My first live football game ever – Seychelles vs Zimbabwe!

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The Seychelles national football team we find out is playing a qualifier game for the African Nations Championship ( Chan) Cup against Zimbabwe at Roche Caiman. Having never been to a real football match - let alone an international - and knowing that opportunities for different types of entertainment are few and far between in Seychelles, we’re keen to go. And it only costs £2. I have a consciousness wobble as its Zimbabwe and I’m no fan of Mugabe but as an African country playing another with the Zimbabwe team full of Black Africans - many of whom are suffering far more than me because of Mugabe’s policies - it just doesn’t seem right to protest by not going. I don’t know if that’s a cop out but it was just a gut feel.

That I’ve never been to a football match as a Mancunian and having lived in spitting distance from Crystal Palace when in London, I think I deserve to wear some dunce cap of shame. Not only that, I could have seen one of the greatest football teams in the world play (after Liverpool of course) instead of the display of what the other one remarked afterwards, with a modicum of exaggeration, was little better than the Sunday Leagues.

The stadium was about half full and we were lucky as we got the shaded side. I won’t attempt any punditry here as in all honesty, I still struggle with offside but it didn’t take an expert to know that the first half was absolutely abysmal. Compared to the Zimbabwe team, from the off the Seychelles team didn’t look fit or keen enough -the manager wanting to make a substitution, couldn’t even get the attention of his subs as they were busy having a kickabout down the bottom end of the stadium! Presumably, they were as bored by the game as we were. Zimbabwe put two away while the Seychelles team woke up and tried to look vaguely concerned about it. Suffering as I do from football tourettes (screaming inanities with no technical knowledge whatsoever to back it up) it seemed (to me at least) that the non Seychellois were way more noisy and I picked up the habit of encouraging/heckling players by shouting out their numbers - number 10 particularly irked the other one who he thought was lazy. It seems that he was actually the captain.

The second half saw the stadium floodlights struggle to flood the pitch with anything much except shadow as each bulb stuttered on; their energy may have been absorbed by the team instead. A changed side, Seychelles played more offensively and scored two though it was too late as Zimbabwe also


a bit blurred but tha'ts probably because it wasn't light enough..
scored another two; one an appalling mistake by the goalie who shall now be known as butterfingers. Seychelles also unluckily had one disallowed but for us at least in the audience in the last 45 minutes we’d had reason to cheer and feel disappointed at the end when Seychelles failed to win. They have another leg to go in Zimbabwe - they’ll have to work hard to win.

It took an age for us to leave the stadium, so long that we saw the players emerge somewhat breaking the spell for me as I realised that they looked about 15 years old and bless were getting lifts home in pick-ups. Premiership glamour it isn’t.

I’m quite grateful I’ve come late to live football as I think had I started earlier, Iwouldn’t now be alive, having been eaten alive by the fans who actually know what they’re talking about - including those of my own team. The other one agrees.

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