Not as cold as we thought

Genclerbirligi 1- Ankaragucu 2

At 10 o'clock Sunday morning the snow was coming down and the wind was howling. It was bleak. But that wasn't going to stop us from going to the match and so wrapped up for a Siberian winter we headed down to the Chopin for pre-match beers and then off to the 19 Mayis stadium. By the time we got to the stadium however the weather seemed to have changed completely. We were sitting in the sun and it was actually quite warm. Weird.

Ten of us made it today for the match, unfortunately the Ankaragucu Kanka crowd were thin on the ground, only Casanova Kanka Gokhan made it for the sari-lacivert side, but us Gencler supporters were out in force including Flying Dutchman Kanka Carlo, Spine, Legal Kanka Saadet, Jac, Roger, Arja, Oguz and Viking Kanka Jens.

On to the football and it was nice to see Ankara's two top teams gathering pre-kick-off to salute the crowd together. After all, this may have been a a damn important derby but in the end the real enemies are all in Istanbul.

First half and Gencler were definately on top. The Ankaragucu keeper was never really challenged but that is not because he shouldn't have been. Yet again, this blog's favourite striker, yes, Mr. Isaac Promise, buggered up in front. We should have been one, possibly, two in front by half time.

At the same time I have no idea what the hell our keeper Jesus was thinking. At one stage he came off the line attempting to punch a ball, buggered it up and went running off towards the corner post to clean it up. At this stage he was beaten by a 'Gucu player and if it wasn't for luck the ball would have ended in the back of the net.

If they served beer at the 19 Mayis stadium, we would have been crying into them.

Second half and Gencler had clearly taken a sedative or 11. It was dire stuff. Midfield rubbish, defence... oh dear.

In the 56th and the 64th minute Ankaragucu pounced, with Ceyhun and Mustafa Ozkan scoring. The second goal in particular was nice with Mustafa scoring from what we thought was an impossible angle.

As for the first goal, was it offside. I guess we will have to look at the replays (which I shall put up as a link here soon).

2-0 down and Ankaragucu started to play act, players were falling down left, right and centre in an attempt to run down the clock.

One might have thought that our keeper Jesus might actually have wanted to speed things up a bit at this point, but no, he took his time whenever we had goalkick and did Promise have any idea what the score was when he was so so so rightly replaced towards the end.

Promise! If your team is 2-0 down and you are replaced your job is to bloody well run off the field, not saunter off as if you had just scored a hat-trick!

After Promise was replaced we finally started to play some football and it resulted in a goal from Mehmet Cakir in the 76th.

It was all Genclerbirligi for the rest of the match but to no avail.

Depressed we trudged, not unlike Isaac Promise, out of the stadium and off to the Red Lion Club to watch England get slaughtered by the All Blacks. At about half-time we finally came across some Ankaragucu Kankas in the form of Maniac Kanka Harun, his mates and Sir Eski Kanka Jim.

Smug would probably be the best word to sum them up.

EDIT: Just fixed up the spelling of Arja. Sorry about that.