Match reports

HNK Rijeka vs. HNK Hajduk Split sa, 18.02.06   The Croatian adria-derby, in the impressive Kantrida-stadium (situated straight between some heavy rocks just some steps in front of the open sea), in Rijeka. About 8 000 people came to see the first regular match after the winter break and the former German national team player, Fredi Bobic, who was unemployed since the end of last season and just signed a contract with Rijeka for the next 6 months. His mother is Croat and the club, which is 2nd in the table, put him in the squad to gather more public interest. In contrast to Rijeka, Hajduk had a disastrous season so far, it is doubtful they will reach the play-off-cut (6th place) in the table. After last weeks home-loss to arch-rival Dinamo Zagreb in the postponed derby from December, the board fired the third coach in just 18 games.   Due to television-wishes the game was been re-scheduled to Saturday night prime time at 20.10h. While the spectators watched the making of of paper choreography of Armada Rijeka, dealing with the flash and thunder-theme, more and more Torcida guys entered the away-sector stand. It took until halftime before the mob reached its final number of about 500 guys. The police stopped some busses on the open road, so they came late. Armada during that time created a very good atmosphere, the special acoustic (singing against voice-reflecting stone-walls) made it even better. Also they put up a very dense scarves-up show. In the 2nd halftime the chanting became more intensive, both groups at their best. Torcida made a choreography from blue and red papers and a small flag plus the message "we will be Torcida forever!". Later they showed a banner with protest message against the Hajduk-board, forcing them to leave. Like the tradition wants it, in 60th minute armada blew up quite some torches in addiction to waving flags in their bloc. The bright burning torches were thrown to the running track, the fire fighters had to intervene.   When nobody counted on it anymore, Rijeka scored a goal in the 89th minute to finally win the match right before the final whistle. People now were totally freaking out since Hajduk is the main rival for Rijeka because of geographical reasons. After the match everything was calm, police had it under control. It also seemed that not ust some of the torcida-guys were under drugs, booze and marijuana. They made some curious/senseless stuff during the game like always changing the fence-flags (most of them and on the other site looked very good, stylish designed material) in their position or even try to destroy them despite it were their own. Maybe it's some internal trouble in the group.... Armada later celebrated the victory in the city. Thanks to Markus(Germany) for this report!