BELLSHILL KANKA NADEEM REFLECTS

Greetings Kankas and Kankies (from Bodrum).

Our 'oracle' in Glasgow, Nadeem, asked me to put this up on the Blog. It's true enough, he has shown in the past year that he deserves the accolade of 'Kanka of the Year' with his loyalty to Ankaragucu. Look forward to seeing you soon Nadeem. All the best from Jim


Hi Jim,

I thought id write something for the blog seen as that's me officially been an Ankaragucu supporter for one year. You can have a look and see what you think.

Title - One year on Been an Ankaragucu Fan

Its just over a year now that i stumbled across the Round ball in Ankara. I've always been a fan of Turkish football. It goes back to the days when Man United made the trip to what they called the stadium of Hell when they faced Galatasaray in the champions league. The atmosphere was like nothing id ever seen. Then there was Jay Jay Okocha who was one of my heroes when he played for Fenerbahce. I never picked a team to follow until last year. I didn't want to follow one of the Istanbul 3 and be a glory Hunter. So i looked through each team and eventually came to Ankaragucu.

I had a look on youtube and read some articles on them and i liked what i saw, passionate fans and a team which you never know what your going to get with them. I also saw the fans when they met Darius Vassell at the airport and again i was impressed. Then i came across the round ball in Ankara, the first thing i saw wasnt a Turkish Fan, or a Turkish footballer, no it was a Scottish man called Jim on a boat in Bodrum with an Ankaragucu top on. Couldn't believe there was another Scottish Ankaragucu fan. I found out there is another few of us as well with Kirkaldy Kanka one of them. I got in touch with Jim and started posting on the blog, everyone has made me feel part of the Kankas, even the Genclerbirligi fans haha.

The new year i would watch Ankaragucu games online and on Livescore every weekend hoping for an Ankaragucu win, unfortunately they were few and far between as we became draw specialists. The amount of players that came and went was hard to keep up to date with. The team we started the season with against Diyarbakirspor to the one we finished with against Sivaspor was unrecognisable. One of the highlights of the season for me was the 3-0 win against Galatasaray in October. But typical Ankaragucu followed that up with a 3-1 defeat away at Kayserispor.

I decided to book up with my girlfriend Rebecca and come over and see a game. We choose the may game against Fenerbahce at home. Ankara is a great city. Friendly people, a culture where east meets west and most of all Ankaragucu. If someone had told me a year earlier that i would end up at an Ankaragucu Fenerbahce match i wouldn't have believed them, but we got there. The atmosphere and whole day was excellent, yes we lost 3-0 but still it was great to finally meet the Kankas and Gecekondu. The Kankas from both Ankaragucu and Genclerbirligi met up with us and it was a pleasure to meet them all. We would both like to pass on our thank you to all of them and wish you the best.

We will be back over in October to see us play Bursaspor at home, hopefully the Ankaragucu fans will be on good behaviour against Galatasaray the week before to prevent a stadium ban lol.


Nadeem