up at the crack of dawn this morning in order to get to the chopin at the extremely uncivilised time of 11 am to find trainspotting kanka drinking his coffee and chatting away to carl and rana, a producer and researcher for a uk television company.
they were in town to do some background work for a show they are putting together all about turkish football fans. it appears that their main interest is in the more violent side of football fans.
poor guys, sure, turkish football supporters have got a terrible reputation, thanks in large part to the english tabloids, but i've hardly seen a violent incident in years of going to gencler and ankaragucu games. in other words i reckon they will have a difficult time making their documentary.
anyway, speaking of peaceful people maniac kanka harun joined us, as did dirk, lulu and lulu's boyfriend. lulu has only been in ankara for a month or so and while she was unable to come along to the match itself i'm sure she will joing us soon.
two other long lost souls from the wilds of bilkent also showed up, battle-hardened kanka damon and mountaineering kanka robbie.
all up a decent turn-out, sir eski kanka was sufferring at work, poor bugger.
off to the stadium nice and early and the crowd was quite a decent one. bugger all rizespor supporters of course but maraton was pretty much full, both sides of kapali were pretty much full and the gecekondu crowd wasn't too bad either.
and were they up for it? you bet. five wins on the trot for ankaragucu had the fans in full voice. the atmosphere today was brilliant. shame no one told the players.
let's just say that despite rize not being very good and ankaragucu dominating it wasn't until the 24th minute before ankaragucu had a shot on goal.
oh i did forget that a few minutes before that rize almost scored from a free kick which went onto ankaragucu's forward mustafa ozkan who was denied an own goal by the post.
another close shave came when the gucu defence allowed a bald bloke from rize a free header. nonsense stuff.
0-0 half time and tensions were rising. including on the terraces where for some reason a group of the anti-x supporters started shouting stuff at a group of genc ankaragucu supporters. no idea what started off the handbags but the cops were having none of it. fully tooled riot police were ordered in and although nothing happened, the atmosphere was definately tense. perhaps that tv company are onto something.
second half and both sides had chances. the difference was that ankaragucu, and tita in particular, seemed more intent on fancy passes around the box instead of actually having a shot.
again the bald bloke from rize was left unmarked twice were he could have scored with that shiny pate and then he really stuffed up when he was one-on-one with serkan (who actually had a very good game).
and so it was against the run of play when bebbe scored for ankaragucu with a header off a corner.
a few minutes later and ankaragucu sealed it after a lovely move down the wing which led to ceyhun sending the ball to bebbe who whacked it into the back of the net.
us happy campers then went off to the cappadocia bar to warm up.
it was here that we learnt of the other great result today. erciyesspor 0, genclerbirligi 2.
it was an away match and thus i have to rely on the anatolian news agency who report that neither goal was scored by isaac promise. in fact, isaac was replaced in the 74th minute and in their star report anatolia gave isaac one star out of a possible three (being chosen in the first 11 is enough to earn that one star).
but perhaps i'm being too tough on the young bloke because i doubt there was much need for attack considering that engin baytar and okan ozturk had both scored within 5 minutes of the match starting.
all up a great weekend which pulls both gencler and ankaragucu further away from the drop zone and closer towards a uefa place. let's keep dreaming.
