As if I needed another reason to dislike Gokcek

After taking Little Oz Kanka to a play on Saturday afternoon - an excellent tale entitled "King of the Jungle" where in the end the king loses his crown and the animals decide on some sort of collective democracy. It was basically a cry against the TV revenue hogging of the big three Istanbul clubs and Matthew and I left the threatre singing "kirmizi, siyah, en buyuk Gencler" - when I checked in on the Gencler forums to find that today's match had been switched to Yenikent.

Ankaraspor "honourary in nothing but name" chairman Melih Gokcek has been trying for a while to have Ankaraspor matches played out near Sincan for a while now. I guess the main reason being that normally Ankaraspor get about 20 supporters to their home matches whereas at the last elections he got massive majorities out in the Sincan area.

It is, of course, Ankaraspor's right to play its home matches wherever it wants but this week and a bit has shown what a farce this league is.

First up we had Gokcek's fight with Ankaragucu chairman Cemal Aydin which resulted in fans being priced out of Ankaraspor's home match against Gucu. 150 TL for a ticket behind the goals! Even Chelsea fans would balk at that.

Then this week it was finally confirmed on Thursday that that the Ankaraspor - Genclerbirligi match would be played at 19 Mayis (for those of you who don't know it is pretty much in the centre of town). Ankaraspor went to court and so, as I said before, I found out Saturday afternoon that the match will be played miles out of town.

Thanks for the advanced warning people.

So I'm going to drive to the match today. Problem is I don't know where the hell this Yenikent Asas Stadium is. There is no info on the Ankaraspor website, in fact they are still saying the match is on at 19 Mayis.

As I was going off to the symphony (I try to mix politically subversive theatre for kiddies, cultural high-brow stuff and the people's game all on the same weekend) I left a message on a Gencler forum asking for directions.

This is one of the replies I got:

"Oz Kanka, melbourne gelmeden sağa dön, çeşmeyi geçince karşına büyük bir okalüptüs ağacı çıkacak onun altında beni bekle. Saat tam 12.45 de oradayım."

Taking the piss me thinks.

A much more helpful post was the following:

"I think you know istanbul road...go go go and there is a an advertisement board....bread picture TAYMEK trabzon ekmeği...(ekmek resmi olan tabela) if you see that after 100 metres bi tabela gözükecek....turn right to BEYPAZARI AYAŞ YENİKENT...and go go go dümdüz...there is sincan...after sincan first yerleşim yeri yenikent....oralarda bi yerde turn right asaş stadı tabelası görünce....good luck..."

So with those directions Flying Dutchman Kanka and myself are off to the stadium. We may be some time.