Hanaskog

Ground: Västra Heds Idrottsplats

Visits: 1

Date: 17th June 2015

Match: Hanaskog - IFÖ Bromölla 1-0 (Division 3 Sydöstra Götaland)

Attendance: 200

Hanaskog is situated a 20-minute drive from Kristianstad and with the local football team, Hanaskog IS, being promoted from Division 4 to Division 3 at the end of last season I knew I had an "easy" ground visit looking forward to in 2015. I wanted to visit the derby against Osby but that fixture is scheduled for next week when I am in northern Sweden. Instead I decided to visit when IFÖ Bromölla, also kind of a derby, visited Västra Heds IP. The weather forecast was anything but promising though, heavy rain forecasted for the evening. I hesitated but when a work colleague of mine, who I had persuaded to join me, started to make remarks about groundhoppers being weaklings I still decided to go. I picked up Gunnar, my colleague, on the way and at 18.20 (KO 19.00) we arrived at Västra Hed. We were among the first to arrive but at least that meant we could choose to best seats in the covered stand. There is a covered wooden stand in the west side of Västra Hed and that stand has around 200 seats. Apart from that there are plenty of benches to sit on.

Västra Hed is, for this level, quite a nice ground and I would have preferred much better weather for my visit. Anyway, I managed to take some pictures and as kick-off approached the covered stand filled up. Almost half of those in the stand seemed to be from Bromölla. Bromölla played with the wind in the first half and in the first 15-20 minutes Bromölla were by far the better team, still no goals at half-time though. In the second half the quality of the match was on par with the weather and I thought the match was going to end goal-less. In the 72nd minute Hanaskog counter-attacked and manged to score though, 1-0 to the home team. Bromölla then tried their best to find an equalizer but that was not to be the case and the match finished 1-0 to Hanaskog. In the very tight table this was an important win for them and hopefully they can stay up. As we walked back to my car the rain had finally stopped but it was still quite nice to sit in a warm car. Next week I go on a tour of Sweden, the highlights being the Division 1 Norra derby between Piteå and Luleå as well as my first ever match in Sweden north of the arctic circle. Something to look forward to!

västra hed