Or should I say North Carolina Tar Heels 2-1 Duke Blue Devils? That just feels wrong to me as an English football fan. I'm not doing a review of my actual time at UNC yet. A lot's happened and I think a larger review is needed. Oh also I'm mostly using English spellings for this post.
So! First time inside a stadium during my exchange at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (still a mouthful). I say "inside a stadium", because I did actually go to a "field hockey", or as I like to call it, "hockey" game with a friend, but just watched from the grass next to the stadium. Which is honestly cool that I can do that, to be honest. This is a review of the men's football match (just not gonna say soccer sorry) game but I feel necessary context is needed for my (mostly English) readers. UNC is sporty, and the American football stadium (by far the most impressive, Kenan Stadium) and the hockey stadium (Karen Shelton Stadium) are within 5 minutes walk of me, and the football stadium (Dorrance Field) is under 10 minutes from me. Basketball games are not being played yet, but I have a feeling I should go when they start on behalf of my basketball-loving dad.
So it was actually free to get tickets, as all games are that aren't American football or basketball are for students, which is cool enough in itself. I'm slightly ashamed to admit Dorrance Field is only the fourth football ground I have been to, the others being Wembley Stadium, Stamford Bridge (the less said about the state of Chelsea right now the better), and the other being The Creek, home of the mighty Bristol Manor Farm, which my friend brought me to and which I will return to as soon as the first game of 2024 takes place. Dorrance Field is a nice medium between The Creek and Stamford Bridge.
It's a bit more "cultural", I think, to go to any sports game in America than in the UK. That's vague. Ie it's like a day out, you're not even necessarily going to support your team. I get there's people in the UK that do that, but it feels a bit more like an event made for anyone rather than for a fan of that sport specifically. They give you little team sheets that are free rather than extortionate programmes, flags are provided rather than you having to bring them, food is...food is still extortionate, actually. Definitely more hot dogs and popcorn vibes than a matchday pie and some beer, which I...still don't do, queues are too long!!
So it's a day for anyone. Easily attached as I am, though, I got invested in the Tar Heels pretty quickly. I won't chant, though. It's horrible for my social anxiety if a man with the loudest voice I've ever heard yells out "TAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRR!!"...and I'm supposed to yell out "HEEEEEEEELLLLLLSS!" back. No sir, no thank you. My friend and I were also both thoroughly disappointed that there were no anti-Tottenham chants (I'm kidding, but also not). I also don't like the announcer saying the first name of a player at UNC for us to say their surname, because what if they have a hard to pronounce name?? *crickets chirping*
The game was very stop-start, meaning not a load of action but plenty of drama. Delayed to Sunday afternoon because of rain on Saturday evening, the game still managed to have a stormy atmosphere. (I was really proud of that one it was very Peter Drury-esque. If you don't know who that is, he's like if Shakespeare was a football commentator. Basically I'm Shakespeare.) I genuinely lost track of how many players were on yellow cards, I feel like half the players got booked because there ended up being like 24 fouls and a good portion of them were yellow cards. Oh, and there were some reds. I'll get to that.
(Edit: according to the Daily Tar Heel match report, which I beat to writing a review for obvious reasons, there were 15 yellows in the game, which would actually be astronomically rare in mainstream football but in this match substitutes came off and on again, so more than 22 players were used.)
A mixup between goalkeeper and defender slipped Duke in for an early lead, but UNC quickly got a brilliant equaliser from Andrew Czech, with what I thought felt like one of the most beautifully curled shots I've ever seen into the top right, or top bins as we say. I don't say that. It sounds weird coming out of my mouth. Or laptop, I guess. Tar Heels no.11 Quenzi Huerman gave the Tar Heels their ultimate winner after Duke suffered their own mixup in defence. (I genuinely can't remember if the score was 1-1 or 2-1 when this next bit happened, and I can't find it online I'm so sorry guys this is so unprofessional. Or, more unprofessional than usual.) But Duke coach John Kerr, protesting a yellow card for one of his players, started raging (and I mean raging) at the referee out of his technical area, so got a yellow. Continuing to rage, he got another yellow, and on his way out of the arena, he got some waves from the UNC fans. Classic stuff.
Huerman who scored that goal to take the lead for the Tar Heels, also got sent off for a second yellow card which obviously-in a combination of school spirit, mob mentality and the overall nature of football fans-resulted in a roar of outrage from the Carolina faithful (is that a thing?)..but like, come on. He got the first yellow for lobbing the ball into the crowd, which admittedly a lot of refs would let go but you can't really complain about a booking there, and the second I saw very clearly-not intentional at all, but his foot went over the top of the ball, late challenge, definite yellow. So despite Duke not having a coach-oh, incidentally, one English-esque football chant did pop up, by which I mean to target the other team ("where's your coach at?" Brilliant.) Despite Duke not having a coach, the Tar Heels had the player deficit for the closing minutes. But they managed to close it out, just.
At the end with less than two minutes to spare there was a legitimately insane scramble where a shot was blocked, then keeper Andrew Cordes made up for his mistake in the first half with an incredible save (one of four on his first start of the season), only for it to go straight to Duke who hit the bar and finally a free kick was awarded to the Tar Heels. You could literally feel the crowd catch its breath, because everyone could see it and that kind of play feels frantic enough watching on TV, I've genuinely never seen that kind of scramble live before so the adrenaline you get from seeing it is brilliant. And it felt great when the players rushed over to jump for joy at beating Duke, because this seems to be the main point of Chapel Hill's existence. Kidding! Sort of. It felt very passionate, is what I mean.
It's great getting invested in football, my aforementioned friend who brought me to a couple Bristol Manor Farm games is of the opinion that it's always more fun to watch a football game when you can get invested in it, and as such he always sides with one team no matter who's playing. So I'd never seen UNC play football (my football) before, but they were playing their biggest rivals and put in a solid shift and got a deserved win, so I guess now I'm a die-hard fan. School spirit I guess! Or maybe I'm still just a sucker for an exciting football match. Some things don't change nearly 5000 miles from home. My predictability is one of them:)))
Credit for image: https://goheels.com/news/2023/9/24/mens-soccer-defeats-no-11-duke-sunday-afternoon.aspx
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