As I’d been working during the week, the weekend meant that I could get out and see a bit more of Budapest and the surrounding areas. The first game that I’d identified was a twenty-five-minute drive north of the city. On the way we called into a flea market to see what treasures we could find.
If we’d had a van and were driving back to England, I might very well have bought a woodburning stove. It would have needed to be a heavily reinforced van as I’d estimate the stove probably weighed twice as much as I do.
As we were flying Ryanair, I thought it best not to test their luggage limits and so we settled for some Hungarian LPs from the sixties and a fur stole. It might have been mink, but more likely was ferret. We got it at a bargain price, possibly because it was missing a back leg.
The first game of the day was at the Ujpesti Haladas Sportpalys and in the sixth-tier of the Hungarian pyramid. The ground was in a residential area, with a playground alongside it. The only seats were a couple of benches, but as it was possible to drive your car to some elevated parking alongside the pitch it wouldn’t have been difficult to watch in comfort.
The crowd peaked at twelve, although few people stayed for the whole game. A couple on a bike ride paused for a while before resuming their journey. There were two wags and a girl in an orange tabard who seemed to have some sort of official role. A mouthy bloke stood behind one of the dugouts shouting instructions to anyone within earshot and there was a fella who looked hungover eating sunflower seeds and swigging knock-off Fanta.
A grandad was supervising two small kids who would much rather have been playing on the swings. They stuck it out for twenty minutes or so before moving on.
Kerulet had the best of the first half in any stat you might think of other than goals. The closest they came to scoring was after half an hour when the home keeper turned a shot over the bar. It was goalless at the break and neither side went to the dressing rooms, remaining on the pitch for a ten-minute interval.
Kerulet might have gone in front just after the restart, but the shot bounced back off the bar. They eventually took the lead on the hour when a loose ball in the box was neatly tucked away. Ujpesti were never out of it at one-nil though and the game was in the balance until three minutes from time when a low shot into the corner of the net from the edge of box clinched the points for the visitors.
Trail of the Lion King 