Antalyaspor!

When we went to Florida, Jason came up with the idea of going to a local basketball game which turned out to be a great idea. Me, J and Scott Currie all went and we all had a great time. So, when Jason did his research on Antalya, he noticed that a local football team, Antalyaspor, were playing on Sunday afternoon. So we decided to go. We knew it would be vibrant, to say the least. The Turks are known to be wild crowds, sometimes clashing with rival supporters and using flares to show their support. So there was a mixture of excitement and apprehension. We had went on a scouting mission earlier in the week so we knew where the stadium was so it was a nice stress-free journey on Sunday morning. We strolled down, bought our tickets and headed up to the museum before coming back down in time for the match at 3pm. We got to the stadium at about 2.15pm to soak up some of the atmosphere. It was such good fun. We were in a quieter part of the stadium but there was no restriction. If we wanted to walk around and switch seats, we could have.

There were lots of girls there which was one of my concerns. I didn't want to be the only female but I had no need to be worried about that.

Neither of us realised that the crowds had "conductors" who instructed their stand in what songs to sing and what movements to make. I got a snap of these conductors who were in the stand behind the goal. Each stand had their own.

The video is of one chant that involved everyone in the stadium. It started in one stand and they shouted something and all pointed to their left. Then the next stand added to the chant and all pointed to the left. So on and so on. It was a fun chant and we joined in, despite not knowing the word that our stand was to chant. It was quite easy to just shout anything and point to the left hee hee.

The game was really good. Actually, the game itself was okay. There have been better matches, but the overall experience was excellent. And Antalyaspor won by 2-1 which was good. Denizlispor only had a handful of away fans but it didn't stop the RIOT POLICE from coming out, just in case. The whole event happened without incident and was brilliant fun. We wandered up to the bus stop and came away having had a really good but exhausting day out.