BV Veendam – SC Cambuur Leeuwarden (18-03-2005)

Last Friday it finally happened: my visit to the legendary De Langeleegte! My friend M.T. and I had already made the long way to the North before, only to find the game cancelled because of the weather. We had decided than and there that we would come back as soon as we would have the opportunity.

Around 15.15 M.T. picked me up at Schiphol – luckily Easyjet didn’t have a delay this time (I had been in the UK for work) – and we were on our way. Without much troubles we drove through 020 (for on-Dutch, this is the area code of Amsterdam) and entered the Flevopolder. The sky became ever greyer and when we drove into the province of Groningen it also started to rain softly. In other words, perfect weather for a game in the De Langeleegte!

Around 18.45 we arrived in Veendam, in the north of the Netherlands, and after a not too subtle meal of shoarma, we bought a ticket for the Promenade stand for 12 euro. Nowadays De Langeleegte looks quite cosy, actually – the stadium reminded me of the old stadium of RBC or (the new one) of FC Zwolle. Probably because the match was the northern derby against SC Cambuur, there was a decent crowd. The stadium was half full, I think, with some 2.500 people, among them a good 200 from Leeuwarden (in the neighboring province of Frisia).

The game started like a storm and after 6 minutes it was already 1-0. After that the game deteriorated rapidly, increasingly resembling a pinball match. The BV Veendam clearly wasn’t able to do much more, but SC Cambuur had some decent players. At half time it was still only 1-0, despite the fact that Cambuur was the less bad team. The whole second half the visitors remained the better team, but they were only able to score in the 70th minute. 1-1 was also the final score.

Despite the bad football we enjoyed the pleasant provincial atmosphere in De Langeleegte. Secretly I was a bit disappointed that it had been so busy and buzzing, as I had hoped to see such a legendary game in front of 350 supporters and in the pouring rain, for which De Langeleegte was famous in the eighties. :-)