Date: 19 July 2024 / League: Polish second tier
Final Score: 0-2 / Attendance: approx. 3,500
Experience
As things stand, only a smattering of classic grounds survive in Poland’s higher divisions, and you don’t need a full deck of fingers to count them all. Of those that have lived through the architectural genocide that has defined the last decade, only Polonia Warsaw, GKS Katowice and Odra Opole remain to this day – however, in the case of the latter two, these too will soon be unceremoniously dumped into an unmarked grave.
With GKS and Odra scheduled to move into their new digs at the start of 2025, the race is on to revisit their legendary homes as many times as opportunity allows – and in the case of Odra Opole that meant a cheeky little trip back in the middle of July.
Having written at length before about Odra (for that, CLICK ME!), I shan’t repeat myself, but what I will do is urge anyone who hasn’t been to get there before it’s too late.
From the perspective of the hardcore stadium nerd, this place has everything you could wish for and a little bit more: towering floodlights that touch the Moon, grassy terraced steps curling around one side, scaffold-style commentary stands, a couple of beer stands selling sausages and local craft lager, and a jumbo scoreboard that’s too wacky for words.
Really, when the time comes to dismantle this stadium, if that scoreboard doesn’t end up in a museum, I’m going to personally haul it back to Warsaw and rebuild it at home.
As for the game, I couldn’t have picked a better fixture. The last time I visited Odra it was for a game of little consequence, and as such I treated it as little more than a chance to get hammered in the bushes while dodging the downpour. This time, there was rarely a moment when my camera wasn’t trained on the crowd.
With Ruch Chorzow the visitors – one of the undisputed heavyweights of Polish football – the match drew a bumper audience, among them a large following of Ruch squeezed into their pen in the corner. Rowdy from the off, the atmosphere lifted further once the sun chose to set. With the skies turning purple before black, it was to this dramatic backdrop that both sets of supporters launched their shows.
Memorable and supremely entertaining, I could not have picked a better game to inaugurate the 2024-2025 season. Hopefully, I shall return one more time before this stadium is bulldozed, but if not then I’ll remember this evening as a fitting testament to one of Poland’s best. RIP.
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