Evening Entertainment....... It's been an interesting feature of the last 5 weeks that there have been no long duration tours to Thailand's provinces. This is because I've been tied down in Bangkok for a lot of this time. However, there have been a more than usual number of day trips to partially compensate. For the second day in a row, we are out traveling again although there's just one location to head for, for some evening entertainment. We don't leave until gone 5:00pm but we have less than thirty kilometres to travel but traffic is expected to be heavy.
BG Stadium....... BG Stadium is home to BG Pathum United Football Club, a Thai professional football club based in Thanyaburi, Pathum Thani province and is managed by the BG Sports Company Limited which is a subsidiary of Bangkok Glass Public Company Limited. BG Pathum United participates in the Thai League 1 also known as the Thai Premier League. The nickname of BGPU, 'The Rabbits', derives from the Chinese zodiac of the first club president, Pavin Bhirombhakdi who was born in The Year of the Rabbit.
Our arrival here adds one more venue to a growing list of football stadiums we've visited. However, our arrival at an unfamiliar location comes at a price, each stadium seemingly having characteristics of their own. To offset this, we try to arrive in plenty of time but the heavy traffic on the Rangsit to Nakhon Nayok Road doesn't help adding a good 20 minutes to the journey. Then there are hurdles to jump over. The first thing is to locate a ticket booth but there isn't one. What? Well, hi-tech seems to be taking over the world right now. All tickets are now purchased online. There are no cash booths anymore at BG Stadium. This considerably delays matters since we must work out how to buy our tickets by visiting customer services. Okay that done we now have to concentrate on something to eat and again we're in unfamiliar territory. There is a sort of food court system of prepayment in operation but instead of getting prepayment cards they use paper slips. Now you can imagine this takes even more time as we queue for the prepayment vouchers. By the time we order and sit down for some food it's close to kick off. Forcing food down is not the best thing to do and then must find our stand. Well, every stadium has its own design characteristics but here they sure don't make it easy. Due to unfamiliarity, we have chosen the wrong stand, one of the most awkward to reach in the stadium. The characteristics of this stadium require slim and tall three-tear stands. Our stand is on one of the higher levels which requires a crazy number of steps to reach. Under the circumstances we do well to get seated just 6 minutes after kick off.
BG Pathum United FC v Trat FC....... Now just let's concentrate on the game. Pathom is in a good position near the top of the league table while Trat occupies mid-table. According to the form book Pathum should win this game and it's not long before their class tells. A cutback from a goal line finds No. 7, Brazilian Danilo who nods in at the far post. More pain for Trat is inflicted in the 39th minutes when a goal mouth scramble sees Chenrop Samphaodi somehow find the net. It's 2 : 0 to the home team at half-time as a jubilant crowd is well happy with their team's dominance. Trat need to re-group having shown nothing in this game so far.
The second half produces much the same and Pathum go further ahead in the 63rd minute when Chanathip Songkrasin unmarked fires low inside the left-hand post from inside the penalty box. Trat deserve nothing from this game but are awarded a penalty which after a VAR review is changed to a free kick outside the box. The 3 : 0 result puts Pathum temporarily on top of the league. The attendance is 5,601 which is above average for this league. It's remarkable that TPL attendances are so low considering the nation's appetite for football. For this game I paid just 140 baht. As mentioned, I try to get to as many stadiums as I can but if I must select a team to support BG Pathum's stadium is convenient. So now we leave the rabbits alone and head back to Bang Khen far more quickly than we arrived making it back well before 10pm.