I was in Sedan yesterday evening, with the intention of going for a wander round, and then I saw an advert from the local football club, CS Sedan-Ardennes, talking about matches that the club will be playing in the near future. I noticed that one of the matches would be played tonight.
Sedan had at one time fairly recently played in the French First Division, and had a nice modern stadium on the edge of the city centre. But they have fallen on hard times just recently and are busy propping up all the other clubs in the Third Division. Still, football is football.
The LeClerc supermarket was just around the corner from where I was so I nipped into the LeClerc and stocked up with another pile of tinned food, seeing as it’s so much cheaper there than in Belgium. And not only that, things like the boulghour is half-price compared to Belgium. And so now I have enough stuff to keep me going for the first month when I go back there.
Once I’d finished the shopping and fuelled up Caliburn, I headed off to the football ground and found a fritkot where the owner served me up a big bag of chips and a salad wrap, all for €6:00 which I thought was extremely democratic.
The football ground to which I was heading was just down the road from the fritkot, and when I arrived there, it was in total darkness. But not to worry. It seems that Bird-brain of Britain had confused the address and there’s a street of the same name in a suburb of Sedan and by pure coincidence there’s a football stadium in that street too.
Back into town again and I arrived at the real stadium this time, the Stade Louis Dugauguez. There was some parking in the immediate vicinity which was quite handy and I then had the “hunt the pay-booth”, which was quite exciting.
To my surprise, it cost me just €7:00 for admission to the ground. That’s a bargain at any price, and then I had another massive hike around to find the entry gate that I needed.
I took my seat behind the goals just as the match kicked off. The noisy sector was just a couple of sectors away from where I was, and I was in good company. Mind you, I could have had plenty of choice as to where I would sit. A huge modern 28,000 all-seater stadium and there were about 1500 – 1800 of us in total. No more than that, I shoudn’t think.
As for the match itself, it was rather surprising. Sedan are bottom of the Third Division and US Quevilly-Rouen Métropole, the opponents from Rouen, are third in the table and so I was expecting a walk-over. But Sedan could have won this match at a canter had they tried because they looked quite a good side.
They had by far the most possession and looked quite dangerous going forward. But it’s yet another case of a team that could play all night with no opposition on the field, still be out there right now and still not score. Hand them a stringed musical instrument and they still couldn’t hit the nether regions of a ruminant animal.
We had one occasion where one of their attackers blazed the ball miles over the bar from 5 yards out of an open goal and another occasion where an attacker, in an even better position, forgot to kick the ball.
As for Quevilly, they didn’t look as good but they scored the vital goal – a free kick round the blind side of the defensive wall and the keeper not being able to hang on to the shot with a Quevilly forward the quickest to follow up.
They also hit the woodwork too with the keeper well-beaten, and missed a couple of other good chances too.
What with my late night last night, I was in bed and asleep about 2 minutes after I went to bed. I’d had the radio on and that awoke me at 00:45 with something noisy, so I turned it off, went off down the corridor,and then back to bed.
And there I stayed, flat out until the alarm went off at 07:00.I’d been a-travelling too, but heaven alone now knows where I’d been on my journey.
For most of the morning I was working on my web site for Labrador. I’m making some quite rapid progress too as far as information goes, but not as far as distance goes. It’s going to be longer than I thought before I arrive at Baie Comeau, but it’s going to be an interesting drive, as well as a controversial one, that’s for sure, because the stuff that’s come crawling out of the woodwork is quite … errr …interesting, to say the least.
After lunch, I crashed out, and for longer than I intended too. It had been a nice afternoon and I was sorry that I missed it. But it’s never too late to hit the road and so off I set for Sedan.
Once the football had finished, freezing to death, I walked back to Caliburn and drove back here. No room on the main car park due to the influx of weekenders, and the lounge was crawling with people – including the noisy brat who was still up creating a disturbance at gone midnight. That’s no way to bring up a 4 year-old.
By 00:30 I was too tired to do much so I called it a night and went to bed.
I hope that I have as good a sleep as I did last night.
with me, it wouldn’t have been too much of an issue but cameras like that aren’t allowed in football grounds in Belgium so I hadn’t brought it with me – relying instead on the camera on the telephone, which doesn’t work very well in situations like this.
were due to appear. Instead of hanging around waiting for them, I went for a little wander around in the immediate vicinity and found another concert hall almost right next-door and this attracted my attention for a while. Then, returning to my venue, I could hear the music drifting upstairs so I dashed down, just in time to miss the last number! Drat! So I went to buy a beer (I haven’t had a beer in over 25 years, by the way) and there, sitting on a stool behind the counter as if he was supervising the place, was a boy who lived in the same village as me and who was on the same educational path and whom I haven’t seen for probably 40 years. But to buy a beer, you had to queue down a line of trestle tables until you reached the end, which was right up against the wall of the building, but the seats were so close to the trestle table that it as quite a squeeze to come back with your full beer glasses.