Loo

SV Loo   3   VV Arnhemia   4

Zondag 4E Klasse D

I think I might have finally got my head around how Dutch amateur football works.

It only really sunk in when I found myself hunting for what seemed like a needle in a haystack when it came to finding a fixture for the final day of the Football Weekend. The Sunday is typically a local day, so we try and find something at a lower level that's pretty close to home.

So then,you’ve got the top two national divisions which are both professional, and then a nationally based third tier that is a mixture of semi-professional and professional clubs (none of whom seemingly want promotion). The top division plays whenever TV scheduling dictates, the second tier turns out on a Friday night and the third tier rocks up on a Saturday afternoon.

Then you’ve got the fourth tier, which is again national, but two divisions, one for Saturday and one for Sunday. After that comes the Hoofdklasse, which has four regional divisions, two on a Saturday, two on a Sunday. This, along with the fourth tier, is semi-professional.

Right, following me so far?

Then comes ‘amateur’ football. This is split into regions, North, East, West 1, West 2, South 1 and South 2. Within each region there can be up to five levels of divisions, or ‘Klasse’ as they call it, and also within each region it’s split into a Saturday and a Sunday. You can also have up to five divisions at a level (Klasse), so a 5A, 5B and so on

But, it’s not that easy to know who’s who unless you actually come from Holland! You see, I wanted a game near Duiven, on a Sunday, which meant I had to filter down to East, and then to Sunday, but I had to scour the divisions individually, you see 5C might cover Duiven, but that doesn’t mean it will be 4C and 3C that covers the same area. The promotion pathway may go 5C, 4B, 3D, 2F, 1A for example.

No, the only way to work it out is to find the name of a team or a place you recognise that is local to the area you want to watch a game in, and work on the principal that the rest of the games in the division will be relatively close by.

It’s that bit harder on a Sunday though, because the Saturday sides often have the name of the town or village in their name, whereas on a Sunday it tends to be just initials, like DVV, WAVV, or my favourite SV AVIOS/DBV.

Consequently, the game we actually ended up going to, I’d not even known existed until the Saturday night. The nearest game my research came up with was half an hour away in Nijmegen, which didn’t help for watching the Ajax v Utrecht and the Liverpool v Manchester City games on TV.

Turns out that Theo knows his way around the divisions, the Klasse and the fixtures, and as a result he found a game in Klasse 4, less than ten minutes away, in a small village conjoined with Duiven called Loo.

So, we had a plan, watch Ajax demolish Utrecht and then arrive at the ground just before kick off. Then leave at the end to get home in good time for the Premier League action.

Loo is a tiny village, but they do seem to punch above their weight in the footballing stakes. The ground is also very tidy for a place of it’s size, comprising of a couple of pitches, a smart clubhouse that appeared to be doing a very good trade from the returning reserve team players and such like, while the main pitch has a quirky old stand sat on the half way line. It's a very rural location as you would expect, with a small farm down one side, complete with some very unusual and suggestive looking vegetables on display!

It hasn’t been the best of seasons for Loo, they sat third from bottom with just one win and four points from the opening seven games, while the visitors from Arnhem sat a point behind them with one win from six games. At this early stage, it was a pretty crucial game.

A decent sized crowd that I estimated to be around 100 paid over the requisite 2.5 Euro admission, and in all fairness they were treated to a very entertaining spectacle

The game did not start well at all for Loo, by half time they found themselves 3-0 down thanks to a brace from Germaine Lenting and an effort from Rewan Hamdaziz.

You did fear for the hosts at the break but no sooner had we left the confines of the bar they’d pulled a goal back, and then suddenly it was 2-3. The pressure was on Arnhemia but Awder Hassan netted to restore a two goal advantage.

Loo did make it 3-4 in the closing stages and despite referee playing what seemed like an age of added time, the visitors hung on for a deserved three points and leapfrogged the hosts in the process.

So that was it, we trudged back to the car, with just a meal and a few drinks to come before the Football Weekend was over and I made my way back to England the following day.

The meal was with Theo and Hendrik, at Edwin’s restaurant, and of course, the food was excellent as always, as of course was the company. It had once again been a quite superb experience, meeting new and old friends, visiting new and old places, and yes, without Mr H senior it did feel a bit different, but after spending the previous fourteen trips with him and then having number fifteen without him, that was always going to be the case.

We’ve already talked about next year, it’s far too early to make a plan, but that fact we still want to do it means we’ll make it happen. But for now, it’s about the memories, and laughs, the food, the drink, the people and the football.

Life doesn’t get any better, does it?