a guest post this week as i was unable to get to today's away match. luckily oguz and spine decided to make the 200 kilometre hike to karabuk. i had to follow the match on twitter as i couldn't even find the bloody thing on the radio. i did though get to learn one really cool word from this tweet from @kirmizikara
dk 60|kornerden gelen topta kafa vuruşunu ramazan mükemmel bir plonjonla direk dibinden çıkarıyor
plonjon! brilliant! apparently it means when a keeper makes a full on parallel stretch to save a shot. that made my miserable day. now on to @spinesideburn for his report.
karabukspor 0 - 0 genclerbirligi
after so many weeks of goals and excitement, the universe restored equilibrium this week by providing a goal-free and deeply undramatic 0-0 draw at karabuk.
the home side had conceded five a week earlier, and spent the first few minutes utterly determined to make sure that wouldn't happen again. so determined were they to keep a clean sheet, that it took them a while to realise that gencler were actually rubbish and were not about to score any goals. once they twigged, karabuk took the match to the visitors and ought to have scored, but for strong work by the back four and ramazan.
no one looked good for gencler. passes went astray, hursut was anonymous, zec unlikely and poorly served. fuat capa clearly thought he had better on the bench when he took jimmy and zec off in the 58th minute. but his chosen replacements oktay and lekic were no better, and the latter looked particularly out of his depth.
the real event was the minor civil war that failed to completely break out between two gencler camps. the top deck of karabuk's rather nice stadium was occupied by sweary supporters, who were liberal with the "i" word, and directed it at our valued hosts. the lower deck was mainly alkaralar people, who objected to the swearing. there was almost a fight. then the police came. angry men cried "hold me back!". the end.
even the crowd trouble was a little disappointing. still, karabuk is pretty, their ground's a nice one, and we were back in ankara for supper.