The final Ankara derby?

Could that have been the last Ankara derby? Quite possibly so as Ankaragucu need some sort of miracle to stay in the top flight next season. It was cold, the field was in places waterlogged and the football on show wasn't that great. In any case though it will be a great shame if we don't see another derby match and hopefully Ankaragucu will still be around next season.

Ankaragucu 0 - 1 Genclerbirligi

Sunday afternoon in the Beer Bus and various Kankas were looking the worse for wear after spending Saturday afternoon at the British Beer Festival at the Red Lion. Still nothing an Efes couldn't cure. Gencler kankas Spine, Oguz, Emre, Robin, the Flying Dutchman and your reporter for the day discussed everything from the first 120 years of AKP rule to how Ankaragucu need a Middle Eastern saviour.

One thing we couldn't discuss was how the Ankaragucu fans felt because none of them showed up. Normally the home side has to do the report but looks like I got saddled with it instead.

At the stadium we were surprised to see queues. Yes queues to get tickets for the Gencler end. Gencler don't have a big support base but it was good to see so many come out on such a cold day.

We missed the first five minutes or so and I doubt we missed much. As I said the place was cold and the pitch waterlogged in places, not the best conditions for good football. As Ankaragucu were forced to play their youth team it wasn't much of a surprise that Genclerbirligi controlled most of the play.

The only goal of the match came in the 19th minute when Yasin on the left did extremely well to get around his man and then with players streaming into the box he passed to Hursut who struck it well from just outside the box.

Of course we cheered, but then we just politely clapped. None of the Gencler fans want to see Ankaragucu go down but at the same time we need the three points to keep up our fight for a place in Europe next season.

Genclerbirligi continued to control the ball for the rest of the first half but with Azofeifa still injured we are really looking poor in the midfield. Once again there were a million horizontal passes and no real penetration. I'm not sure that we forced the Ankaragucu keeper to make more than a couple of saves for the whole match.

I had no idea at the time but one Ankaragucu kanka was at the match, namely Cider Kanka John and as he posted on the blog, the Ankaragucu fans were having fun throwing snowballs onto the pitch. It started pretty much as an attack on Hursut for having scored the goal but later on everyone was fair game. It seemed petty at first but later just seemed like fun, after all, snowballs are much better than chairs.

Also weird was the "we share your pain" display by the Ankaragucu fans as thousands of them took off their shirts and threw their atlets/singlets/vests on to the pitch. I might take part in a similar display myself some day, but certainly in January.

Minus 10 was still too warm for these Ankaragucu fans.

Second half and Gencler flaffed around, sent some balls over the top and generally played like they wanted to get off the field as soon as possible. Sensing this the young Ankaragucu players started having a go and they were very unlucky not to equalise late late in the second-half. If it wasn't for Ramazan in goal, the match would have finished one-a-piece.

Match over and very subdued applause from us. During the match the Ankaragucu stands started up various "Hukumet istifa" and "Gokcek istifa" chants, which the Gencler fans of course joined in and so it was slightly annoying that at the end a very small group of Ankaragucu fans sitting to the left us started shouting "you are all sons of disreputable women". We merely applauded them, which only got them more pissed off. Ultimately the police went in and pushed them out of the stadium, after which much larger groups of Ankaragucu fans shouted their appreciation for our support and we started singing Ankaragucu chants.

All very weird.

Thanks to Karabuk beating Trabzon on Saturday, Gencler now go into fourth spot on the ladder. Wow, you could have got very good odds for betting on that at the beginning of the season. Let's see if we can keep it up.