Leeds Uni vs. Leeds Met

If you can't go to Uni, go to Met
If you can't go to Uni, go to Met
If you can't go to Uni,
You can't go to Uni,
You can't go to Uni,
Go to Met!

This is the closest thing I've come so far to derby match like Man Utd vs. Man City in the UK. Back in Southeast Asia, the derby matches that I watch come in the forms of Malaysia vs. Singapore or have St. Joseph's Institution pitted up against Raffles Institution. So, on Wednesday, I went with a couple of my MASSoc friends to the annual rugby friendly betwen University of Leeds and Leeds Metropolitan University. Friendly in name but not so in the match with each other. The supporters are certainly pumped up for the match, with bragging rights at stake. I headed over the Headingley Rugby Stadium which is home to the famous Leeds Rhino rugby team and it's a 30 minutes walk from my flat to the place. People are already lining up for the tickets, which costs about 5 pounds. I'm kinda excited going for the match because this is somewhat like a proto or preliminary feeling on what it's like to watch a football match in England.

First impressions of the match is that the Brits gotta have beer for the match. Glass bottles are banned for safety reasons, but they have plastic cups and plastic beer bottles as substitutes. It doesn't taste as nice if it were to be placed in a glass, but no Brit really does care as long as they can get drunk..hahaha. We managed to get some seats after scuffling with hordes of students from both sides. For team chanting purposes, we are known as "Uni" while the other side calls themselves as "Leeds Met". And the chanting and taunting at stadiums are done at full blast with no barriers held. One of those that I heard from our side was "If you can't go to Uni, go to Met!"(She'll be coming round the mountain tune) and then the Met students will respond by taunting "Fat B**tard" in response to our unofficial cheerleader who was rousing us to chant. And the other one was "Your dad works for my dad"..haha. As the match nears kickoff, things got a little rowdy in the crowd. A section of it started flinging beer plastic cups with the contents still there to the people who are still searching for seats. That incited a further flurry of things being thrown around so there's literally a beer shower all over the place. One guy even got a headshot and the crowd cheered at his demise..lol. Our side did get some flaks because our cheerleader with his female friends were seated near us and so we got the retribution from some furious Met fans. It seems that the security stewards did little except to warn the perpetrators occassionally. Looks like they wun interfere unless there are real serious injury.

When the match started, the crowd grew wild. The thing about crowded places in a UK stadium is that one will never sweat because the weather is always cold to keep the place naturally air-conditioned. When I saw the first streaker jumping in to the field attempting to disrupt the game, I had a good laugh because they have this occassionally at the Premier League games. But little did I know that he was not the only one. There were like almost NINE other streakers who ran into the game with hillarious results endings for each of them with the stewards chasing after them. The second streaker in the game actually had one of the stewards falling down on his face when he was giving chase. And the players got involved in pinning down one of the last streakers in the game too..lol. I've concluded that streaking is truly an Anglo-Saxon cultural thing in stadiums..haha.

Anyways, we lost in the end. It looked like a thrashing at first because Uni was still 0 after 35 minutes. But they clawed back at the second half and nearly completed a comeback but Leeds Met scored the extra crucial points. I heard from the other students that Leeds Met was at the thrasing end last year when they scored a mere 3 points..lol. Oh well, we made our way out after the match and the amount of rubbish that were piled up is immense. The final estimated figure that came to watch the game was around 10,000. And even in post match, the fans are still chanting through the streets of Headingley..haha. Ahhh, I would certainly love to watch the football version of this Varsity derby, if there's one.