the week started with snow and freezing temperatures, it ended in lovely sunshine and one hell of a beating for konya as genclerbirligi gave us a feast fit for a king.
genclerbirligi 6 - 1 konya
i have no idea what else was happening in ankara today but it must have been good as we only had a small turnout of kankas at the chopin, just me, flying dutchman and spine. a couple of beers, koftes and discussions on the operation in iraq, a virus hitting a blog about someone wanting to commit suicide and spine trying to find out where to get a lamp, and then off to the match.
we cut it pretty fine and thanks to cavcav putting his pennies above the interests of gencler fans we missed the all-important singing of the national anthem. found alpine kanka and his two boys who are conveniently both named chris (sort of), took our seats and within seconds burhan eser made a break down the right, sent in a pass, defence balls up the clearance and the ball falls to mehmet nas on the edge of the box and goal!!!
four minutes in. 1-0. not a bad start.
while gencler were definitely playing better football, konya were pretty crap, it took all of 16 minutes before we saw the next goal. engin baytar sent in a lovely weighted ball from a corner right onto the bald spot of grandfather okan ozturk. 2-0
us gencler fans were cheering away. we were playing some excellent football, treating the konya players like the hopeless jokes they were. at some stages it seemed as if every trick was working, we were winning 90 per cent of the one-on-ones, our defenders were stopping everything and burhan was running riot down the right wing.
then the ball goes in front of isaac promise on a run down the right and heading towards goal. at this point i say out loud, "send it in to okan", which isaac obvious heard as he did and okan scored. 3-0
"dort, dort, dort," screamed the crowd who by this stage were enjoying themselves as if at a sunday fair. in fact the crowd was a bit subdued considering we were three ahead, perhaps they were stunned by the fact that we were even ahead. it has after all been a long time.
almost half time and konya score, but all up we were bloody happy. 3-1
for those of you who haven't been to the 19 mayis stadium recently let me tell you the pitch at the moment couldn't be worse if they had held a rodeo before the match. so at half time they brought out a guy on a tractor pulling a roller. what i liked is that the roller only seemed to do one part of the pitch, that which our man burhan would be running down in the second half. hats off to that tractor driver.
second half had hardly started and we get a free kick not far from the corner flag. engin baytar steps up and attempts to hit okan's bald patch once again. he stuffed it up though and instead the ball goes high, past the keeper and into the far top corner of the net. we started laughing, as did engin who looked almost embarrassed to have scored. it was a great goal which the keeper had no chance of saving but sir eski kanka has a better chance of picking up hulya avsar than engin will ever have a repeating such a feat. 4-1
at this stage the hard-core konyaspor fans left the stadium.
burhan then used the nice and rolled grass to send in a cross for isaac promise at the far post to tap in. 5-1
almost at the end and traore sends in a pass into the box, finds burhan who puts it away. 6-1
at this stage the gencler fans start singing "that's enough gencler, enough".
brilliant day. three wins in a row. bloody amazing. my oh my, haven't our fortunes changed in just a few weeks.
and then i have just read that our youth team beat konya by the same massive score before the main match. it never rains, but it pours.
