My frozen toes are grateful that we won't be playing at home for a while... Genclerbirligi 1 - 1 Galatasaray

There were a lot of Istanbul cocukları out today. They were able to sing well, but really... your team is supposed to be one of the best in Turkey, you are riding high in the league, you just knocked Juventus out of the Champion's League but despite the fact you couldn't win against a team as lowly as Genclerbirligi you still went ahead with calls for the team to come over after the match. Do you really follow football? You are all Ankara people. You should be supporting Ankara teams. What you should not be doing is spending obscene amounts of money on official Galatasaray merchandise, going to one match a season and then at that match swear at true Ankara football fans. Ankara fans of Istanbul teams, with very few exceptions, are just simply pathetic.

Having said that, thanks for the gate receipts.

Genclerbirligi 1 - 1 Galatasaray

If the Genclerbirligi bus had got stuck in traffic on the way to the ground things would still have been okay because us Kankas could have filled in. The Beer Bus was taken over as we had Flying Dutchman Kanka in goal, Carl at left back, Steve at fullback, Spine at fullback, Dan the Man at right back, Mark on the left wing, David in the centre, Our Finnish friend as the other centre, Oguz at right wing, and Aiden in a sort of slot behind your good correspondent who simply stood around doing nothing much for most of the match but was ready to take all the GLORY!!!

Fortunately the Gencler bus did arrive and we kicked off positively enough but it could have been for nothing when Schneider sent quite a good chance flying over the goal. I only know that it was Schneider thanks to the kids behind me (children belonging to us Kankas that is) actually recognising the Galatasaray players... I didn't say it at the time but ... "Istanbul cocukları!".

We even had the ball boys and girls.
Anna, Matthew, Tanner and Ville

It was only a few moments later though when it was us Gencler fans who were leaping for joy when it was some simply nice passing from Jimmy to Petkovic to Stancu who took a shot from a difficult angle that the diving keeper couldn't save.

One-nil up after only six minutes or so and well... could this be another amazing giant-killing performance? What was especially weird was the fact that for the last few weeks we have been absolutely crap.

Us Gencler fans, even those who had forked out 75 lira for the Maraton tickets, would have been very glad for the referee to blow his whistle there and then. It was below zero after all and the idea of going to a nice warm and cosy pub was very tempting. The Gencler players probably felt the same and while it was true that from that goal onwards our players were, at best, not the quickest to get balls back into play, we still played with attacking intent.

Our midfield was good with Gosso delivering good ball. The defence was solid, with Ferhat on the right particularly good, but yet again our last attacking force just wasn't good enough. Our blokes either took too long to get crosses in or else sent them too far. Perhaps Zec on the right should have been more attacking to get to some of the crosses... perhaps the player kicking the ball should have gone for a player, not a space.

But really, all this is me being picky. We played well, there was some wonderful individual football, some woeful refereeing (when has there not been) and it was a good crowd of maybe 15,000 watching what was a fun match.

Galatasaray got back in the second half thanks to yet the latest old-age pensioner to have some sort of Golden Pond moment at Galatasaray - Drogba. No complaints from me on that one. It was a decent cross in and Drogba, pretty much unmarked, simply headed it in.

We continued to play half-decent footy but couldn't really get many real chances. Just toward the end though Galatasaray really had us sweating. They were getting damn good shots off left, right and centre and if it wasn't for the heroics of Ramazan in goal we would have been toast. In the last three minutes I think he pulled off three match-saving saves. --- does that count as alliteration? ---

The referee blows the match up and us Gencler fans are pretty happy that we were able to stave off the kind of ugly result of something like what happens when England send a team of cricketers to Australia.

True Galatasaray fans, those from Istanbul, would have been disgusted with the result.... The mob there tonight were merely pleased to be seen on TV wearing their official merchandise.

As for us Gencler fans? Perhaps not delighted... but a point against Galatasaray is probably about all we we could have hoped for.