Saturday’s opening day games saw FOUR away wins, three of them – Yamagata, Hiroshima and Niigata – could definitely be called shocks. The other, Gamba’s destruction of JEF, probably expected….. SIX away goals for Montedio must be the performance, and shock of the day! More games on Sunday…Yokohama F Marinos 2-4 Sanfrecce Hiroshima (Nissan 23,601)F.C.Tokyo 1-4 Albirex Niigata (Ajinomoto 27,568)Nagoya Grampus 3-2 Oita Trinita (Toyota 25,395)JEF United Chiba 0-3 Gamba Osaka (Fukuda 17,916)Kashima Antlers 2-0 Urawa Reds (Kashima 37,878)Kawasaki Frontale 1-1 Kashiwa Reysol (Todoroki 17,841)Jubilo Iwata 2-6 Montedio Yamagata (Yamaha 12,141)

Just a quickie… have just seen the replay of Koroki’s goal… finally we got the correct angle to see if it was offside…. but, UNBELIEVABLE, it was such a close up so that you could not see the other players in the frame – to me that proves it WAS offside and the TV coverage intentionally did that! PATHETIC – time to do something about this – watch this space. If anyone out there has a recording of that first goal, feel free to let me know and send it to me!

Here we go, the 2nd half as it happens…By the way, Antlers started with (4-4-2): Sogohata in goal, Uchida, Inoha, Iwamasa, Araiba across the back. Motoyama (no, really!), Aoki, Danilo and Nozawa in the middle.Koroki and Marquinhos up front.

Now, it’s not that it was offside that worries me, everyone makes mistakes! What really irritates me is that the commentary team do not even consider it worth a look and, I believe it’s not because they’re not allowed to diss the referees on air (which IS true) but that they haven’t even considered the possibility because the y DON’T KNOW THE RULES!! Sad! Last year’s Xerox Super Cup was a copy (!!) of this one… mistakes being glossed over – hope this is not a similar game and another year of ignorance in the J.League!

I’ll be updating this every few seconds with my “commentary”.. please excuse any typos, I’m doing it as I watch!!

It’s Kashima Antlers vs. Gamba Osaka…..

900 word article prepared for Kansai Time Out, April edition.

Thanks to Oddbjorn in Norway for keeping me up to date on rumours…. after a lot of travelling and trials at various clubs in various countries (often detailed on TV in Japan as a kind of reality TV trip!), Daigo Kobayashi has joined Stab

Now’s your chance to take a trip to Tochigi, Kumamoto, Kusatsu, Gifu, Okayama… what are you waiting for?!

Here are the J1 fixtures for 2009… start planning that trip to Chiba, Kashiwa, Oita, and more!