Tampere United supporters got a nice belated Christmas present today as the club announced that a friendly against the second team of HIFK has been arranged. It will be played away in Helsinki on January 25th, and the supporters will of course ride a bus to the match. As of right now, about 20 people have already signed up for the trip. The match will be played late in the evening on a Friday night, which seems quite ideal for supporters who’ll want to make the most out of the trip. Even better, the home team expects that their supporter group Stadin Kingit will be there in numbers too. Should be a great night!

Competitively speaking the friendly is a good one for TamU-K. HIFK/2 plays in Nelonen (fifth tier) and can be expected to be a good test for us in preparation for the start of our competitive season in the Finnish Cup. As far as I have understood HIFK/2 is a very competitive team. It is a feeder for the club’s first team, who got relegated to Kakkonen (third tier) at the end of last season. Therefore the assumption has to be that HIFK/2 is the better team and the favorites to win the friendly.

And since I mentioned the Finnish Cup, I should say that there is still no word on when our first round match will be played. The club has of course been in contact with the FA’s Tampere district office, who are in charge of assigning the date and venue for the match. However, it seems that they are still working on digesting their Christmas ham. The match as well as the possible second round match has to be played by February 17th, so options are quickly running out, but it seems that not many others than the clubs involved care much about this. The best guess right now is a late kickoff on a weekday, but we shall see.

Lastly, I want to briefly recap our opponents history, because it is quite respectable. Founded in 1897, HIFK is one of the oldest clubs in any sport in Finland. Even though the club is nowadays best known for their ice hockey department, their football department actually has a longer history. It was started in 1907, and in 1930 when the Finnish championship was contested in a league format for the first time, HIFK were the winners. Previously they had been Finnish championship runners-up in the cup format four times (1909, 1912, 1928, 1929). After their first championship in 1930 they went on to win six additional Finnish championships (1931, 1933, 1937, 1947, 1959, 1961). In 1971 they still finished second in the league, but the following year they got relegated and have since then not returned to the top division. The club has nevertheless been playing competitive football all along, and has even played a few seasons in the second tier league on a couple of different occasions.

One day we will move beyond hundred years of history too. And when that happens, I bet we too will have seven Finnish championships. But let’s start with a great training match hosted by HIFK.