saturday morning off to balgat for little oz kanka's football match, then straight to the red lion club to watch a very unlucky wales go down to france in the rugby, then it was off to kecioren for little oz kanka's cricket match and then i had to umpire a couple of under 13s cricket matches. quite a sporting day, followed by - sunday morning off to kecioren for little oz kanka's cricket match, then to the red lion club to watch australia get beaten by a far superior kiwi side (oh how it pains me to say that, but it was true) and then off to watch genclerbirligi... phew, quite a weekend.
genclerbirligi 3 - 0 antalyaspor
spine, french kanka hande and little oz kanka joined me at the beer bus at about 1pm for what was not my first beer of the day. with just a bit of a cloudy brain off we went to the stadium, minus french kanka who preferred to go home to do some cleaning.
one of the best things about having bugger all supporters is that we can time our arrival at the stadium to a t. we showed up just in time to hear the national anthemn and still we got excellent seats. all up i'd say about three to four thousand at the match. not many, but we did make ourselves heard, especially since we took the lead in the fourth minute.
it was all a bit scrappy but these things need a decent build up and that was what we got when hursut sent the ball into the box. i think it was oktay who got to it but he didn't get the ball cleanly and instead it was an antalya player who did... and put the ball into his own net. as i said scrappy but we were as over the moon.
gencler continued to attack and it was quite exhilarating for us fans as they actually showed some promise. this was not the gencler of a couple of weeks ago. great attacks and some brilliant defending had antalya on the back foot for the entire 90 minutes. our coach fuat capa got his own chant from the fans towards the end of the match because he had obviously banged into our players the importance of keeping the ball and defending hard. my only criticism, which spine also pointed out during the match is that our man up front today, herve tum, just doesn't seem to fit in, especially with through balls from people like azofeifa, erdal or hursut being lost completely because tum clearly doesn't have the speed to get to them. anyway, i'm getting ahead of myself a touch.
it wasn't long before gencler went 2-0 up after azofeifa sent a ball over the top to aykut just inside the box. he hit it with a fair amount of power and antalya's keeper omer didn't have a clue. in fact he probably could have saved it, but obviously he couldn't be bothered.
as the gencler fans started chanted uç, uç, uç, someone sent a ball through to oktay who managed to get away from a defender and found himself one-on-one with omer. no worries as oktay slid it in. 3- 0 after just 33 minutes. this was great stuff.
there were no more goals but plenty of chances and the football from gencler was great. one problem we did have was the failure of the forwards to actually take chances as they came to them. some brilliant chances deserved to have been taken but too often than not the gencler players didn't back themselves and instead went for a pass.
still, i can't complain much. all up it was a great match. the gencler defence was excellent with aykut and curri in complete control. hursut was his usual enigmatic self and oktay in midfield/up front put his all in.
antalya may not be the best team in the league but if we beat these type of teams we won't be worrying at the end of the season.
