Saturday, August 04, 2012
Groundhopping In Indonesia
English football is full of eccentricities. Every match day
up and down the country there are people out there busy adding to their
collection of match day programmes, badges or tickets. Others collect scarves,
pennants or autographs. You name it and there is probably someone out there
somewhere with a sizeable collection of them.
I’m sure if some enterprising club introduced their own
vomit bags, much like airlines do, complete with club crest on them some bright
spark would soon be out there buying them up, getting a few autographed to add
to their value then starting a website about his growing collection.
All those nutters make the 92 Club seem somewhat staid and
normal. The 92 refers to the number of football clubs there are in the top four
divisions of English football; for new converts to English football there are a
further three divisions outside the Premier League and that is how they manage
to promote and relegate clubs.
The aim of the 92 Club is to provide a place for members to
gather and talk about their achievements. And to be a member you must have
attended a competitive football match at each of the 92 stadiums in the
leagues.
Not just any old game. For example, my long trip to the
South West of England to see Plymouth Argyle play Everton would not count
because it was a friendly and the sniffy members don’t recognize such
meaningless games.
Once members have ‘done’ the 92 then they often go on and
cover Scotland, Wales and Irelands or they start visiting as many ‘non league’
grounds as possible where they meet other ‘groundhoppers’ and opine about how
this is real football and the modern game has lost its soul thanks to the
millions of pounds flooding in.
Could Indonesia host a similar club? Unlikely given that it
would mean fans would have to travel from Banda Aceh at the northern most tip
of Sumatra to the highlands of Wamena in Papua with all points in between.
Logistically a nightmare, prohibitively expensive and that is before we try and
track down a reliable fixture list!
In England clubs have their own home stadium, most own them,
and you can be sure when Rochdale have a home game it will be at Spotland.
I have seen PSMS Medan play two home games but never in
Medan! One was in Bandung, the other Jakarta yet they were home games. Their
own stadium was closed for renovations at the time and they were forced to take
to the highways and byways.
What about Pelita Jaya? I have seen them play home games in
three different cities; Purwakarta, Soreang and Karawang. Before that they
played in Solo, Jakarta and Cilegon. How would any groundhopping club in
Indonesia address that?
Last week I saw PSIM Yogyakarta play Persebaya at the
Mandala Krida Stadium in Yogyakarta. To all intents and purposes it was a PSIM
home game. But the game was a play off and in the eyes of the authorities the
stadium was a neutral venue; for them Persebaya were the ‘home’ team!
We’ll round off with Persiram Raja Ampat. The notion of Raja
Ampat glazes the eyes as we consider gorgeous, white sandy beaches and fabulous
diving. I have been to three Persiram home games, one was cancelled at the last
minute as the police on duty were called to a riot elsewhere. The games took
place not way off to the east of Indonesia but in polluted South Jakarta.
The idea of a groundhopping club is an intriguing one but we
are a long way from that. Instead what we have is the occasional European who
makes his way over here and tries to find as many games as possible to visit with
the aid of Facebook.
Yet the ones who have tried this have always returned home
with some unbelievable stories about football in Indonesia and how friendly the
people were once they had overcome their amazement at the foreigner who had
tracked down an amateur game in Sragen!
# posted by Me @ 8:45 AM 
