Premier League football (but not the one you're thinking)

So we decided to go and watch the football. Most of the time if you say this in Kenya it means go down to the pub and watch the Arsenal, Chelsea or Man U game, but this time we went to watch the Kenyan Premier League (KPL). Kenyan football crowds have not had the best press in the last year or so, with a few riots and people being crushed by crowds (not unfamiliar for those who remember football in the eighties). A former volunteer who had been to watch a KPL game said it was 'hell'.

Undeterred we decided to watch Mathare United vs Karaturi and were more than pleasantly surprised. No crowd trouble and plenty of space, albeit this is early in the season and the game wasn't to be a championship decider.

Some of us had decided to support Mathare United. The selection of clubs to support in the KPL can be rather delicate, with some teams drawn on ethnic lines such as AFC Leopards (a Luhya team) and Gor Mahia (a Luo team) with others being company teams, such as Tusker FC (the beer), KCB (a bank), Mumias (a sugar company).

Mathare seemed an uncontroversial choice and are an interesting club. Their players are drawn exclusively from the slums. The players are contractually obligated to do a set amount of community work every month and are trained AIDS prevention workers. Mathare United also has a youth organisation, Mathare Youth Sports Association, whose Hope for Sport centre was used for KAIH's Fun Day just a few weeks ago.

MYSA is a very successful organisation and acts as a feeder club for the whole league with two of their most successful graduates playing European Champions League this season (Dennis Oliech at Auxerre and Macdonald Mariga at Inter Milan).

MYSA was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and I don't think that's an award Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho or Arsene Wenger will be up for any time soon.

Having paid our money and made our choice, we got VIP tickets for the princely sum of 400Ksh (or about £3) and took our seats, concrete steps, in the stands. We couldn't really tell what made our tickets VIP, although the chairman of Mathare United, Bob Munro, came along, shook our hands and invited us to sit with him:

Left to right: VSO volunteers: Simon, Gaz, Jo, Allys with me sat next to Bob Munro

Sadly, Bob hadn't brought the prawn sandwiches or pinot grigio but he did make good company for watching his team play.

Mathare United didn't bring much in the way of support to the match but they didn't have some of their MYSA players, the U-12s boys and girls teams, in attendance, and they were in good voice.

And the youth team had plenty to cheer about as their team were 3-0 by half time, with pacey winger, Innocent Mutiso, creating most of the chances.

Mathare United celebrating their second goal

The game finished 3-0 but our day was not yet done, as it was a double-header at City Stadium that day with AFC Leopards vs KCB coming straight after the Mathare game. As I mentioned AFC Leopards are a Luhya team and very well supported, with a mascot and a band:

AFC Leopards' mascot getting his groove on

This was a much more even and open contest, plenty of missed opportunities on both sides but we were minded by Bob's parting advice 'if Leopards go down, leave before the final whistle'. When KCB scored early in the second half, the Leopards fans started to take umbrage with the ref and the opposition players, although the band and mascot didn't notice the goal and continued singing and dancing. We took our cue and left before we became a target of the Leopards fans' ire.

It was a good day's football and worth supporting; if Kenyan's supported the KPL as much as they support the English Premier League, it would be among the best supported leagues in the world.