Any excuse will do

Genclerbirligi chairman Ilhan Cavcav has in recent games been slagging off his own club's supporters for not coming out in force last week for the Gencler-Fener Turkish cup quarter-final.

It is getting all a bit weary to hear this bloke drone on about how we don't come out in force. While you will definitely hear plenty of criticism from us that too many people in Ankara support Istanbul teams you will never hear us slag off anyone who actually supports Gencler (or Ankaragucu for that matter).

Unlike Mr. Cavcav who seems to enjoy taking shots at his own team's rather small fan base.

This is not supposed to be a rant against Cavcav (well, only a bit) but what the hell did he expect? Cavcav put the prices for Maraton tickets at 30 tl. While many of us yabancis can afford this how many working class Turks can blow that sort of money. I know of many Gencler supporters who arranged to watch the match at tea houses because they simply couldn't afford the prices.

To put it in perspective, tickets for the Galatasaray - Trabzonspor match this weekend are miles cheaper, not to mention Ankaraspor who are currently filling their new stadium out in the middle of nowhere thanks to selling tickets for just 50 kuruş (about 30 cents US).

That price by the way is exactly the same as the price was for the good seats at the first ever Genclerbirligi - Fenerbahce match back in 1928 (Sir Eski Kanka had a cold and couldn't make it to the match).

According to Tanil Bora's book "Ankara rüzgarı" (from which I will no doubt be subjecting you to even more trivia facts) some 3,150 showed up for that match. In a piece of genius from which our current chairman should learn from, but which he won't of course, women were let in free.

The point of this post. Not sure really but any excuse to have another go at Ilhan Cavcav. "Yonetim istifa"