This game was a bit one-sided, as the scoreline suggests. Colorado did in fact score first, but Real then scored three in five minutes to turn it round and it was 4-1 before half time. A fifth was added in the second half and it could easily have been more. I felt sorry for the Colorado keeper, who frankly had a total mare: two of the Real goals came straight from his unforced fumbles, and he also conceded an own goal, albeit a deflection.
It was interesting to note how the matchday experience differs from what I'm used to. First there's the good stuff: you can drink beer in your seat, and while $9 for a big serving of draft Shock Top Belgian White isn't cheap, it's still pretty good value compared with what you pay for a small lukewarm plastic bottle of Fosters back in Sunderland.
There are also some things I could really do without, like the rather unsporting 'yellow cards' given out to the crowd for them to wave at the ref when they don't approve of a challenge. These cards are of course sponsored. Also the absence of spontaneous singing...it was pretty tame apart from one end of the stadium, which was filled with - how can I put this tactfully? - Mexicans, who banged the same drums and sang the same songs all through the game. I heard one ad hoc chorus of 'If You Hate Colorado, Clap Your Hands', but it wasn't convincing.
Then there's some things that are just plain weird: the National Anthem before the game; the visiting team being referred to as the 'guest' team; the way the home crowd responded to conceding the opening goal with loud gasps of dismay, rather than just muttering obscenities under its breath like we do back in Blighty.
Perhaps the weirdest bit was going into the gents pre-match to find a chap changing his baby daughter's nappy on a proper baby change table. If I live to be a hundred years old, that's one thing I'll never see in the male pit lane at the Stadium of Light.
Anyway, that's enough about football. I've decided to extend the Edd vs Food photographic saga: it will continue to reflect the most notable and photogenic meals I enjoy on my travels, but from now on there will also be a separate series called Edd vs Fast Food. I've decided to evaluate, for the benefit of my reading public, all of the main American fast food chains which most of you won't have sampled (ie those other than McDonalds, Burger King, Subway and KFC). I made a start with Wendy's and Jack In The Box in my New York City blog last year: my summary of the rest begins below.
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| The Rio Tinto Stadium (capacity 20,507). Already 5-1 at this point. |
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| Mountains in the distance behind the north-east corner. |
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| The stadium filling up as the sun goes down. |
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| Edd vs Food #17 Cheese enchilada, a Taco a la Iguana, a beef flauta topped with guacamole and sour cream, a chile relleno, a beef tostada and a side of refried beans. At the Red Iguana restaurant on North Temple Street. It's #1 in SLC on TripAdvisor...lunch queues forming outside at 11.30 on a Friday morning...deservedly so. |
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| Edd vs Fast Food #1 Denny's An inauspicious start to the series: mediocre food, surly service, and not at all cheap. The 'hash brown' was just a big pile of shredded potato, in widely varying degrees of fried-ness. One of those places you visit only when nothing else is available. |
