Peter White's Swedish Diary

TALK to professional footballers about travelling and they will tell you there are miles and "Swedish miles."

It's one of the reasons many of them groan when it's announced that the pre-season training camp will be held in Scandinavia.

Not that there's much wrong with a beautiful country where the people are helpful, friendly and all seem to speak excellent English.

But when you are stuck in one place, necessary for the work they have to do, and then have to journey back and forth to matches long, long distances away, it can get you down.

Sweden is so big and under-populated for its size, every inhabitant could have his own farm if he wanted.

Tough on the players, but they are simply doing a job. It's even tougher on the hardy fans who try never to miss a game.

Wherever Rovers are playing you'll find John Pittard. He was there again at Jonkoping - situated about a third of the way from Gothenburg to Stockholm - with regular travelling companion Steve Heyes.

This dynamic duo had flown to Copenhagen, travelled by ferry from the Danish capital to enter Sweden at Malmo, picked up a hire car and driven to Jonkoping. Then it was back to Gothenburg for the night before another trek - twice as long - to Norrkoping for this evening's games and a drive through the night back to Malmo to return the car.

Another ferry to Copenhagen will be followed by an early flight home tomorrow morning. Believe me that's some travelling and, amazingly, they are planning to come out again for Saturday's game in Copenhagen. But that one night stopover will seem like a local derby in comparison.

Incidentally, I shared a pint or two with John and Steve which leads me to a major gripe about Scandinavia - the price of a pint.

But let's not give the local breweries any ideas.

For the Rovers boss Roy Hodgson, Sweden is like home from home. He spent several successful years here as a manager and is known, liked and respected wherever he goes. Roy has been enjoying plenty of reunions and you could say the master was beaten by the apprentice when Rovers lost to IFK Gothenburg. For their manager Mats Jingblad was a player in Roy's title-winning team at Halmstad.

He also met up with Colin Toal, his former assistant manager who was coach of Norrkoping until recently.

Talking to Swedish journalists after Saturday's IFK-Rovers game they reckoned we had also witnessed a "first."

The kick off had to be put back 15 minutes with the official explanation being congestion of fans outside the ground.

With crowds at Jonkoping, a small club in lower leagues, normally counted in hundreds rather than thousands, they were delighted with an attendance of 4,650.

Many IFK fans made the trip from Gothenburg and there was also a sprinkling of Rovers shirts around the ground.

Many of them were worn by Swedes and also in evidence were tee shirts with the slogan: "I'm a Scandinavian Rover."

That's the power of TV.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.