Trail of the Lion King

The Bucharest trip was intended to coincide with the Saudi Eid holiday. However, the dates are not something that you can accurately rely upon too far in advance. Apparently, there’s a committee of old blokes who look at the visible shape of the moon and then they announce the start and finish of the holiday a few days beforehand.

Whatever they saw, worked well for me and resulted in an additional day at the end of the holiday. I had no intention of wasting the extra time off and so had a look at how I could rearrange my return flight for maximum benefit. To cut a long story mercifully short, I dropped the Bucharest trip down from a week to five days and Jen and I flew on to Sweden for three nights instead.

It was a destination predominantly chosen for availability and ease of getting there, but also because they play their football between April and November.

We flew into Skavska airport, which is just south of Stockholm and about an hour and a half’s drive from the small house in someone’s garden that we were staying at to the north of the city. It was as well that we had to pass through Stockholm as Jen needed some emergency dentistry and she was able to nab a walk in appointment within a few hours of our arrival.

Stockholm seems a pleasant city. I’m not sure if I’d called in there during one of the interrailing trips in the eighties, but if I had then nothing appeared familiar. It was good to be out in the country though. We saw a bit of the wider landscape from the plane window and it’s all coast, lakes and forests. Yet another place that I could readily move to.

The tooth removal meant that there was no time for a match on the day that we arrived, but I lined up a fixture for the following day in the Division 5 Uppland South league which, despite its name, is actually part of the seventh tier of Swedish football.

On the day of the game we went for lunch at nearby Rimbo, where the only option available was beef with some sort of jam sauce, then went for a walk at Finsta where we followed a trail dedicated to a Saint Bridget. I’d hoped that she was the patron saint for the vertically-challenged, but apparently not.  It was a short walk through some woods to a church and then on to a cave and back again. After the heat of both Saudi Arabia and Romania, it was good to be outside in temperatures suitable for mooching about.

We’d driven past the Lundbyvallen ground a couple of hours before the 7pm kickoff and it was a relief to see someone putting up the nets. I’d also noticed a covered stand which, in an afternoon that had seen the odd shower, might well prove useful.

We arrived for the game half an hour or so before kick-off and with the main car park already well populated. We followed the sign to the overflow parking and then wandered down past a club house selling food and drink, taking a seat at one of the picnic tables along the side of the pitch.

Considering that the game was in the seventh tier and in a village that didn’t appear to have even a corner shop, I was surprised to see floodlights. Not that I expected them to get much use in Sweden in June.

Riala were in third place in the table, with visitors Uppsala in second. By the time play got underway there were probably around eighty people in attendance along with a couple of dogs, including a young husky that was keen to be somewhere else.

The standard was decent and by half-time Riala were two counter-attacking goals to the good. They added a third on the hour with an ambitious back-heeled volley that was perfectly executed.

At that stage, it might very well have turned into a rout, but instead the visitors upped the pressure and within ten minutes had pulled two goals back. They pushed hard for an equalizer in the final stages, but it just wouldn’t come. The win meant that Riala drew level on points with their opponents in the battle for the second promotion spot.