Soccer match + Pictures

Cork City FC 5, Cobh Ramblers 0. The match was at Cork City's home stadium, Turner's Cross. It was about a half hour walk from my townhouse. It was quite an experience. Cobh (pronounced cove) is about 20 miles from the City of Cork, making this a derby of sorts. I went with the Irish guy who lives in the townhouse with me. I enjoyed it immensely. Its much much different from watching soccer in America, but mostly in ways that are difficult to explain. Oh, and we got front row seats, which was sorta cool.

That picture is of the 4th goal, which was actually scored by a guy who isn't in the picture. Cork were wearing green, Cobh that sort of maroon.

As we were walking to the match, the closer we got to the stadium the larger and larger the crowds who were joining us became. It was a fascinating and awesome sort of enlarging stream of fans who simply walked to the stadium or parked far away and walked, converging on a single place by walking down ordinary streets. The stadium didn't have a parking lot, so this was the only way for people to get there. There was a pub right next to the gates, and the stadium is surrounded on all 4 sides by streets so that it turns out that all the gates are literally right on the sidewalk. When we got inside we went into the stands and sat in the front row of the Curragh Road End (apparently also known as "The Shed"), nearly directly behind the goal. Off to our left there was a large group of committed supporters waving flags, holding scarves, and standing for most of the match. There was another such group over at the far left corner (from my perspective) in the Donie Forde Stand as well as a bunch of away fans in the far right corner in the Derrynane Road Stand.
vocal Cork fans with flags in the Donie Forde Stand.

Cobh free kick behind which you can see the Donie Forde again.

The fans sang or chanted in some sort of semi-organized way pretty much throughout the game. One of my favorites was about a 5 minute stretch when they yelled in unison "hey!" when any Cork player got the ball and "boo" whenever any Cobh player touched the ball, which became rather amusing after the first 10 or 11 yells or boos. The stadium itself wasn't particularly nice but it did have a sort of character and charm to it that made it a pretty awesome place to watch a match.

Only 15 euro for a ticket and then 3 euro more for a program. Not too bad, overall. As we were walking back from the match it occurred to me that since I'm here in August I might be able to fly over to England and catch an English Premier League match on opening day. That'd be cool.