Date: 26 October 2024 / League: Polish seventh tier (I think!)
Final Score: 5-1 / Attendance: approx. 750
Experience
Having written about Otwock a couple of times before, I see no need to repeat myself other than saying: get here while you effing can! The old stadiums are being felled at a pace faster than my first pint of the morning, meaning that Poland’s football landscape is soon going to be as varied and vapid as an empty plastic box.
That goes for Otwock, as well. Changes are afoot, and the classic away end has already been bulldozed. Soon, so will the rest, replaced by your standard lower league design as now replicated across the nation. Who wants character when you can have something shitty and shiny?
Anyway, enough angry rambles—if memory serves me correctly, I had been due to be the other side of the country this day, only I found myself thwarted by the night before. Having emptied Warsaw of Guinness on Friday, I woke up the next morning on the floor of my bathroom. Put simply, I was in no state to travel much beyond the arc of my vomit. So Otwock it was.
Being a southeastern satellite town of Warsaw, reaching Otwock was dead easy—having peeled myself from the sticky surfaces of my own lavatory, it took about 30 minutes in an Uber to get there for kick-off. And bosh, talk about arriving in the nick of time.
As pleasing as previous visits to Otwock had been (for that CLICK ME!!!, and for the other CLICK ME!!!), this was the biggie—the club’s centenary. Turning up, you could sense the occasion. Whereas usually I’ve been welcomed by the sight of empty, barren stands, on this day the place was heaving—hundreds had turned up, maybe even as many as a 800. Granted, that’s bugger all when benchmarked against English attendances, but in Poland that’s something to be proud of, and even more so if you’re playing in the equivalent of the seventh tier of football.
Packing onto the side terrace, Ultras from Otwock had mobilized heavily, their numbers boosted by allied teams such as Wisla Pulawy, Plomien, Victoria Sulejowek and so forth, and they didn’t need much time before launching into their opening tifo of the day—a ticker tape salute followed by a prolonged burst of pyro.
Banging atmosphere, one briefly disrupted by some in-fighting at half-time—no photos of that, as at that stage I had collapsed onto one of the broken wooden benches in a vain attempt to cure myself of that hammering hangover. Punch-up? I’m having a snooze, mate.
Come the second half, and then came the real show, a full-throttle display that left the pitch smothered in a nuclear mist of yellow and black. Storming stuff, and Polish football at its most real and proper: an old school terrace bouncing in unison in a fog of joy and collective mayhem.
Of course, my body was in such a toxic state that I couldn’t fully appreciate what unfolded before me. Even so, despite my own physical pain, I couldn’t help but love every moment—for at times, pain is pleasure.
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