Welcome back for another go around. It’s time for the final part of our four-part series (actually, that was the plan until I started writing and this got very long; now I’m going to do one more piece after this one) detailing my journey to and through the Sydney Super Cup, where I’ve written on what the tournament and trip was like from a fan perspective… but also from having access a fan might not usually have. Part travel blog, part human-interest piece, part fan boy experience… and part pure
stream of consciousness.
What did it felt like as a fan walking into the press box and seeing Spurs play a Premier League opponent for the first time? At the risk of sounding like Fabrizio Romano, here we go.
Here are the previous pieces in the series:
Accor Stadium
It was my second to last day in Sydney and the day of the Chelsea match. I went through my usual morning routine with a shower, a walk, and a coffee, before spending some time with my friends, getting a bit more pre-writing done, and having some lunch. Olympic Park, where Accor Stadium is situated, was a fair trek from where I was based, so after doing a little packing I decided to head off around 2 pm to get there nice and early. It was a nice day, and it’s a cool area to walk around.
On the way, I wrestled with various locale issues as I tried to find a way to stream my NRL (National Rugby League) side, the Warriors, as they took on the Gold Coast Titans. Not Worth It took a one goal lead.
Just kidding – we all already know what the scoreline of that matchup will be. This trip has been so, so much more than merely “worth it”.
The Warriors blew the Titans off the park in what I hoped was a good omen for tonight’s match. As I headed west, I began to see more Chelsea shirts in something of an interesting coincidence given they are based in West London. My route consisted of a bus, followed by a train, followed by another bus. The queues for the final bus were pretty significant, so I let a couple of the buses through as I watched the NRL and waited for the crowds to dissipate, with them coming every 10 minutes.
I eventually reached the outskirts of Accor Stadium not long after 5 pm, giving me plenty of time before kick-off. I decided though to try get into the stadium as early as possible, to both explore and to make sure I didn’t repeat Wednesday night’s shenanigans. There was a complicating factor, too: while Allianz had the access points, press box location, and processes all laid out on their website, Accor had none of this, so I had no idea really where I was going.
I did, however, know that the press box was on the western side of the ground, and I was reasonably hopeful that my press pass from the Sydney fixture would ensure I wouldn’t run into any blockers with regards to accreditation (it was supposed to give me access for the whole tournament, but I wasn’t 100% sure on this).
There was one gate open this early, with most of the people entering sporting credentials of some kind (mostly photographers or catering related passes). I thought I’d try my luck, flashed my press pass, and I was in. Now where? Nothing was signposted; I had no idea where I was going. Accor Stadium is BIG. I wandered around aimlessly for a little bit.
Enter Pablo.
I caught the eye of a gentleman who had a similar lost look on his face to me, also sporting a press badge. We introduced ourselves to each other: Pablo was in radio, attending on behalf of Nova Entertainment. We shepherded a steward and asked for directions; there’s safety in numbers, and I think being together meant both of us felt less like fish out of water. We’re legitimate press, guys!
We were directed upstairs. It was all a bit of a maze, and we ran into a camera operator who was also a little lost. We finally found where the press box was, and it was quite a different setup to Allianz. Allianz was newer: the interiors were modern and the press box well decked out, with a nice writing / media area in behind it that I referenced back in Part 2. Accor’s press box, on the other hand, was accessed from a concourse area with a bunch of fans milling around, from where we went through a glass door and across a steel gantry to what were almost like shipping containers with a printout on the door of one of them saying “Beware of the leopard” “Press Box”.
Inside, the press box was much smaller; maybe 2/3 the width of Allianz with one less row of desks. The biggest negative though is the windows in front didn’t open. We were trapped in a glass case of emotion. It was all a little underwhelming to be honest, and given my experience a few days ago, we wondered if we were actually in the right place; the stadium staff had mentioned some more facilities upstairs… so it was exploration time.
We headed upstairs; we were in corporate box territory. As we walked along the hallway, we noted signs on the doorways: not paper, like the press room, but brushed metal with logos and names. For some reason though, they’d done the printing in white on steel, so you had to squint to read. There was one labelled media room, but it was so nondescript we thought that it surely wasn’t what we were looking for. After a little more wandering, we determined it was.
In we went, and we were in the areas with the TV and broadcasting crews, with access out onto the camera gantries. It was a pretty spectacular view:
Pablo and I hung out and chatted for a bit, talking Spurs, talking the fixture, talking fandom. It was a nice settler to just get acclimated, and it was nice standing out in the fresh air (something I would miss soon enough, spoiler alert). After a while, though, I thought I should head back downstairs to the press box.
A few more people by now had begun to turn up… so at this point I decided to once more break free of the shackles of social anxiety and introduce myself to Alasdair Gold in perhaps the most awkward way possible:
Hi Alasdair – I thought I’d introduce myself. My name’s Matty; I know who you are abviously, but you won’t know who I am. I believe though you’ve might have talked my boss Dustin previously, we write for Cartilage Free Captain.
Or something like that. I’m paraphrasing. Alasdair was very gracious, saying that he absolutely did know who I was (not professionally, of course, he’d just recognized me from a couple of nights ago). We chatted a bit and I ended up sitting next to him. Not long after, I also met Elias Burke from The Athletic, another lovely individual who loved to talk football and talk Spurs.
I thought I’d take an opportunity to take another photo of the view, this time from the press box, with the crowd starting to wander in:
There were some negatives about the Accor Stadium press box, which I covered; one of the positives, however, is that were we were much closer to the action. In fact, if you pause the highlights video of the match as the players come out of the tunnel, you can see the silhouette of my head. At Allianz it was often hard to make out players and their numbers due to the distance; at Accor, this was much easier.
The other improvement is there was food present. I wasn’t going to go hungry this time. The arancini balls were especially good.
Chelsea vs. Tottenham Hotspur
We were nearing kick-off now. We had paper copies of the lineups delivered; before, in fact they are released to the public (not by much – 15 minutes or so). Alasdair and I had struck up a bit of a conversation by this point, not limited only to Spurs: we talked family, travel, music, among other things. We talked about the lineup; or more specifically, we talked about the format of the lineup release from the club.
It turns out the whole “graphic design is my passion” numerical order lineup posts aren’t just down to the social media guys. Apparently, the club (or somebody somewhere in the club) thinks that the obfuscation of Spurs’ tactical setup potentially creates just enough confusion that it could result in a tactical edge. Who would’ve thought?
So don’t expect a return to position-based lineup releases anytime soon.
We continued to chat, and one thing that struck me was there was this odd dichotomy with actual football journalists: 1) they know way more than they actually write about; and 2) there’s actually also a whole lot they don’t know. There were certain topics of conversation where I almost felt like I had more insight; others where out of the blue you would discover something you had no idea about.
One of those was Manor Solomon’s status at the club; another was Bristol Rovers coming in for one of our youth players, though Alasdair didn’t know who the player was (it turned out to be Reiss-Alexander Russell-Denny, as announced yesterday). We discussed the youth players as well, and how impressed we’d been with Malachi Hardy and Rio Kyerematen (as well as Luca Williams-Barnett, of course).
And like that, it was time for the match. The players stepped out onto the pitch and the stadium, that had been steadliy filling and was now almost at capacity, erupted (almost literally, in fact):
There were fireworks galore, and somebody in the box joked that they spent half the budget for the tour on pyrotechnics, which was why the ticket pricing was so exorbitant. There was a rousing rendition of Oh When the Spurs Go Marching In, led by a trumpet player who apparently travelled all the way from England, but despite my earlier experiences out and about in Sydney, the crowd was more Chelsea-heavy then Spurs. Both sets of fans were sat at either end, opposite one another, with Chelsea’s end clearly the bigger stand – though not overly so. The rest of the stadium seemed to be mostly 50-50, but with a narrow majority turning out in support of The Blues.
The first match was surreal; this one was a blockbuster. My first experience of Spurs playing another Premier League club… and it’s a London Derby.
And it was played like it from the start. Things were quite physical early on, with Chelsea leaving a little bit of something in a couple of challenges, and that seemed to rile up the Spurs players, with the Lilywhites definitely escalating things. One particular Conor Gallagher tackle was shocking, and prompted some of the Chelsea media in the box to ask, “What’s wrong with Spurs?” to which Alasdair replied, “They’re just letting the Chelsea players know they’re there.”
Spurs soon opened the scoring, possibly against the run of play and via a massive direction, but I didn’t care. A goal against Chelsea? Pure ecstasy. The problem was that was offset slightly as we tried to work out exactly what happened. Questions would often fly around the box, as replays on the big screens sometimes weren’t forthcoming. Who made that pass? Who got the last touch? Who did that deflect off?
Chelsea soon equalized; Alasdair and I reminisced how poor Andy Robertson had been, before he delivered quite a decent ball towards Gallagher who looked to be totally taken out in the box. We were sure it was a penalty; the referee didn’t agree.
1-1 at half-time.
I don’t know why, but this match felt harder to write up. Maybe because I was even more engrossed than the Sydney fixture. I would have to tear myself away from the action, take a few notes, check back in with the progress, flesh out a paragraph… part of me just wanted to cheer. But that wasn’t an option.
The second half kicked off… and then Kevin Danso was sent off. Everybody in the box was disgusted, but understanding at the same time. It made no sense for a red card in a friendly, but there wasn’t much else the referee could do. Comments flew around that apparently the ball had kicked quite a bit off the turf as it bounced to Danso, something not immediately obvious in either the broadcast or live at the ground. Some of other journos and media had already commented on how poor the condition of the pitch was.
Well, now I’ve seen it all.
Not quite, actually.
My fear was that Chelsea would put us to the sword from here. Enter: Antonin Kinsky and Richarlison. Kinsky made a couple of incredible saves, one of which wasn’t even clear that it was a save live; we thought Estevao had just hit the bar until we saw a replay. Stunning. Then the whole press box, Chelsea and Spurs alike, went up when Kyerematen went on his merry way, driving forward from halfway before his dipping effort crashed of the crossbar. That would have been an absolute stunner. The adrenaline was unreal.
We all start grumbling about penalties; Alasdair and I joke about the Audi Cup. A few of the journos ask if there’s an actual trophy, to which somebody else helpfully comments, “Well, yeah, it’s the Sydney Super Cup!” And then what happens next happens almost in slow motion.
All of a sudden, Jamie Donley has the ball at the top of the box. He’s on his right foot, he won’t shoot from there.
He does.
It’s not that well struck, the keeper will save that.
Ho doesn’t.
It clangs off the post, and bounces out to Richarlison, who I’m sure will be flagged offside.
He’s not.
The ball’s in the net; the crowd is stunned; I let out a solitary clap and a yelp all at once. I can’t believe my eyes. I’ve just seen Richarlison score the winning goal against Chelsea in the 90th minute.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO goes my internal monologue.
Damn, I have to rewrite half my match report, goes the follow-up. Oh well. Well and truly WORTH IT.
I’ve just seen Spurs beat Chelsea. Is my heart going to explode?
Check back in tomorrow, where I’ll finish (for real this time, honest) with the aftermath of the match, including actually attending the press conference this time.
