A game of two halves

So a very interesting weekend indeed, spent watching sport.

The plan was always to go to Kumasi, to watch Ghana ( the Black Stars - do we have a NZ sports team with that name.........) play against Benin. And its a 4-5 hour drive to get to Kumasi and back, and we did it in a day with the match being played at 5pm! Long day!!!!

Especially for the people who had to take the bus at midnight and arrived at 5am and then got back on a bus again that night, I was lucky and got myself a seat in a car, so we could choose our leaving times a bit better!

So anyway, seeing as we were staying in Accra on Saturday, and for some reason still unknown to me, the home ground of Togo is in Accra, and they were playing at 4pm vs. Cameroon, so we thought we'd get along to that also.

Tickets for the most of the seats were 3 cedis (like $4 maybe), and VIP were 8 cedis, so for a International World Cup qualifier, this to me seems pretty cheap.

But it was the most chaotic sports event I've been to, we arrived at about 3pm to buy tickets, and while technically there may have been lines, I was small enough to shove my way to the front and get our tickets, we then had to wait for awhile for others joining us to arrive, and normally you would think nothing of this, still having plenty of time to get in, but not so......

The first gate we tried was apparently VIP tickets only so we had to move around, we did this and kept walking trying to find entry, but its not that clear, when we eventually found what was an entry point, it was pretty much a tiny space with a couple of police men checking tickets technically, but mainly keeping people out who didn't have tickets, and a rotating barrier thing you had to go through.

So in theory this should be easy to get in, but not so much, kind of like a Big Day Out mosh pit, people were cramming themselves towards these tiny entrances, and again maybe would have worked, but the problem was the people pushing at the front didn't actually even have tickets, they were just trying to force their way in, and the sclapers were also in there trying to sell for a high a price as possible to these desperate people.

So after standing for about 20mins in this crush and not moving, we thought we'd try another entrance place, or attempt to talk our way past the police at the VIP gate, but walking back around, they'd closed off the entrances due to the huge numbers of people trying to push their way in, we also saw people attempting to scale the massive walls.

Once we were back around to the ticket place, this had also been shut off, so we assumed it must have been sold out, I would say though largely to scalpers, from the huge number of people selling tickets around.

So we walked our way around the satdium looking for open gates which weren't crushed with people, the game had by now well started. There were no ground security, and a few police men with random like stun gun things to move people back but we didn't really try the crushing ourselves towards the entrance thing again.

So once nearly having done a full circle and very close to just selling our tickets and going to buy a beer somewhere, we went to the last gate, and amazingly it was as simple as holding our tickets above our heads and people actually parted to let us through!!!

Why was this......because once we handed over our tickets to the police, they took them and sold them straight back to the people waiting outside!!!

So finally in, about 2 minutes before half time, we were amazed to see the stadium was no where near capacity, so many more people outside than in

But there still was a good atmosphere, and despite missing the goal which was very early on, we did get to see Adebayor (famous, I think he plays for Arsenal) miss a penaly kick, which is the video I have.

So it was a very interesting experience, and even though it was quite choatic, I never really felt unsafe, and it gave us good lessons to learn tp get there early for the Ghana game in Kumasi!!

So, Sunday morning, up nice and early ready to drive, the one thankful thing is on Sundays because of church I think, the roads are not actually too crowded, so it was a pretty good journey, and we arrived with time to relax and get some lunch before buying up some Ghana merchandise and heading inside.

It was a big difference to the day before however, there were much more police and even military around, and people were a lot more controlled, so it was almost as easy as walking right through the gates, and we even our tickets back! Still someone did lose their wallet due to a theif, but in situations where people crowd around you have to know to hold onto your stuff, it doesn't happen often, but you shouldn't give people the opportunity.

So we were in nice and early and the satdium was already much more full than the day before, and a huge huge number of Ghanaian supporters, we couldn't even see where Benin fans were for a long time as they were to the side of us and it was hard to differentiate their flag, every African country is pretty much Green, Red and Yellow somehow!!

So a good game, we saw the goal this time, scored in pretty much the opening minute by Ghana, they were meant to win over Benin so we were a little disappointed there weren't more goals but it was still a very cool exerience to go to a live soccer match.

We headed back home straight after pretty much, and arrived back at around midnight, so a long day, but well worth it, and good to do something different than going to the beach.

Also despite the organisation of the games not being to my normal standard, at the end its very peaceful, there is hardly any drinking at all, I didn't see one person really with alcohol or even anywhere selling it, so people file out pretty orderly at the end. And much more control was kept than at the game in Cote d'Ivoire where I think 22 people were killed when they stormed a fence, so it definitely never got to that point in Ghana.

The soccer itself, its hard for me to judge on style of play....the guys who normally watch European football thought especially the Togo-Cameroon game was very slow, and I could really see that also, Cameroon are meant to be pretty good, and they didn't even look like scoring.

Ghana-Benin game was pretty good, had some close shots, but still I think I prefer watching rugby :) Lots more happening on the field!! Although soccer probably moves at a faster pace, in terms of break times, even when people were injured, it was moved along quickly and play resumed, none of these long extended drinks breaks going on!!

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/SoccerGhanaVBenin#

http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/SoccerTogoVCameroon#

I have more videos of the noise at the stadium and the playing, but due to the hand held nature of my filming, its very motion sickness inducing!!! So thought I would leave them p=out!