Sunday 8th June ko 13:00

Ettan Norra

IFK STOCKSUND 3 (Suleiman 31 Perez 54 Lundström 57)

ASSYRISKA FF 2 (Ugwu 10 Fernandez 34)

Att 325 at Danderyds Arena

Entry 100 sek

The Swedish Hop’s cost of £350 included bed and breakfast for two nights, all transport in Sweden, together with entry fees for all games, and a goodie bag!

It seemed unusual to not be packing our suitcases. The Swedish Hop was ending, but Robyn, Adrian and I had booked an extra night in Hammarby Sjöstad before travelling to Tallinn on the overnight ferry on Monday evening. It allowed us the most precious of commodities, time and we managed to make full use of it, but not as a few folks expected!

Kim Hedwall’s first destination of the day was a visit to Tranebergs BP home of Djurgårdens IF’s mens’ team from 1911-1936 ; it also hosted 3 Olympic football matches in June and July 1912. There’s not much left now, but we did make use of it for the traditional Swedish Hop penalty shootout- congratulations to Giovanni on a famous victory.

From there we headed to Alvik, and Salkhallen Tennis Club famous for being where Bjorn Borg started his career in the mid 1970’s. As you might expect from the Swedes its a classy, restrained place with nods to their famous son rather than his face plastered everywhere. We stopped for Fika (coffee and cake) before heading further north.

We’d visited the pretty village of Danderyd before, back in 2016. You are in the catchment area of Stockholm County’s famous Roslagsbanan railway. There have been no lack of Swedish Hop games around the area covered by what the locals nickname the “Prairie Express” such as Viggbyholm and Österåker, and I’ve no doubt that’s because Sweden’s only remaining commercial narrow-gauge railway runs through some enchanting countryside!

We’d explored the 3rd tier Ettan Norra (north) before, and it does still have something of the crossing of Rubicon about it. This level is where the Swedish FA treat all clubs as professional, no matter whether the players are or not. IFK Stocksund illustrated the point beautifully. They were started as a youth team, and to this day the first XI still has half the side picked from players they’ve nurtured themselves, and players get expenses only.

We were given a talk by the chairman who rather unusually is also the team manager! This is Stocksund’s first season in the Ettan and the team are finding the step up difficult. So much so he admitted to getting phone calls suggesting that if he wanted to sack the manager, they could easily do a better job. He smiled ruefully saying he has no plans to sack himself!

The club are also unusual in that they have two home grounds to choose from and they are adjacent to each other. There’s the Danderyds Gymnasium IP, a grass pitch with a running track and bleachers but this and most games are played on the 3G Danderyds Arena next door. It is basic with just a set off wooden steps to sit on, but it does Stockstund…. for now.

As a party it was lovely to, for a change, give a friendly club a little luck, they deservedly won this one, and as a I write this their fate is still very much in their hands.

From the game to Arlanda airport there was just enough time to award the prizes for the “Guess the scores” competition and say our goodbyes- always the hardest part of the weekend. It had been another wonderful delve into Swedish football, culture, and sometimes those little moments that were random but memorable nonetheless. For me what Kim Hedwall does is give you the pieces of the jigsaw of Swedish life but lets you put them together.

Kim gave Robyn, Adrian and I a lift back to Solna, he had to take the minibus back to the hire company close to Skytteholms IP. He imagined we’d make a beeline for a game at nearby Råsunda IP, a ground I’ve been wanting to tick off for 20 years. It’s just been renovated and there was a convenient 5pm kick off. It is a measure of how much Stockholm and its people mean to Robyn and I, that we didn’t consider going.

We bade Kim farewell and headed to Södermalm and met our friends the Söderströms for a quite exquisite Italian meal. It was a highlight for the entire 11 days we were away. We may have met through football, but it didn’t cross my mind that evening!

The next day saw us check out of the hotel in Hammarby Sjöstad and make the slightly awkward journey south to north-east to Stockholm’s Värtaterminalen for the ferry to Tallinn. The boat from Lumaparken to Nybroviken may not be on the SL card, but it does cut out a lot of metro travel, and the views are spectacular! However the bus to the terminal was packed, uncomfortable- perhaps the walk from Gardet metro station would have been a better option?

The idea of the overnight ferry to Tallinn is straightforward. You buy a cabin and in effect the journey becomes a mini cruise of roughly 17 hours. The Baltic Queen stops for 10 minutes at the Finnish, but Swedish-speaking island of Åland which is enough to allow for tax free shopping too. It is a lot of fun, and given that you’re combining your passage and accomodation extremely cost effective. We departed, and as the sun began to set the Stockholm archepelago gave us a wonderful send off. We looked forward to returning, but we had another adventure planned….