I traveled 33 hours to watch a football game
… round trip 2 flights, 2 train rides, and transfers in between, so technically closer to 17 hours each way, 33 hours round trip from Asia to the UK, to watch King’s Lynn Town Football Club (also known as The Linnets), the football club Turn Sports Investments invested in this year. BBC covered the deal in January, you can read about it here.
(Linnets played Farsley Celtic at home, and lost 0–2, very painful especially considering the travel, but let’s not talk about it as the wound is still raw)
It’s been almost a year since I started working with Steve on the Linnets. Steve is the club Chairman and owner of the Linnets. I knew little about King’s Lynn or the Linnets when I first spoke with Steve late last year and it was his passion for the club that got me intrigued.
Turn Sports Investments started working on deal diligence and fast forward a month, we officially signed papers to invest in the club.
Listening to radio broadcasted games of the Linnets
Since then, I’ve followed almost every game religiously, on radio (yes in this day and age) or when coverage on radio isn’t available, through Twitter match updates done by the media team. I spend time before each game hunting for match radio broadcast links, sometimes through BBC Norfolk if lucky, other times through biased opposition radio coverage. I dislike midweek games as that means I’ll be up at 4am in Asia listening to the radio or have my eyes glued to the Twitter notifications for updates from the team, the latter is a horrible experience at 4am. I wonder a lot about the various broadcasting rules and why games cannot be broadcasted live, as it costs so little to set it all up; for clubs like the Linnets it’s so important but this is a topic for another day.
As 2024 started drawing to a close, I felt compelled to visit the club at least once before ending the year so I made plans to visit just a week before.
The excitement and build up
Over the weekend the Linnets travelled to Chorley, the game was not covered by any radio station and so Twitter once again became my salvation. After the game I discussed with Steve and sought options to see if we can have every game covered ourselves via radio broadcasting, if alternate options are not available and I believe Steve has come up with a solution to ensure this. I feel it’s important for the community and fans who cannot travel so far to each away game, that they have the option to listen in should they choose. Fingers crossed.
The flight to London was uneventful but I could sense my excitement build up as the plane approached Heathrow. Dashed through customs and made my way down to the underground to catch the first Piccadilly line to King’s Cross, arriving with 4 minutes to spare before the Great Northern’s 842am ride left the station. Having watched a few YouTube videos of the train ride to King’s Lynn, the experience was surreal.
I was lucky to catch a black cab at the station, the only one there, as I headed to Travelodge for an early check. The room wasn’t available yet when I arrived so I headed next door to Gateshead for a quick meal.
I finally met Steve at the Starbucks nearby at around 4pm, though first time meeting in person as all our previous meetings were done remotely via Zoom. He exuded the same passion as always and after a brief chat we headed down to the club.
Dreams are made of this
As Steve took me through the grounds, and introduced every person we met along the way, including our manager, vice president, academy director, head of media and more. One thing struck out. Everyone was with the same passion that Steve had. It didn’t matter what role they played at the club, their eyes all shone. As I walked into the home dressing room, an overwhelming sense of pride came across me as Steve explained how they did up the room just this season and it was important to the manager that everything was done right for the players.
Seeing our groundskeeper work on the pitch before the game was a treat.
It’s about the community
If there’s one takeaway from this visit, it’s all about the community. Not the easiest to swallow losing at home, and understandably frustrating for the fans, myself included. However, the sense of belonging that everyone I had the pleasure of meeting, had, is massive. A gentleman I met and spoke briefly with has been watching the Linnets play since over 50 years ago. That’s hard to sink in for me, and it’s a immense pleasure to be a part of this.
I hope to come back again soon, hopefully with my family so they too can be part of what is a once in a lifetime experience for me. Thank you Linnets, let’s keep building! #COYL
