Ängelholm is a bit of my second hometown. Have spent every summer in my entire 66-year-old life just over a mile out of town. Mom and Dad came there as early as 1950. Mom was the head of the children’s colony. We stayed there.
I remember when the legendary pollen king, Gösta Carlsson, sowed the seeds for the club that would eventually become hockey semifinalists in the SHL 55 years later. Rögle Bandy Club, yes, it was a bandy club from the beginning, and when the pollen king in the mid 60’s decided to make a big bet, they went all the way up in the elite.
He recruited the Canadian Des Moroney, he supplemented with the Canadian goalkeeper Tom Haugh, and hit the whole establishment with Sweden’s biggest hockey star at the time, Ulf Sterner.
Pollenkungen built Vegeholm’s ice stadium also, the only seventh indoor hall in Sweden. Rögle has gone up and down in the series system a number of times, this year they can go all the way. I have watched their TV matches. It is hockey fever in Ängelholm. No one is allowed to go and look. Mighty tragedy.
Now Gösta Carlsson bought himself a place in the sun with the help of money, but in the shadow of today’s billion-dollar roll in sports, one must well consider Gösta’s contribution as highly unassuming.
Gösta has been a beekeeper since childhood, interested in pollen and pollination – but it was only after he encountered a UFO on May 18, 1946, down by the shores of Skälderviken, that the pollen fell down. It’s a fantastic story, Gösta Carlsson maintained until his death in 2003 that his UFO history was one hundred percent true – he also built a UFO monument in 1972 in memory of his encounter with the aliens, it remains in the Siberian forest a bit outside Ängelholm. Go there.
I do not know why hockey feels even more stone-dead than football without its audience, and the play-off and semi-final series without people is almost more than you can handle. The TV broadcasts are like diluted long broth. And you do not understand a shit of how the Public Health Agency reasons. In Stockholm, I trot into Ica and Willys in the middle of the city and it is crowded with people, at five or six o’clock it can be difficult to get to the shops. The outdoor cafes are well attended, indoors the mood is high towards eight o’clock.
If you allowed people in the Friends arena to the same extent as you allow people to go shopping, well then you could take in 10,000. AIK would surely settle for 7,000-8,000. The sports park in Norrköping would house 4,000-5,000 at a very competent, safe distance from each other; the same applies to Borås, Gothenburg, Malmö, Halmstad, Örebro. We stand outdoors, we sit at a safe distance – I am convinced that the supporters would take one hundred percent responsibility for how they entered, and left, the arena. In organized order.
By the way, how did you get to eight spectators per match? They have no knowledge of sports and the conditions of sports. They strain mosquitoes and swallow camels. Who do they have as advisors and consultants in the matter? You have to take care of yourself, but if Anders Tegnell has the slightest ball sense, I will… I do not know what (by the way, does he look like he ever took a lyre?).
Abandonment is the word of the month.
The only thing that enlivened lately the Super League reactions, the mockery, the anger, the consumer power – “We want our club back” chanted the Chelsea fans. And of course you can think that they are about 30 years too late, but the sinner will wake up late and I felt tremendous joy over the power of the protest.
They will return of course, soon, with JP Morgan in the back and a good much sharper and smarter proposal. And even more TV money. It’s just a matter of continuing to build barricades, get organized, and gather strength. Forward!
Read more sports in TV chronicles by Johan Croneman:
The cracks in the facade make the portrait of Tumba strong
How good Pelé was is impossible to answer – the question is what he was
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