Friday 14th June 2024 ko 20:00

Division 4 Stockholm Mellersta

SICKLA IF 2 (Rosell 40 Marsden 80)

RINKEBY UNITED 2 (Rawufa 57 Jobe 88)

Att 88 at Nacka IP2

Free Entry

The Swedish Hop’s cost of £320 included bed and breakfast for two nights, all transport in Sweden, together with entry fees for all games, and a goodie bag!

The tram from Sickla Kaj wended its way to Solna, and I used the time to reflect on how the Swedish Hop has changed everything for me since that day in 2007 when the plane landed at Skavsta and the very first Swedish Hop watched Nyköping BIS that evening. That was my first ever game abroad, and it was organiser Kim Hedwall that got me there. Since then, I’ve watched football in 28 countries, so I’ve got a lot to thank him for. He started me off, and without that start so much that’s wonderful would never have happened. It is possible that I’d never have met Robyn. Infamously we met on Twitter and what attracted me to her was my tales of footballing travel. As I said, I owe Kim and Sweden a lot.

On so many levels the Swedish Hop shouldn’t work. It’s an expensive place to visit, and since that first hop there’ve been quite a few hops based in Eastern Europe where it’s a lot cheaper. I did wonder whether the event would finish with Covid, but both Kim and I wanted to at least one more hop- both of us hated the idea that the pandemic would end this.

So last year we revived the hop, but soon realised that came with a few problems. Firstly, due to Kim’s personal situation we had to be based in Stockholm, but hotel prices were extremely high. Our hotel was lovely but we both knew we had to find a way to reduce that cost for this year. We managed to fill a minibus, and with Kim wanting to limit numbers for this time round, the minibus was hired once again. I suggested the hotel in Sickla Kaj, in ultra-hip Hammarby Sjöstad as many of our games were going to be in and around south-eastern Stockholm. With Robyn and I having stayed at the Best Western there before I knew it would be both of the required standard, and better value too.

In fact, our only real issue was the fixtures. Over the weeks leading up to the event all but two of the fixtures changed, including one the week before the event! The net result was that those goodie bags didn’t contain programmes, Kim didn’t have time to produce them, and we didn’t get any talks from club officials before any of our games either. On one level it didn’t matter, Kim is a walking encyclopaedia of Swedish football anyway, but the reality was that without Kim’s observational skills we’d have never seen the 6 games we did.

We completed the pick-ups at Arlanda Airport, and the next issue has always been how to kill 3-4 hours before our hotel rooms would be ready. A favourite has been the stadium tour but a trip to Tranebergs IP represented something different, even for the Swedish Hop. The finale of the hop was going to be a trip to the 1912 Olympic Stadium the former home of Djurgårdens IF’s mens’ team, but Tranebergs was their home from 1911-1936 and the stadium also hosted 3 Olympic football matches in June and July 1912. When Djurgårdens moved out to the Olympic Stadium in 1936 the stadium was demolished.

What’s there now is described as Tranebergs Bollplan but the feel is of a public park. There are pitches after a fashion, and a set of changing rooms but no competitive football takes place here, unless of course you count a Swedish Hop tradition- the penalty shootout! It serves no other purpose than for fun, and what better excuse than to claim you’ve scored a penalty at an Olympic venue?

We still had plenty of time to reach the hotel and for many to catch a little sleep after what had been an early start. It didn’t take long for us to reach Nacka (no not those, it translates as “Neck!”) so close in fact that Nacka is adjacent to Sickla (the home team’s base) which is in turn adjacent to Sickla Kaj where we were based. An oddity is that the area isn’t served particularly well by train, but the building site for the new metro station on the Blue Line is visible in the foreground of the first photo of the water tower.

We had a meal together with Mats from the Swedish Society of Football Statisticians at an Irish-American diner. Imagine that, two Swedes, 1 Scot and 6 English there. Talk about multicultural!

From there it was a short walk to the intrigue that is Nacka Idrotsplats. It is a typically Swedish multisport facility and one I’d visited back in 2012. There’s been a massive change since then, a massive dome has been erected over the main pitch, to allow for winter training. It’s made two dugouts and a whole swathe of terracing redundant and the vast majority of summer football is now played on Nacka IP 2 nearby. Even the little cafe, run by Järla IF FK who I watched back then has been rotated to face the new footballing reality.

The second pitch, sad to say, is nowhere as good as the old, with just a small section of bleachers for specators to use. At least the Nacka Water Tower is still visible, with its name emblazoned it, in case you forget where you are!

We had superb game to watch, second versus top in the sixth tier in mid-Stockholm, and for once the game completely lived up to the billing. To add to it all were Sickla’s band of tifosi and they were as young as any of the genre I’ve ever seen. Their lack of years meant the use of pyro was restricted somewhat; the teams came out to a display of Party Poppers, and the goals were celebrated with sparklers! What they lacked in gunpowder they made up for with gusto, and we all found them rather endearing. I was pleased to see their heroes come over to acknowledge them at the final whistle.

We made our way back to the hotel, and enjoyed an evening in the hotel bar, who thoughtfully were stocking beers from the Carnegie Brewery from Lumaparken, a single stop away on the tram. Even more thoughtfully the bar stayed open while beers continued to be bought, which turned out to be well into Saturday morning!