In 2008, Drogheda went into examinership, Ireland’s equivalent of administration, and were deducted 10 points in the league.<\/p>\n
Trabzonspor fans heard of their plight and sent letters to the club with cash inside.<\/p>\n
Two years later, their relationship was made official when they became sister clubs and there were plans for a ceremonial friendly in Dublin in 2013.<\/p>\n
“They travelled over here to play and there was a freak deluge of rain that fell within an hour of kick-off,” explains Wogan.<\/p>\n
“We had our staff in the turnstiles waiting to scan tickets in, but the game was deemed unplayable and Trabzonspor went home without playing the fixture.”<\/p>\n
So Thursday’s match has been a long time coming.<\/p>\n
When Drogheda announced the friendly on social media on 2 September, Trabzonspor fans reacted in their droves. The post on X has been seen well over half a million times.<\/p>\n
About 30% of Drogheda’s social media following is from Turkey. More than their share of followers from Ireland.<\/p>\n
And it is not just online where the crossover of fans is being seen.<\/p>\n
Trabzonspor shirts and flags are commonly spotted at Drogheda matches and Turkish fans sometimes visit the club during the week just to see the stadium.<\/p>\n
One Trabzonspor fan, Cafer Bektas, lives a couple of miles outside Drogheda and attends every game.<\/p>\n
When he first moved to the area, wearing a Trabzonspor jersey caught the attention of locals and got him discounts in shops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2008, Drogheda went into examinership, Ireland’s equivalent of administration, and were deducted 10 points in the league.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-788474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}