Ground 153: Glebe Sports Ground, Whickham FC

Although it had one of the largest coalmines in Europe at the start of the 14th century, Whickham is much better known nowadays as an elevated, genteel suburb of Gateshead, a two-time Britain in Bloom winner which “commands a beautiful prospect of the vale of the Tyne from Newburn to Newcastle” as the History, Topography and Directory of Durham eloquently put things in 1894.

The Victorians had their scenic view, but it would take another fifty years before there was a football club for anyone to watch. Set up towards the end of WWII, and initially named Axwell Park Colliery Welfare after the village’s last working mine,
Whickham have had an up and down existence since joining the Northern League in 1988. Promoted at the first attempt, they were relegated in both 1992 and 1997 and have been stuck in Division Two ever since.

Whickham’s best years undoubtedly came as a Wearside League team when, in the five years between 1979 and 1984, they reached the semi-final of the FA Vase no fewer than three times, losing to Almondsbury Green in ’79 and, controversially, to eventual winners Stansted five years later. In 1981, after squeezing past Windsor & Eton in front of a crowd of more than 3,000 people, they took part in Wembley’s first all-seated final against Willenhall Town of the West Midlands Regional League. Watched by 12,000 fans (included an estimated 5,000 who'd travelled down from Tyneside), it was Willenhall who made the better start, scoring two goals in the first ten minutes of the game. Full-back Alan Scott, a fireman from Consett, scored a quick reply, before Willenhall’s goalkeeper collided with Billy Cawthra’s bulky frame and had to be stretchered off. With the opposition centre forward forced to play in goal the momentum was now almost entirely one-sided. Ronnie Williamson levelled the score midway through the second half; in extra time a Cawthra shot was blocked, hit a defender and ricocheted into the net. George Cook collected the winners’ trophy from Sir Matt Busby, and thousands of people turned out to greet the returning team at Glebe Park the next day. “All that standing around on cold football grounds, all the knockbacks, were worth it for that one moment of leading your side out at Wembley," manager Colin Richardson told The Northern Echo.

Except for a brief, vicarious brush with fame through Big Brother 6 winner Anthony Hutton, once signed by Whickham for £75, in the thirty years thereafter success has been much thinner on the ground. The black and whites finished tenth last season, and could manage no better than fourteenth the season before that. This year, though, they're up in fourth, nine points behind Graham Fenton’s North Shields but with games in hand on all the teams above. As improvements go, it’s almost as good as Birtley Town’s: hard on the heels of a disastrous season in which they lost their sponsors, used more than ninety players and won only sixteen points, the visitors now sit comfortably in ninth.

An overnight deluge means the sound of squelching footsteps is almost as loud as that of boot on ball. The pitch slopes down towards the distant River Tyne from the open cricket club boundary; there’s a single covered stand behind the near goal with numbered wooden bench seats and ‘Made in Britain’ embossed on its roof support posts. I take a seat against the back wall - behind a half eaten Rich Tea and an empty can of Foster’s. The game starts slowly, with more sliding tackles than shots on target until Birtley old boy Tony Thirlkell sidefoots the home side ahead after twenty-five minutes, his sixteenth goal of the season. “Birtley, our heads don’t go down, mind. Everyone!” bellows one of the beaten defenders as the tannoy briefly crackles out live commentary from Newcastle’s game at Ewood Park. Ross Peareth doubles the lead just before half time, and a near post header from Scott Swanston, the game’s outstanding player, makes it three almost as soon as the teams start again after the break. “Smallest bloke on the pitch,” the goalkeeper laments. “Shite goal to give away, lads,” says Scott Oliver on the Birtley Town bench. “Are we up to third now, are we?” asks a substitute. “How am I supposed to kna?” his mate replies.

Admission: £4 (plus £1.60 for a gorgeous homemade sausage roll and a Bovril that came in a proper mug).
Date: February 12th 2011

Ground 152: Boldon Colliery Welfare

Until the 1980s there was a pit wheel overlooking Boldon Villa's football ground. Both would have been familiar sights to Sam Bartram. On Saturdays he would start his early shift down the mine at four in the morning, then turn out for the football team at three in the afternoon.

Born in South Shields in 1914, Bartram's family moved the few miles to Boldon Colliery at the end of the Great War. He played for Sunderland and Durham Schoolboys, started out at Boldon Villa playing wing-half, then switched to centre-forward while at North Shields where, partnering his uncle in attack, he scored 33 goals in just 25 games, including six in a single match against Wallsend. In 1934, aged 20 and back with Villa following an unsuccessful trial match with Reading, he volunteered to play in goal when Boldon's regular keeper was injured before a cup final replay. In the crowd that day was Angus Seed, whose brother Jimmy, once of Tottenham Hotspur and England, had recently been appointed manager of Charlton Athletic.

Bartram signed for the Addicks in September 1934. Despite conceding eight goals in his opening two reserve games, he soon broke into the first team as Charlton finished eight points clear of Reading at the top of the Third Division South. He would remain Charlton's first-choice goalkeeper for the twenty-two years which followed, his 623 games encompassing all three divisions of the Football League, second, third and fourth place finishes in Division One and two successive FA Cup Finals. "Sam is to Charlton what Matthews was to Blackpool or Milburn to Newcastle," says Mike Blake, author of Sam Bartram: The Story of a Goalkeeping Legend. Today, within a goalkick of the Valley you'll find Bartram's Restaurant, Sam Bartram Close, the Sam Bartram Gates and a nine-foot bronze statue of "Charlton's greatest ever goalkeeper", balancing a ball in the outstretched fingers of his right hand, sleeves rolled back, and polo-neck shirt tucked in to his shorts. Supporters raised £60,000 in a mere nine months to pay for it: "Charlton without Sam is like Laurel without Hardy" as the inscription on the 1950s bubblegum card went.

Although he was never capped, Bartram achieved international renown. "With his polo-neck woolly sweater, voluminous bloomers, hulking boots and Desperate Dan chin," wrote The Daily Telegraph in 2004, "Bartram has come to represent his generation of footballers; his brooding sepia image adorns the window of a photographic shop in Paris while, even more curiously, his life-sized cut-out is on display in Marshall Fields, the biggest department store in Chicago, for the simple reason that the manager of 50 years ago (who knew nothing about 'soccer') decided Bartram's presence would lend a certain charm."

And yet he isn't the only link between Boldon Villa and Charlton Athletic. Four months after signing their goalkeeper, Jimmy Seed - born in nearby Consett and an ex-Wearside League player himself - returned for Villa's 17-year-old full-back, Jack Shreeve. Both Shreeve and Bartram played in the FA Cup Finals of 1946 and 1947, Charlton emphatically losing the first to Derby County but winning the second 1-0 against Burnley in front of 98,215 fans (they had beaten Newcastle United, the team Bartram had grown up supporting, 4-0 in the semi-final). Later that year, the two men paraded the Cup around the streets of Boldon Colliery after Charlton had played at Sunderland. Another Boldon goalkeeper, Harry Smith, signed for the London club at the same time as Shreeve. A decade later, Ron and Jack Vitty followed them south. Jack would go on to make almost 250 appearances for Brighton & Hove Albion and Workington Town. In 2008, Boldon hosted the inaugural Sam Bartram Cup. Charlton Athletic donated a signed goalkeeper's shirt, which still hangs in the clubhouse.

One of the Wearside League's eleven founding members, Boldon Community Association are a club whose current ambitions match the size of their history. Despite their lowly league position (second bottom, ahead of only Prudhoe, and five places behind visitors Stockton Town), the club plan to apply for a place in the Northern League within the next two years, having raised over £24,000 in grants and donations to improve the facilities at Boldon Colliery Welfare. Hard standing now rings the touchline, and floodlights were installed at the beginning of the year. Less than a day later, though, copper thieves removed 185 metres of cable from under the sides of the pitch, digging trenches three-feet deep before dragging the cable out through a hole in the perimeter fence. “Devastated is probably the only word that’s printable to describe how we’re feeling at the moment," club secretary Bryn Griffiths told The Shields Gazette. "For five years we’ve fundraised and applied for grants. The lads have given up their free time at weekends and after work to dig out the trenches for the cable, and just as everything was coming together, someone has gone and done this."

Sited between a social club carpark and a bridle path, Villa share an entrance gate with the Boldon C.A. Sports Ground, home of Northern League club Jarrow Roofing. Our arrival, right on kick-off, swells the crowd to twenty-four. There are a couple of green portakabins, a loudspeaker tacked to a corrugated roof and an all-brick clubhouse, painted red, with Villa in white capitals on the chimney.

Both sides struggle on the sodden pitch, but it's Stockton who create the chances in a one-sided first half. A quick break sees two attackers bearing down on goal. "Now! Now!" urges the onrushing number 10, but the sideways pass bobbles, hits his shin and dribbles harmlessly wide of the post. "Ah, man!" he shouts, clutching the back of his head. Minutes later, an almost identical move ends with the number 11 sliding past the prostrate keeper. "That's five times that, man," complains the Boldon right-back. "It's them ower there," the centre-half points to the left, "they're not deeing nowt."

Things are more even after the break, and only some truly atrocious attempts at finishing keep the score at 1-0. Ten minutes from the end, it's the visitors who finally kill the game. A diagonal ball out of midfield splits the gap between two defenders and the low cross is angled back past the diving keeper into the bottom corner of the goal. For Boldon, it's a seventeenth defeat in just twenty-three league games.


Admission: £2.50
Date: 5th February 2010.

The Greatest Game: South Korea 2 Italy 1

When I bought my 2002 World Cup tickets the year before the tournament began, few people seriously expected South Korea to qualify past the group stage. In the space of three months, Guus Hiddink’s side had been thrashed 5-0 by both France and the Czech Republic, mirroring the scoreline (ironically, against a Dutch side coached by Hiddink) which got Cha Bum Kun fired two games in to France ’98. Samsung hastily withdrew a TV campaign which ended with the tagline ‘Hiddink, show us your ability’ and the Korean press derisively nicknamed him ‘Mister 5-0’. “The players should be well equipped with advanced superior skills and be more than ready for the World Cup by now when the opening is less than two months away. Isn’t that what Hiddink is here for?” raged the Chosun Ilbo. Despite the optimism of the players - "If we try our hardest we can do well," said midfielder Choi Sung-yong - most of the people I knew were relatively downbeat. “I’ll be happy if we score one more goal than Japan,” a Korean friend confided minutes before the start of the opening game against Poland.

But the Poles were swept aside with ease, a 2-0 win giving the Koreans their first World Cup victory in fifteen attempts. And now, four days after Park Ji-sung’s goal had beaten nine-man Portugal and sent Hiddink’s team through as the winners of their group, here we were, high up at the Daejeon World Cup Stadium, lone dots in a tumultuous expanse of scarlet bandanas, noise sticks and t-shirts with the slogan ‘Be The Reds’ written across the chest. A giant Taegeukgi was passed overhead; “Dae Han Min Guk!" (Korea Republic) reverberated across the stadium, hands thrusting the words ‘Again 1966’ into the air. The only time you noticed the tiny pocket of Italians was when they stood for their anthem and walked out, gesticulating furiously, at the very end of the game.


Without the injured Nesto and suspended Cannavaro, Italy start with Paolo Maldini at the centre of defence and Alessandro Del Piero partnering Christian Vieri up front. They came under pressure immediately, both on and off the pitch. “Arirang, Arirang, Arariyo,” the Korean fans boom. “Arirang gogaero neomeoganda…” (Crossing over Arirang pass, the one who abandoned me will not walk four kilometres before their feet ache in pain). Coco, outpaced, scythes down Park Ji-sung, Song Chong-gug takes the free-kick from the right and Seol Ki-hyeon is grappled to the floor by Christian Panucci. “Penalty!” scream the commentators, but Ahn Jung-hwan nervously places his shot low to Buffon’s right and the Italian, arms flailing, palms the ball round the post.

The crowd quietens, but only momentarily. “Arirang” segues into “Oh, Pilsung Korea!” (Victory Korea!) as first Vieri then Totti miss with shots at goal. But then Totti pitches a corner to the near post and Vieri, bent almost double at the waist, heads in to the top of the net, wheeling away with a finger to his lips.

The noise doesn’t stop. Nor do the Korean players, who have more of the possession as the Italians fall back, content to hold their lead. On the hour, Del Pierro is replaced by Gattuso; Hiddink, in contrast, brings on another two forwards. His team attack in desperate waves, but are more and more vulnerable to the counter. Vieri scuffs a one-on-one, and Lee Young-pyo’s knee deflects a goalbound shot inches wide of the post. There are only two minutes left when a cross hits Panucci on the chest and spins back off his arm to Seol Ki-hyeon, who jabs the ball left-footed past the static Buffon. The stadium explodes, Hiddink, dark-suited, pumps the air with his fist. In a madcap couple of minutes, Vieri misses again and Seol hits the side netting with 39,000 fans already out of their seats.

Almost everything that could possibly happen on a football pitch happens in extra-time. Totti turns Song Chong-gug and tumbles in the box as the defender slides to make a challenge. He looks back, arms raised, only to see the referee, correctly, reaching into his pocket for a second yellow card. Minutes later, Damiano Tomassi is wrongly flagged for offside as he touches the ball around Lee Woon-jae. The play takes on the cadence of a basketball game. Hwang heads the ball into the ground and straight up at Buffon; Seol gets into a tangle and Lee, flying to his right, somehow manages to divert Gattuso’s rising shot over the bar.

There are three minutes left before penalties when Lee Chun-soo rolls the ball back to Lee Young-pyo. The cross swings in right-footed, “Ahn Jung-hwan…heading! Goooooal!” the commentators howl in unison. Ahn, kissing his wedding ring, sprints off in the same direction as Vieri. Fireworks go off, the Korean players are all on their knees as the Italians, dumbfounded, sit silently by the touchline. Ahn leads a lap of honour. Not for the last time that night, a beer is shoved into my hands. “Dae han min guk!” roars out again, and this time it sounds like the whole city is singing.

“THIEVES” spits the Corriere dello Sport, black capitals blaring out from its front page. “Outrage!” says the slightly more measured La Gazetta dello Sport. “It was a scandal,” says Francesco Totti, so confident before the game. “The truth is the referee was set against us…They wanted us out”. “Korea is a powerful country. It’s clear they would have done something. I’ve never in my life seen refereeing that bad,” remarks the head of the Italian World Cup delegation, sardonically. “It was like something out of a comedy film." They were laughing in South Korea, where five million people had joyously spilled onto the streets. "Veni, vidi, vici," mocked the following day’s Chosun Ilbo.


“The gentleman will never set foot in Perugia again,” Luciano Gaucci said of South Korea’s matchwinner. "I have no intention of paying a salary to someone who has ruined Italian soccer." Although he later backtracked, Ahn moved on to Japan. Byron Moreno, the Ecuadorian referee, was banned for twenty games after allowing twenty minutes of injury time in which LDU Quito scored twice to defeat Barcelona Sporting Club, and retired as a referee. In September 2010 he was arrested at New York’s Kennedy Airport after police discovered ten bags of heroin strapped to his stomach and legs. As for ‘Mister 5-0’, Guus Hiddink was granted Korean citizenship and had statues, hotels, a song and a football stadium named in his honour. More than 200 books were published on the subject of ‘Hiddink syndrome’, Samsung hurriedly re-released their old TV campaign (it would eventually have an estimated marketing value of over $1 billion), and presented Hiddink’s parents with a plaque of appreciation.

But before all that, we moved on to Gwangju, and a quarter-final against Spain.

Not Home Today

With my plans to see Boldon Villa scuppered by the overnight theft of 185 metres of copper floodlight cables from under the side of their pitch, it's back to the Northern Football Alliance and the east end of Newcastle, where Heaton Stannington are hosting Carlisle's Harraby Catholic Club in what's meant to be a two o'clock kick-off at Grounsell Park.

Newcastle are at home to Spurs and the metro's crowded with Saturday afternoon shoppers, Chinese students dragging suitcases to the railway station, and middle-aged men in blue jeans, knitted hats and black and white scarves. Disconnected sentences rise above the intermingled talk. "Try and relax, forget about work," "It starts at three o'clock," "Don't let me forget we need to go to Fenwick's," "What price is Bale to score the first goal?" "They've got some lovely stuff in Next," "Where are we getting off? Haymarket?" By Ilford Road, where there are cars parked on both sides of the road, allotments, bay-windowed houses and a yellow sign pointing 'To Local Shops', the carriage is almost empty.

I cut across the top of Jesmond Dene, past a real tennis club and what's left of a public school, coming out by the brown brick and pebbledash buildings at the Freeman Hospital. A left turn at a roundabout, by an empty duck pond and a public toilet, takes me on to Newton Road, where I'm passed by a jogger, panting up the hill. There's a church and a building site before the ground itself, tucked behind a garage, a chip shop and a Cantonese takeaway. Two elderly men stand just inside the entrance gate, bare-headed and wearing the kind of clothing you see advertised towards the back of a tabloid TV listings magazine. "Is it on, like?" one asks. "There's no cars here, mind." "Not a peep from the dressing room," says the other. "Ah divvent kna," says a third, slightly younger, coming out of the clubhouse door, "I've just been deein' some work inside but I would've thought they would've been here by now." "Last night's Chronicle said it was on," says the first man, trailing off into thought. "I'll have to gan and watch the Toon now, I suppose." "You know what it's like at this level," I say, "a little bit of rain..." "Aye, to be honest with yer, mate," he says, getting into his car, "this pitch is bloody knackered."

I make it back to the station in a quarter of an hour, edge on to the train, and am home in time to see Gareth Bale go off injured and Fabrizio Coloccini score the game's first goal, chesting the ball down and slamming it in off the fingers of Cudicini's left hand. You'd have got a decent price on that happening at half past one.

Places I Have Been: Siracusa

Siracusa: the New York City of Magna Grecia, birthplace of Santa Lucia, the city where Archimedes had his eureka moment, Epicarmus introduced the notion of pathos into comedy, and Claudio Ranieri had a one-month spell on loan from Roma in 1973.

The smell of marijuana and the sea, a 1930s entrance gate with graffiti on the sides, and whitewashed flats and palm trees overlooking the three stands.

In Sicily I lived so close to the Ionian Sea I could have chipped a pass into it. The Duomo was a five-minute walk away, work half an hour, and the football stadium, Stadio Nicola De Simone, was somewhere between the two, just before you hit the orange-squeezer church of Madonna delle Lacrime. The first time I went to see Unione Sportiva Siracusa play I sat in the posh seats and watched a routine 3-1 win. The second time I stood on the terrace and got caught up in the midst of a riot. I call it a riot because that's how it was reported and punished, but what really happened was this: Cavese scored two goals, a few fans sat astride the perimeter fence gazing moodily at the pitch, looking just as likely to start singing Coldplay songs as they were to invade it. Someone held up a banner depicting an elephant being straddled by a lion (a joke based on the symbols of Catania and Siracusa; Siracusa hate Catania, but Catania mainly hate Palermo, which makes things even worse) and a few stray objects were lobbed towards the pitch. The referee responded by taking the players to the opposite touchline, which prompted several loud suggestions that his wife was routinely unfaithful to him, that his mother had been unfaithful to his father and that he had used a donkey in being unfaithful to all three. After a few minutes of this two Carabinieri finally appeared from behind the top goal and everyone scarpered for the exit at the first sight of a riot shield.

The end result of it all was that Siracusa were banned from playing at home for the next three months. By the time they returned their promotion chances had gone much the same way as Vince Cable's, a loss to Vittoria in the end-of-season play-offs leaving them marooned in Serie D.

I predict a riot.

They finally made it up in 2009, and are now in Lega Pro Prima Divisione (or Serie C1 if you prefer your leagues in old money). As I type, they sit as comfortably as a Christian Democrat before Mani Pulite, sixth in the table, ahead of Zdenek Zemen's Foggia, Pisa and, best of all, Cavese.

Even Archimedes would have been proud of that.

Ground 151: Cochrane Park

It's cup weekend on Tyneside, but while big boys Killingworth Sporting, Shankhouse and Percy Main Amateurs are busy scrapping it out for a place in the third round of the Kicks Leisure Challenge Cup, Newcastle University AFC and Newcastle East End are playing league fixture catch-up in the perceptibly more mundane environs of the Northern Football Alliance Division One.

The £4,500 I've recently handed over in tuition fees doesn't get me so much as a garden chair to sit on at Cochrane Park. With trees along one half of the pitch, open fields on the other, and a crowd of just five people, my main concern as the game kicks off is to find a place to stand where I won't be expected to run and fetch the ball, eventually settling on a spot between a conifer tree and the corner flag.

It's immediately apparent that East End (disappointingly, the only things they share with the club that made up one half of Newcastle United in December 1892 are the name and shirt colour) are the more talented of the two teams. Three of their players have turned out in gloves, four more are wearing long sleeves, and they occasionally manage to kick the ball in the general proximity of a teammate. Newcastle University - a student club run by students for students, their website says, as if there wasn't a big enough clue already in the name - were Northern Alliance Premier Champions in 2000, but start out fourth from bottom, having managed to play only five games all season. East End sit in midtable, seven points better off, though recent form doesn't count for much when you haven't played since November 6th.

The players are rusty, the pitch is wet, and the game soon takes on the sound and tenor of an inexpertly-managed sexual encounter. "On his...tighter! There's two of yuz, ye kna," screams a defender. "Tuck in", "Eyes" and "On yer back," cries the bench. Good foot in!" and "Stuck in Robbie," purrs East End's number 4. "Plenty of space up there," suggests the University keeper, "but you've got to want it." "Stand, Jeff" and "Talk to me," shrieks a voice in midfield. "Come on, we've got to hurry this up," cautions someone on the touchline. "Let's try and get the ball down." "Take your time," cajoles a defender. "Keep it up" and "Good shape," the away keeper encourages. "Push!"

The game's first shot on goal drifts harmlessly over the University bar with thirty minutes gone. The students counter, and a forward rounds the keeper but scuffs his shot against a defender's knee. East End scrape an effort wide and miskick in front of goal. Then a University midfielder takes a pass on the edge of the area and casually slams the ball into the top corner of the net. His teammates break into applause. "And he just stood there like he does it every day," laughs one of the substitutes.

The home side grow in confidence after their goal and have the better of the second half. East End's keeper slaps a shot off the line while blinded by the sun, and as two of the five crowd members drift away the visitors' final chance of the game* pings back off the crossbar.

"I'll have to go inside, man," says a voice from the dugout. "If I stay here any longer me feet'll drop off."

Admission: Free
Date: 8th January 2011

* As it turns out, it wasn't quite their final chance, as they equalised in the last minute of the game, just as soon as I was out of sight.

Places I Have Been: Busan I'Park

One of the K-League's six founding clubs, Busan was also the first Korean football team I ever saw play. It was March 2000 and Ahn Jung-hwan, on the verge of an ill-fated loan move to Perugia, was still their undisputed star. "Just like David Beckham," Koreans used to insist, though Ahn's subsequent career trajectory suggested Bentley may have been a better choice of surname. Busan won easily, but then teams usually did when they played against Daejon.

For as long as they belonged to Daewoo - at one time Korea's second largest conglomerate, manufacturing everything from cars and container ships to toasters and toothpaste - Busan were among the best teams in the league. Pipped to the post by Hallelujah FC in 1983's inaugural K-League season, they won three of the next eight titles, beat Egypt's Al-Ahly to lift the 1986 Asian Club Championship and, inspired by ex-Red Star Belgrade forward Saša Drakulić, added an Adidas Cup to their fourth K-League triumph in 1997.

Not the last time I'd see Daejeon lose to Busan.

But then Daewoo went bankrupt, company founder Kim Woo-chong took an extended holiday in France with $3.2 billion he'd borrowed from the till, and in the chaos that followed Busan were acquired (rather appropriately given the circumstances) by I-Con, a construction company belonging to the Hyundai Group. For both Kim and Busan, the glory years were over.

Since 1997, thirteen different coaches have tried, and failed, to emulate Lee Cha-man's title-winning team. Ex-Swiss international Andy Egli lasted one season before resigning due to "differences with the management of the club". His replacement, Park Seong-hwa, departed for the Korean Olympic side after fifteen days and just one match in charge. Hwang Sun-hong, scorer of Korea's first goal of the 2002 World Cup, stayed for three years, tempted Ahn Jung-hwan back for nineteen games, and took the club to the Korean FA Cup Final earlier this year. But none could match the achievements of the man Egli had replaced.

Ian Porterfield arrived in November 2002, at the end of a season in which Busan had won just six games and finished second bottom of the league. Korean international Song Chong-gug had already left for Feyenoord and the club's owners, having agreed to move into the 54,000-capacity Busan Asiad Stadium, were now threatening to relocate to Seoul after the council refused to let Porterfield's team train on the pitch. "My wife called me and was really worried, she said: 'We are moving to Seoul, it's all over TV.' In all honesty it was a good marketing exercise," the Scot told Soccerphile's John Duerden.

The Busan Asiad Stadium during the 2002 Asian Games.
It didn't get much busier when Busan played at home.

Porterfield brought in ex-Aberdeen and Airdrie player Drew Jarvie as assistant and used some of the Feyenoord money to rebuild his team. Jamie Cureton arrived on a free transfer from Reading, soon followed by Stoke City's Andy Cooke and Forest's Norwegian defender Jon Olav Hjelde. "Apparently it's very good money out there – and it's tax free," explained Preston boss Craig Brown when North End's Colin Murdock flew out to Korea for talks. But Murdock, like Reading's Martin Butler, turned Porterfield down, signing for Hibernian instead.

Cureton soon wished he'd done the same. After four goals in twenty-one games a group of QPR fans helped to raise the £100,000 needed to take him back to the English First Division. "Curo just does not like the lifestyle out there and he's struggled with the language," his agent explained, "so the club have agreed to terminate his contract a year early." "I wasn't happy in Korea," Cureton said on his return to England. "Within the first month I realised I was not getting what I wanted out of football, with the language barrier to overcome and the fact the build up to games was so low-key. The crowds were small and there wasn't the same buzz you get over here".

Hjelde suffered too, playing sixteen games in a year before rejoining Joe Kinnear at Nottingham Forest. "I don’t know what sort of football they play in Korea," said Kinnear, "but you could tell he’d not been playing in England." Despite thirteen goals (and almost as many yellow cards) from Cooke, Busan finished ninth in 2003, losing almost half of their forty-four games.

Undeterred, Porterfield signed Chris Marsden, who'd captained Southampton in the previous year's FA Cup Final. Marsden scored the opening goal of the 2004 K-League season, but walked out on Busan a single game, one unhappy wife and £136,000 of Sheffield Wednesday's money later. "I'm sad and disappointed," Porterfield said. "I'd have hoped that he would have waited to the end of the stage, sat down and discussed it. If that had happened, everyone would have seen it differently."

That left only Cooke, who scored another six goals as Porterfield (now assisted by ex-Swindon midfielder Tom Jones) led the side to seventh in the league. At the end of the year, to almost everyone's surprise, Busan won their first Korean FA Cup, beating Bucheon SK on penalties in a Christmas Day final. "Like winning the Scottish Premier with Dunfermline Athletic," Porterfield said.

Busan 3 Daejeon 0 at the Gudeok Stadium, a few months before Porterfield arrived.

But while things were looking better on the pitch - the team losing just a single game on their way to winning the First Stage of the 2005 K-League season - problems were mounting off it, with attendances down to just 4,000 at the Asiad Stadium. "I think that one of the reasons that we don't get good gates is that we play in the World Cup Stadium way over outside of town," Porterfield explained. "It's very difficult to get there, no train service and it takes a long time by bus." An even bigger problem was the indifference of the city's four million inhabitants: "When I first came to Busan and met people," Porterfield said, "no-one knew that there was a football team here."

Porterfield's cash-strapped team lost nine and drew three of their last twelve games to slump to tenth overall, going out of the FA Cup to non-league Ulsan Dolphin and losing 7-0 on aggregate to the Saudi team Al-Ittihad in the semi-final of the Asian Champions League. Despite the offer of a new contract, Andy Cooke had left for Bradford before the start of the season. "I thought about it," he said, "because the money was more than you could ever imagine getting here in England. But I just thought enough was enough and I wanted to get my family home. There are only so many shops and restaurants you can go around and in the evening, the highlight of our day, every day, was going for something to eat."

Porterfield and Jones followed in 2006, leaving to coach the Armenian national side. The British invasion of Korean football had come to an end.