Friday the 6th of August 2012, a day of real footy and a date that goes down in history for footy in Stockholm and Sweden.

The match Södermalm Blues V’s Norrtälje Dockers was originally scheduled to be played at rugby fields at Årstafället. However the stalwart of the Södermalm Football Club and all round club legend, Larry Hagberg and co. had other ideas.

What Larry went and did was unheard of. He booked The J. That is right folks, booking of venue has been a mammoth challenge for SAFF this year, however, Larry managed to sneak one past the goalie so to speak. Over the last 6 months unbeknownst to the rest of the footballing world in Sweden the Södermalm club built their own full size ground as the Skarpnäck Sportfält. The ground is located in the south of Stockholm and is now officially known as the J.C.G or simple The J!

To make the day even more special, both teams decided to play 12 a side footy! That is right folks! SAFF has been a 9 a side competition since its re-inception in 2007, however due to the amount of players that were present for the opener at The J, and the size of the field, 135m x 100m, the 2 clubs decided it was time to step up and play 12 a side footy! Again a first in the SAFF League.

The games starting time was delay several minutes due to some technical difficulties with the ball backing net, but once that was overcome we were on for the coin toss.

On hand for the opening presentation was the Australian Ambassador to Sweden, Paul Stephens. Paul happened to be driving past at the time and saw the permanent goal Posts and decided to see what the fuss was about. Jordo saw that Paul had a Krona on hand and was then to offer the first ever coin toss to him.

Söder won the toss and decided to kick to the city end. The game started in a flurry with the race to kick the first ever game goal at The J. Around the 3^rd minute mark of the game Natis Johansson claimed the crown with a mongrel kick of the side of his boot which managed to roll thru for a major.

Söder were strong the first half with great passages of play starting in defense with Lethal Larry, Kaj and Berger linking up with Natis, Mick and Max Larsson and some good conversion by Chris Tancredi and Brad Stålhult gave the Södermalm team a 10 goal break at the half time break. John murphy was at it again back chatting umpire Jordan and he was threatened with a yellow card and a 25m penalty. This was enough for Coach Stephens who offer Murphy the showers at half time making history in being the first Australian footballer to shower at The J.

Norrtälje started strong in the second half kicking the first 2 goals against the run of play, lead by the 3 Ryans; Tucker, Kingsley and new recruit Ryan Smith. Kingsley had some trouble finding the ground and arrived prior to half time, just in time to sign on the team sheet. “ I went down to Årstafältet and they wanted me to fill in for the Exiles Rugby, but I explained to them in my South Australian mother tongue that Norrtälje is more appealing than being a bum sniffer” Kingsley said explaining to Christian Nilsson.

Norrtälje tried to trick Söder by taking one of the Stephens twins onto their team in the last quarter. In fact it fooled everyone except Bonecrusher and Bonecrusher’s brother. No one knew which one was which and who was on their teams, it was chaos. So as you can imagine, Stephens dominated the quarter with the most possessions.

Special mention should be made to Söder’s new recruit. Söder introduced Bluey Svensson to his first game for the club, starting at full forward in the 3^rd quarter, as seen on Facebook, he played some good passages of play but faded towards the end of the match. Bluey has only been to a handful of trainings, however he showed some real potential.  “I had planned to put Bluey on in the second half and use his fresh legs for speed and hoping he would kick a few goals, he run out of puff sooner than I had thought, I guess he has to get his mind off the footy trip and back into his training” explained Coach Stephens

In the last quarter Albert Bergström and Henke started to get on top of the Söder boys in the ruck.  Max Skarlen, Buster and Joel Sund were leading the strong finish for the Dockers. Söder moved Larry Hagberg up front to kick some goals however the pressure from Norrtälje was immense.  Ivan Rexed repeatedly kicked out of bounds on the full and Larry managed to be the first to hit the goal post.

The game end with a free kick to Norrtälje’s Erik Lindqvist, then a 25m penalty against Söder which brought Erik down inside the 40 meter arc where he kicked truly to finish on a high note!!

The final scores remain unknown as usual, however I can say Söder won by about 15 goals.

After the match and ecstatic Larry Hagberg went on record saying “I am just so happy Jordo, it was finally fantastic to play real footy on a real ground!, it is so much better than 9 a side and it is on a real field !! We need to learn to kick longer and use the open spaces. I am not looking forward to going back to play 9 a side on a rugby field and to use the Exiles’ FILTHY change rooms.”

All the players enjoyed the facilities at THE J and we thank Anders Sköld and his crew from Stockholm Stad for the use of their wonderful facilities.

It was prefect conditions for the first game at The J and the crowd was approximately 25 people and 2 dogs.

In other results Solna won over Årsta by forfeit.