Leeds wrap-up

Just spent the last two days visiting Leila while she's on exchange in Leeds. First impression when walking through town was that it was purely a college/university city. Students wandered the streets, many were lined up in lines for bars, while others were chatting with their casually lit cigarettes in hand loitering outside of them. 

I pretty much fell asleep within a couple hours of arriving and was knocked out cold until the next morning, fortunately letting my body recover from that deep fatigue that I'm familiar with after a long night on call. 

We went to the Leeds v. Tottenham FA Cup Round 4 match the next day. Now I get the hype behind experiencing an English football game. The atmosphere is nothing like a regular season hockey game in Canada. In Edmonton, we would ride the LRT to the arena, opposing fans would sit next to each other, there would be some polite teasing, but nothing over-the-top, and in essence have a mostly family-friendly night of entertainment. 

In contrast, in the shuttle bus to the match, there would be boisterous chanting about Leeds, repetitive Tottenham bashing including a well-known chant about how one of the players is fond of consanguinity. At the stadium, the visiting team's fans are in their own section, and I understood why. While the overall atmosphere was loud and cheerful, there was definitely an underlying tone of pure hostility against the opposing team and its fans. This climaxed at the end of the match where there was a police escort surrounding the visiting teams' fans as they tried to quietly exit the stadium. The tension was palpable as they were surrounded by this crowd of Leeds fans, both sides heckling each other.. and not just in the "ha-ha, match well played mate" type of way. 

The match itself was awesome. It was a crowd of 28,000 which is on the smaller end when it comes to English football, but while it's also bigger than any hockey game it was orders of magnitude more intense than what I've experienced. Chants would erupt spontaneously, and would not have to be cued by a jumbotron and there were at least four or five that everyone at the stadium knew by heart. Every time Leeds scored, it felt like a giant party, and I wanted them to score more just to experience that mood of pure elation that went rampant through the crowd. It lacked the necessary "bigh-five a perfect stranger" I enjoyed in hockey games, but seeing an entire stadium jumping up and down like that made up for it. Fortunately, Leeds won 2-1 which is nice because being an Arsenal fan I also despise Totttenham so it was a jolly trip home. 

We walked around campus briefly on the way back to my sister's dorm and stopped at a student pub for a small dinner before just hanging out the rest of the evening. 

Now on the train, and London awaits...