By Leipziger
June 14 2011

A few months ago I rejected Kiev/Pripyat as a holiday destination, at least until after the football Euros next year I began looking around Scandinavia for somewhere to go since their football season is in full swing in June.

I finally decided on Stockholm, with the chance to watch sometimes Champions League participants AIK Solna play Malmo. Then a couple of weeks ago I suddenly thought “I wonder if they play rugby in Sweden?”

I was in luck – last year’s Allsvenskan (the top league) champions Stockholm Exiles RFC were at home to Hammarby IF on Saturday morning, on what according to Google Earth looked like a field with two pitches in the south-west of the city.

So for this I got up at 2.30am on Friday (early even for me) and headed up to Stansted. I don’t know what’s happened to my luck with transport over the past season, but this time I missed my bus to the airport from Liverpool Street and paid £10 to get the next one that came.

The driver tore up the M11 and I was soon several thousand feet above the North Sea thanks to the good people at Ryanair.

I won’t bore you with many ins and outs of Stockholm, except that newly-graduated students were going around in cars and later dump-trucks, blasting music, drinking and cheering. The smell of beer nearby was quite overpowering. And they told me taking an open-top bus to the Old Assembly Rooms for our sixth form ball was eccentric!

Oh, and on my search for somewhere to eat on Friday night I happened on a riverside bar selling Brown Ale. About £6 for 330ml may be enough to make the Wasps barmen wince, and be more than I’d normally spend on beer (or the mortgage) but when not in Newcastle…

I later discovered plenty of bars sold Brown, and one even had it on tap. The Swedes clearly appreciate a quality beer!

So Saturday was rugby day and I headed off to the suburb of Årstafältet full of breakfast and curiosity. The area is very quiet, with several tower blocks as you see in Europe.

The rugby ground was indeed two pitches back-to-back, and when I arrived about 40 minutes before the 11am kick-off, one team was warming up at the far end of a pitch, and at the other end of the other, some people were sitting beneath a tree, some clearly wearing green rugby shirts. The away fans.

The ground wasn’t actually just pitches, at the side of the main pitch was a ‘stand’ of sorts, basically a shaky (if you moved too quickly) and rickety (some planks were missing) wooden terrace.

As you can see, it’s nicer than Vicarage Road.

The away fans, beer in hand and voices in good form, joined the rest of us before kick-off. There weren’t any noticeable home fans, bar coaches and relatives, but I always gravitate towards the home teams in neutral situations so the Exiles had my goodwill.

The game reflected the teams’ table positions (Exiles third, Hammarby fourth in the six-team league) in the first quarter, the hosts (in black and yellow) dominating but unable to score. Their driving maul almost yielded a try and a penalty went wide after 10 minutes, seconds after the second touch judge turned up.

The home scrum-half finally opened the scoring, finishing off a flowing move down the right, and his blindside flanker fought through two tackles on the other side to increase the score to 10-0. The different-shorted full-back seemed to be having an off-day with the boot.

Hammarby’s first real attack came in the dying minutes of the half and their full-back dropped a pass with the line gaping, but the play was brought back for a penalty in front of the posts and the away side reduced the half-time deficit to 10-3.

The second half was initially tight, but as the Exiles brought their replacements on (wearing different, newer-looking shirts to the starting players) they began to take control, the inside centre cutting through under the posts, allowing for a first conversion.

The right winger was next on the scoresheet, adding insult to injury for Hammarby was the fact that he had only minutes earlier been spoken to by the referee for a scrap with an opponent. In his best English, possibly taught through elocution lessons by Slacker, one Hammarby fan called out “Yellow card, sir!” but none was shown.

Indeed it was the green and whites who were reduced to 14 men with 12 minutes left due to a card for their tighthead.

A Hammarby replacement jumped on a dropped ball however to score his side’s first and only try of the day, but three tries in the final four minutes for the Exiles secured their 41-8 victory.

I really enjoyed the game, perhaps more so as a neutral because there was none of the tension and emotion involved with watching the Falcons, or indeed other English teams of whom I have an unconscious popularity ranking in my head.

The pace may not have been as fast as a Premiership match, and there were more knock-ons and missed passes than I can remember, but there was 100% commitment from both sides and clearly a lot of respect between them.

At the end of the game the two teams lined up opposite each other, the captains said some words, presumably in English as a lot of the communication on the pitch had been, and then each side gave the other three cheers before they all shook hands.

I must have looked strange, watching this rather than the Exiles Ladies team who were warming up for their match in front of where I was. The loosehead’s thighs are probably bigger than my waist! OK, maybe not that big.

Come the evening, I was ready for a few beers and found the pub with Brown Ale on tap and also a nice European lager called Falcon, which I obviously had to try.

On the way back to my hotel I got lost by virtue of trains not stopping at the station I needed to get off at after 6pm (it was now near 11), but walking around Sundbyberg I found a pub called the Falconeer, to where I headed the following evening before going to watch football.

One of the many scarves decorating the pub was a Newcastle one.

Amazing what you find in places you should never have even been!