended up with some warm bread balls, the sort of thing that might have been garlic bread but turned out to be cheese flavoured. We also got some sort of pastry with, I think, jam in it.

I joined the away fans on the far side for a while in the second half. They seemed friendly enough and most had brought their own beer. None of them looked to have any pyro with them so it ended up as a quiet afternoon for the fire brigade.

The weather took a turn for the worse whilst I was on that side of the ground and in order to avoid the rain I spent longer over there than I’d planned. It meant that I was able to celebrate a Slovan Duslo goal with their fans when a low shot into the corner reduced the deficit to a single goal.

There were a few chances at either end in the final few minutes but none were taken and Komarno claimed the points with their three-two victory. It had been an enjoyable day out with Slovakia becoming the sixty-sixth country where I’ve watched a game of football.