Date: 26 November 2023 / League: Polish fourth tier
Final Score: 0-1 / Attendance: approx. 700
Experience
Finally, I have the time to catch-up on posts, matches and photos that I failed to deliver at a more relevant time due to a right bastard of a work-crunch late last year. In that regard, one of the first out of the stable is my November trip to Lowicz, a town of 30,000 around 45-minutes from Warsaw.
The trip started inauspiciously, I’ll grant you that. Arriving at around 10, a few hours before kick-off, my concern that there’d be bugger all to do dissolved when, right outside the station, a bar hoved into view. “Non-stop drinks” promised the sign. “Open 24hrs” rattled another. Wahey, here begins the carnage, I thought.
Of course, it was bloody well closed. Permanently. Defeat doesn’t exist in my world, though, and on reaching the ground I was pleased to find not just a dilapidated club house that looked like it had been condemned, but also a small market consisting of wooden cabins selling mops, buckets and car radios dating from 1987. I had no need for these, but I did have a need for beer, and this I was to find in the half of a dozen or so seedy old school bars also located in these shacks.
Full of old boys drinking their second bottle of vodka on the day, I soon settled in. Rarely has time flown so quickly. It’s sometimes a shame to find such times interrupted by football, but on this occasion I wasn’t disappointed. Making my way into the ground next door, I discovered much to enjoy: toilets trapped in time, and a simple home stand staring out towards what is, apparently, the biggest mural in Poland.
Put simply, it dominates your view. Spanning an area of 3,500 sq/m, the artwork had debuted earlier that year and was painted by Marek ‘Looney’ Rybowski on the side of a food production facility. Depicting three children dressed in regional peasant attire, it lends the stadium a certain folksy charm.
Not that this was in evidence on the day in question. By all accounts, the Pelikan experience is usually quite docile, but this time the visitors were GKS Belchatow, a side with a historic feud with Widzew Lodz, the team that most locals count as their primary side. Adding spice, GKS Belchatow were celebrating their club’s 46th birthday and so brought with them a rowdy following of just under 150.
Locked up in a side pen, Belchatow celebrated their anniversary with a birthday banner and pyro show, while the home fans contented themselves to obscenities aimed at the visitors. Immediately wrestled to the ground by the stewards, the actions of a lone pitch invader failed to herald further unrest.
Really though, the game did not need anything more to add to it. Played in a bitter chill, this was one of those afternoon’s that you just can’t fail to love. Featuring plenty of banter from the fans and rugged tackles from the players, this was the epitome of Poland’s lower leagues. Pelikan will never top the groundhopper’s leaderboard of stadiums, but for a bigger game it’s a wonderful experience – in essence, a good tick to have, and an enjoyable one at that.
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