Date: 18 February 2024 / League: Polish top flight
Final Score: 0-2 / Attendance: 14,893
Experience
The winter break firmly now firmly behind us (cheerio, mother f***er!), it’s been a restart to cherish – and what better way to really signal the return of football than the 70th Lodz derby. Yes please!
Previously, I’d done this fixture two-years back and it was an absolute belter with plenty of mayhem and a concerted attempt by the hosts to engage with their counterparts from Widzew (for a bit of that, CLICK ME!). Since then, the ground away end has been fortified further, so I knew that a repeat of those shenanigans was never on the cards. What I did expect was a rollicking atmosphere befitting of this fixture.
Strangely, that wasn’t the case in the first case. Noise levels were healthy, but aside from an elaborate flag drop from the home side there was little to indicate that this was one of the most intense rivalries in Poland. Crikey, was I at the right game?
Turns out I was. Come the 60th minute, and it appears both sets of fans remembered what was at stake, and the final half hour passed in a fog of pyro. If I’m correct, three shows from LKS and two from Widzew. A couple of rogue home fans got a little overly excited in the top corner and attempted to engage with Widzew, but that was never going to end well for those that tried.
As the atmosphere built, so too did the tempo of the game. Widzew nosed ahead on 54 minutes and they put the result beyond doubt with another goal on 90 minutes. Delirious scenes in the away end, with the result leaving LKS bottom and 11-points adrift of safety. I could of course write more, but I’ve been floored by a bastard of a cold ever since – as such, Lemsip and Columbo seem a more fruitful way to spend the evening. Cheers!
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