My first Stockholm Derby

Hammarby 3 Djurgården 1

No this isn’t a match report, but I thought I would share my impressions with you on my first Stockholm derby.

My experience yesterday was almost for me like going back to the 70s/80s in the UK. Football special trains, beer served in the ground, people standing, constant singing, smoking in the ground on the train, boys walking to the train with their beer bottles in their hands.  There was thankfully no racism though thats not really done in Sweden.

As I wrote yesterday I was told there was a ’special’ train that goes directly to Solna from Södra Station. I had initially planned to get the tube from work to Solna and find my own way to the ground. I decided not to wear any colours, not just because I work a few streets away from Djurgårdens home ground Stadion but also Solna is home to AIK, another Stockholm team.

This would be an English football hooligans delight and every coppers worse nightmare so I was very interested to see how it would be policed.

The Bajen fans on the Söderstadion site told me about the train so I rushed home got changed, and donned my Hammarby scarf. I felt safer as I would be travelling in numbers.

I arrived at the train station with about five minutes to spare but the carriages all seemed full. Football specials really took me back to travelling to Cardiff City with the Swans. They used to run ‘em all over the country but they were phased out years ago. Shame.

Every carriage was full but thought sod it and managed to squeeze myself on-board. It was carnage, the Bajen fans were singing, boozing, smoking and not just cigarettes by the smell of it. Proper old school football travel.

The carriage was rocking and swaying before it set off. You can see it on the video clip. All good natured as the Bajen fans had obviously started on the ale early and were full of song. The journey to Solna is only about 15 mins but with little air it seemed longer, so someone decided to boot the windows in. Not good I know but I wasnt complaining to get some fresh air.

I was amazed there were no police officers in each carriage, there certainly would have been back home. It was the start of a very low key police presence.

At Solna train station it was virtually every man for himself as there was no stewarding and quite a crush to get up the stairs.

We then then took a 15 minute or so walk to Råsunda. It was amusing to see AIK fans out on their balconies giving the Bajen fans shit. But thankfully no sign of their ‘firm.’ I learnt a new word ‘tattare!’

There were plenty of tunnels and bridges and at one intersection Djurgården ‘fans’ were taunting the Bajen fans, all easy to do of course when you have a line of policemen in front of you.

We made it to the ground where the access to the Djurgården side of the stadium was blocked off by mounted police. The local constabulary are obviously well prepared and drilled for these derbies and I was impressed that I had seen no trouble as such.

Råsunda is an ‘old school’ ground. Miss P says it will probably be torn down when they build the new arena which is a shame as it certainly has something about it. It retains its own character which is something very few modern arenas are able to pull off. The North Stand loomed ahead as I walked through the tunnel.

In a way it reminded me of my days on the old North Bank at Swansea, where you would walk up a ramp and walk into a wall of noise, the smell of the turf, the odd spliff and the players warming up.

The sight here was amazing. Green and white flags everywhere, many personalised flags which were obviously home-made. This is something about Swedish football that really impresses me. They put a lot of effort into following their teams and visually showing their staunch support.

I was delighted to see everyone standing, though they were standing on the chairs which wasn’t the most comfortable. But still, very nice not to have some jobsworth steward telling us to sit down all game. What got me was that this was a high profile derby match but they were selling beer in the stands. Very similar to the way they used to sell ice cream in cinemas. Ok the beer was low strength but still in the UK sometimes they close all the pubs for miles around so you cant have a pint, and when you can buy a beer its only at half time.

I was impressed with the Bajen noise levels. They had raised it up a notch from games at Söderstadion which I thought was impossible to do. Two fans sat high on the fence and spent the whole match orchestrating the crowd. I don’t think they even watch the game, incredible.

Of course, as is often the case with teams I follow, they went one nil down fairly early on. Shit. The Djurgården fans went ballistic which was quite impressive to see, reminded me of the ‘boing boing baggies’ days at West Brom. But still, and this is what I really like about Bajen fans, there was no moaning at their own players or booing, it was straight on with vocally supporting the team.

Bajen had a  goal not given, it was one of those ‘was it over the line’ shouts, and neither the ref or the linesman, sorry assistant referee were in a position to call it. The TV later showed it had crossed the line and most definitely a goal.

Not long after that a full beer can was lobbed into the Djurgården penalty area. I have no idea how they get it over that net but the Djurgården keeper Dembo Tourray was bit of a drama queen. He made a big fuss about it and it took the Hammarby skipper to run all the way to the goal mouth and thrown the can behind the goals before the game could be restarted. Touray then turned around and tried to stare out the Bajen supporters, not a good move.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with throwing stuff on the pitch, I don’t see what purpose it serves other than to hold up the game which affects the concentration of your own players. It achieves nothing and I was disappointed to see this.

I try and join in with the Bajen songs as I am starting to know the words but I get some funny looks as my pronounciation is not right and a Swansea accent shouting Hammarby is very different from a Swedish one. I even try and shout out in Swedish but inevitably English comes out as well as some industrial language!

A young lad next to me started chatting to me in English. I said to him in Swedish that he spoke the language well  and he took great delight in telling me he got an A+ at school! Very polite young man though and very clued up about Bajen.

Bajen  showed tremendous spirit to fight back, they clawed it back to 1-1 through Johansson and then upped it a gear with a Charlie Davies goal before Söderstrom cemented the win to with a header. 3-1 to Bajen!

The Djurgården fans soon slipped away to the Bajen chant of  ’ska ni gå hem nu’! I have to say I could’nt really hear the Djurgården support but their flags were impressive.

This was class, the Bajen fans all turn around while jumping and singing to face the back of the stand.

I also loved it at the end when the Bajen fans chanted for goalkeeper Kristoffer ‘Poppen’ Björklund to ‘give us a song’.

He calmly walked to the Bajen fans who all went quiet and he started to sing one of the Bajen songs! Quality! The Bajen fans joined in with him, thats something I haven’t seen at the football before.

Outside it was fairly calm. I expect the DIF fans had all been shepherded out of the way as most left early. I decided to get the tube back to Söder and it was rammed. I was amazed that there was a tube every 10 mins as I had thought the Police would want the fans out of the way pretty quickly to avoid any problems.

So I waited 10 mins and got on the tube, and waited, and waited there was a mechanical failure so it took us twenty mins to get going and then it had to go really slow!

I walked into my local about 11.30 and ordered a nice drop of malt to celebrate..it was nice but the price 280 SEK about 23 quid! If I thought I had been back in the seventies I certainly knew it was the 21st century now!

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