Finnish Veikkausliiga
Tapiolan Urheilupuisto, Espoo
Admission: 5 euros
Programme: Free
Attendance: 2038
Rating: 4
For the first game during my stay in Helsinki and Tallinn, I headed to the far western suburbs of the Helsinki region for what threatened to be the trickiest ground to get to on my itinerary, given that the Tapiolan Urheilupuisto, home ground of FC Honka of the Veikkausliiga (the top league in Finland) is located over four miles away from the nearest train stations, and in deepest suburbia, not close to any town centre or landmark, which would make catching a bus there a challenge. Officially, the team's home town is Espoo, which is rather strange as the ground is about as far away from central Espoo as central Helsinki. Tapiola is actually the district that the ground is located in. In the end, I decided to catch a train for the 25 minute train journey from Helsinki to Kauniainen, from where the pleasant walk took around an hour and a half.
On arrival at the ground, I noticed what must be a rare aspect of a professional top-flight European ground - it is entirely temporary, with not one permanent structure in place. The club has taken one pitch of many on the complex and placed temporary looking stands along either length of the pitch, complete with tarpaulin-type cover, and with shallow wooden terrace steps behind both goals with no cover. Even with the temporary nature of the ground - which actually isn't temporary in that the ground has been like this for some years and plans to relocate to a bigger stadium still very much in their infancy - the capacity is 6,000, which is more than sufficient for accommodating fans here.
I bought my ticket for this game online through the club's website, for the bargain price of €5 for a standing ticket behind a goal, which curiously wasn't scanned and so presumably one could print off several copies of an e-ticket for friends to use - but trust is a significant and pleasing feature of the Finnish culture, which very rarely seems to be abused. 4 page glossy colour programmes were handed out on entry, providing the essential team and league standings info.
This game was between the second and third placed teams in the Veikkausliiga, with FC Honka one point better off than today's opponents from Kuopio, KuPS, and six points behind the leaders, HJK Helsinki with four games left in the league after this one.
KuPS started off this game in the ascendancy, and it was little surprise when they opened the scoring on 12 minutes through Dudu. That was about as it good as it got for the visitors though, as FC Honka equalised on 28 minutes through Rasmus Schuller. Despite reasonable chances for both sides, the scores remained level at half time. Within 4 minutes of the restart, Nicholas Otaru gave Honka a lead, a lead which they fairly comfortably held on to for the remainder of the game, indeed, they squandered several reasonable chances to increase their lead, whilst KuPS were limited in their ventures into the penalty area. This was a reasonably enjoyable game, although there was very little atmosphere generated throughout the game which was disappointing considering this was a game between two high fliers in the league. Considering it was now night-time, I chose the easier option in returning to central Helsinki by bus, which stops very close to the ground.
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