Date: February 2024 / League: youth level
Experience
The last couple of days saw me working in Walbrzych, a city many in Poland associate with industrial blight, poverty, crime and other forms of social cancer. When the coal mines failed in the 1990s, the town failed with them. At the same time much of the rest of the country was adapting to the post-Communist banana republic capitalism that took hold, Walbrzych was left behind.
At times, the town can feel frozen in time. Things are improving, but slowly. Still, what the area lacks in physical riches it compensates with historical riches. It was here that the Nazis built miles and miles of secret tunnels, many of which still lie undiscovered. Their true purpose has never been formally established, though it is with some certainty that those that were completed were utilised for the production of wunderwaffe and the storage of stolen gold. According to some treasure hunters, it is somewhere in the Owl Mountains beyond that the Amber Room was hidden.
I digress. As a town, Walbrzych is home to numerous sights, and for the football fan I can add the home of KP Gwarek Walbrzych. Playing in what some speculate to be the oldest stadium in the city, it’s a piece of football heaven.
Reputedly opened in the 1920s, here played Ober Waldenburger Turnverein until the Germans were expelled in 1945 and the town subsequently Polonized. Some vintage pictures I’ve found online reveal that for years it was then used for mass events and trainings. One photo, for instance, shows women lined up in tracksuits carrying stretchers. Dated to 1974, the accompanying caption simply reads: “Civilian defence exercises.”
Later, it was the home of Kokoschemia Walbrzych, a team that folded in 1998. Four-years on, football reappeared in this ground courtesy of Gwarek. However, their senior team was also eventually closed. According to the chap that opened the ground up for me, this wasn’t because of any fiscal crisis, but rather because players kept on missing matches. “There’d be games when only seven people turned up,” he told me.
The senior side might have gone, but Gwarek still train around 130 kids and play a vital role in the community. Run out of pure passion for the sport, it is a club that encapsulates everything that is right about football. My guide, it turned out, was one of those that has sacrificed much for them. “There’s three of us here that basically do everything,” he told me. “I’m the club president, but also the manager, the coach, the cleaner…”
A truly beautiful ground, it’s accessed through a retro gate and consists of little more than earthen embankments that pen the pitch. One of these to the side is the steepest, and it’s here that seats have been bolted onto benches. A cabin sits up the top, and in front of it, a temporary stand built onto a platform that juts from the slope. Even in February’s dull colours, it is a ground that will bewitch the football romantic. “You’ve got to come back here when the weather is better,” I was told. That I will.
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