A Day of 2 Games

Double headers are few and far between and when they happen it usually feels like the canonball run from one stadium to another, today was a bit more relaxed, in a way, and I saw 2 good games and didn't feel guilty as I was excused from going to some kid's birthday party.

First up was Obolon v Prikarppatiya. I have to say that Obolon's ground is a real sod to find, situated in a housing estate at the end of a metro line and without floodlights doesn't make it easy and neither does the fact that very few of the locals know the way. I had been there twice before, but I still found it hard and ended up phoning Andriy for directions.

Luckily I found it in time and it's a good job I did. First of all the beer is dead cheap and straight from the brewery, it costs the equivalent of 20p and tastes good, so it's a good job the club have the sense to have plenty of portaloos there. The weather was terrible, hence the poor photos from today, but the football was satisfactory, and the atmosphere (aided by cheap booze) was pretty raucous.

The first half saw Obolon dominating without looking like scoring and I was wondering whether the rumours that they were going to give up trying for promotion, as they can't afford to play in the Vische Liha were correct. However the skeptics were proved wrong as Obolon eventually won 2-0 with 2 headed goals. It seemed that prikarppatiya were very vulnerable in the air and Obolon could probably have had a couple more if it wasn't for bad luck.

I was also pleasently surprised to see Erwig from Arsenal at the game and we had a beer on the way to the metro before I embarked on the second stage of the double header.

I was pretty late getting to Dynamo, as was expected, as I missed the first 20 minutes, and the first goal. Luckily the Kryvbas hoodoo was finally buried the moment that I entered the stadium, as Shatskih hammered the ball into the back of the net to score Dynamo's and his second of the match. Shatskih, who is often known as Burratino (Pinnochio) because of his 'wooden' leg looked the sharpest he has done for a long time. In fact Dynamo as a whole looked sharper than they have for ages, so maybe the change of coach from Szabo to Semin ( with Luzhny taking control as caretaker boss in the interim period) has paid dividends. Probably the only person who would disagree is Szabo, who was ranting away about how he was hounded out of the club on TV a couple of weeks ago. On the other hand maybe they were more assertive as Tavriya had beaten Shakhter earlier in the day giving them the chance to go top, although their other performances since Semin took over would suggest that they are on the up.

Bangoura scored the third goal on 77th minutes and it wasn't until this point that Kryvbas started to play, maybe they finally realised that their offside trap wasn't working, but 3-0 is how it finished.

The strangest thing about Dynamo is the fact that although I was late loads of people were still messing around outside and taking photos of themselves by the Lobanovskiy statue and by the end of the match most of them had buggered off early. Admittedly the weather was crap, and luckily the stewards are pretty half-hearted, so I spent the match standing in different parts of the ground, but you have to wonder what the point is of making an effort if you can' t be bothered to watch the game for more than 20 minutes, especially when the team performs like it did today.

The top picture shows Obolon, on the left is the main stand which hasn't been completed due to the club running out of money when there was a hostile takeover bid of the brewery. On the right were the fans ( mostly out of shot) including a group of headcases who had travelled up from Ivano Frankosk.

The second picture shows the view of when I entered Dynamo stadium