Saturday 15th June 2024 ko 10:00

Stockholm Youth League P2007A

SOLLENTUNA FK NORD 1 (Sheko 89)

URSVIK IK 14 (Mermer 6 Adam 10 Mohamed 10 30 64 Sörenson 37 59 76 83 Altgenug 53 66 Sjöman 75 79 84)

Att 30, 2 dogs and a deer at Edsbergs Sportfält 3, Sollentuna

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!

In the long history of the Swedish Hop the Saturday and Sunday morning games tended to be in the lowest tiers, normally divisions 6 and 7. With us never being able to attract the levels of groundhoppers that would allow us to get local associations to move kick-off times, we’ve always taken in what games we can, whenever we can.

Since Covid, it seems to me that those lower-league games are far fewer in number, I’m sure many clubs folded during the pandemic, and those that survived now tend to play their games on midweek evenings. That’s not a criticism, more an observation for what Kim Hedwall and I are dealing with. We’ve replaced those lower league games with youth games, purely on the grounds of timings but these to come with the risk of them being moved at very little notice.

We’d planned on heading to Hjorthagens IP to watch one of Djurgårdens youth teams but that got moved to Zinkensdams IP with a 12pm kick-off. We’d featured Zinkensdams on the very first Swedish Hop in 2007, and would have had no issue going there again, but the later kick-off time would have meant we’d missed the start of the next game at Boo.

Now I’m not staying what we ended up watching was obscure, but consider this. I’ve mentioned the pecking order of Swedish football grounds before. Top is the Stadion (stadium) then there’s the Idrotsplats (allsports venue) and then there’s the Bollplan (ball games field). At this point I’d clocked up 117 grounds in Sweden but a Sportfält (sports field) was a new one for me!

We’d travelled way out of our way to go up into Stockholm’s northern suburbs, to Sollentuna, the base for last year’s hop, and so tucked away that it was both a new ground for Kim, and he had some difficulty in finding it! We got there, and immediately thought the game was off as there were no signs of life. Eventually we spotted a climbing club who throughfully were running a snack bar, and a trip to the changing room block revealed our game was being played on a 3G pitch squirreled away beyond the climbing club. Spectator accomodation came in the form of wooden block bleachers.

It probably paid not to worry too much as to what we were watching. I’m sure both clubs have more than one youth team, and in more than one division too! I chose to see it as two under-17 teams in the Stockholm male youth league (the P stands for pojke, or boy by the way) and without wishing to state the obvious, it was something of a mismatch.

Having said that it wasn’t as much as a mismatch as you might think, in the first third of the game it was more a case of the visitors scoring from each and every chance they got but as Sollentuna heads understandably dropped the goals poared in… and we we got the ultimate in consolation goals, and no Aland Sheko didn’t celebrate his achievement!

The game was stopped briefly as, would you believe, a small deer entered the field of play at the end Ursvik were defending. He looked up, realised he wouldn’t be needed at full back and scuttled back to the field behind. I’m fairly sure that was a new experience for everyone there!

We made tracks back to the south-eastern suburbs, firstly discussion whether it was, individually our highest aggregate score, then thoughts of what some groundhoppers count as a game watched. David Bogie, the doyen of the London Underground League answered that question succinctly. “Of course,” he said, “You could just fancy watching a game of football”

Spot on Dave!