| A brief history of SK Football Club | |
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| Topic Started: Feb 18 2009, 02:32 PM (156 Views) | |
| dalpaengi | Feb 18 2009, 02:32 PM Post #1 |
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This may end up being rather long-winded as I have a tendency to ramble on a bit too much when I really should be much more succinct and to the point, but I'll try and put the whole Bucheon situation into context so AFC Wimbledon fans can get a better idea of what went on. Back in the early 1980s, when South Korea was beginning to rapidly develop as a country, it was decided by the powers-that-be that the general population would quite like to have a few professional sports leagues to enjoy. They created a baseball league in 1982 and pencilled in the creation of a football league for 1983. As the leagues were developing in such a fashion, it required investment from major corporations to actually get the teams off the ground, and the very first season of the Korean league began with five teams - Daewoo (the car manufacturer), POSCO (the national steel company), Kookmin Bank (a bank, obviously), Hallelujah (churchy-types) and Yukong Elephants (Yukong were a whopping great corporation involved in doing absolutely everything). The last club there is the important one for this  As it was essentially a giant circus designed as entertainment for the general population, the league toured around the country each weekend and games were played in different cities - Seoul one weekend for two rounds of fixtures, then off to Suwon the following week for some more, Daejeon next, etc. That went on for a fair few years and a number of other corporations, notably LG and Hyundai, got in on the fun of operating teams in the league. By the late 1980s the teams had found a few home cities or areas to be based in for training purposes and the like, but the league still continued to tour the country more often than not. Yukong's team base was in the city of Incheon on the west coast of Korea and very close to Seoul. In 1990 POSCO completed construction of the first football-specific stadium in the country right in the heart of their giant steelworks in the city of Pohang, and gradually the other teams started to play the majority of their home games out of one city. Daewoo Royals became associated with Busan, Hyundai Horang-i with Ulsan, and three teams decided to call Seoul home. Those three were LG Cheetahs, Ilhwa Chunma (owned by the Moonies) and Yukong Elephants who were all playing at Seoul's Dongdaemun Stadium, then the home of the national team. League membership had settled at six clubs by the early 1990s, but in 1994 a new team called Chonbuk Buffalo joined the league. Although they were corporately-funded, they were the first team to adopt a geographical location in their team name, named after North Jeolla province - an English equivalent would be a team called West Midlands United or Yorkshire and the Humber Rovers. Buffalo lasted just one season before folding, but they were replaced in 1995 by two new teams: Chonbuk Hyundai Motors, a replacement side from the same region funded by Hyundai, and Chunnam Dragons, named after and based in South Jeolla province. Samsung were also keen on getting their own football team off the ground, and they spent 1995 setting things up. They took a different approach by specifically stating they would create their team in the city of Suwon and began forging local links right from the outset before Suwon Samsung Bluewings were to begin competing in 1996. The K-League liked the sound of this whole localisation malarkey, and decided that all the K-League clubs should adopt local identities in their team names and forge stronger links with the communities where they were based before the 1996 season started. The Japanese had done this from the beginning of the J-League in 1993, even going so far as to ban corporations from using their corporate IDs in team names. They then, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the Seoul-based teams would have far too much of an unfair advantage over teams based elsewhere in the country owing to the population of the capital, and that the three teams in the city would have to relocate with immediate effect. LG decided to move their team the short distance down to Anyang to become Anyang LG Cheetahs, the Moonies shunted their team a wee bit further afield to Cheonan to become Cheonan Ilhwa Chunma and Yukong decided to relocate to Bucheon, just to the west of the capital, and become Bucheon Yukong. The one teeny tiny problem with that though was that there was no stadium in the city of Bucheon in 1996, so they were able to continue playing in the capital at Mok-dong stadium in west Seoul until one was built. So that takes us from the birth of Yukong Elephants in 1983 through to their forced move out of the capital by the K-League in 1996. |
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| dalpaengi | Feb 18 2009, 02:59 PM Post #2 |
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Part 2 By mid-1997, the Yukong corporation changed their name to SK Group and so the football club became known as Bucheon SK, though it was still playing in Seoul and awaiting the construction of the Bucheon Leports stadium in the city of Bucheon. At some point in 1999, the K-League decided that all clubs had to be playing in home venues that had floodlights in order to play night football. This was fine for all clubs except Ilhwa Chunma, who were playing in a stadium down in Cheonan that didn't have floodlights. As the Cheonan city government were in the middle of building a brand new sports complex across the city they didn't fancy forking out for temporary lighting at the older venue, and Ilhwa Chunma didn't want to pay up either. The solution - move cities. They left Cheonan at the end of 1999 and from 2000 became Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma. Bucheon SK finally got to play in the city of Bucheon from the 2001 season as the Leports stadium was finally finished. Of course, before all this came about Korea had been awarded joint-hosting of the 2002 FIFA World Cup and they had to come up with ten new stadiums as their part of the plan. A number of city governments bid to have stadiums built in their cities, and it was generally agreed that they would be built in places that either had teams currently based there or that were willing to create teams along a similar model to Daejeon Citizen, the first non-corporate team in the league created in 1997. Daejeon, Busan, Suwon, Ulsan and Jeonju (city of Chonbuk Hyundai Motors) all had existing K-League member teams playing in their cities so they were picked for venues, and Daegu, Incheon, Seoul, Jeju and Gwangju all committed to getting their own teams off the ground so World Cup venues were built there. Daegu created their own team and joined the K-League in 2003 and the Gwangju WC stadium entered use at the same time as the military side Sangmu joined up and played there. Incheon United joined the league in 2004 and that meant that eight of the ten World Cup venues were in use - the two unused venues were the Seoul World Cup stadium and Seogwipo World Cup stadium on the island of Jeju, interestingly enough the two World Cup stadiums at the furthest distance apart in the country. Seoul City Hall had planned to create a football club to play in the capital, but the KFA were looking to pass off $15m of their construction fees for the Seoul WC venue onto any teams that wanted to play in the capital. Perhaps understandably the city government didn't fancy paying that on top of the near-$20m fees required to actually join the league so they decided against creating a club. During 2003 the K-League then said they'd consider letting two teams play in the capital if they split the $15m two ways but even then no other corporation seemed willing to step in and back a brand new club. That's when the K-League invited current member clubs to apply to move to the capital with LG and Daewoo (by this time the team was operated by a subsiduary and called Busan I'cons) bidding to relocate. As it was, LG's bid was accepted in late 2003 and so they moved their team the short distance from Anyang and back to the capital to become FC Seoul. This pissed off football fans in the country no end and all sorts of protests were aimed at the league, LG and the new club. Anyang fans tried to get a team off the ground to join the second division, and football fans in Seoul worked at getting their own club together but ran into massive hurdles. Anyway, back to Bucheon SK, who had become firmly rooted to the bottom of the K-League around 2003 and 2004. The SK Group were cutting funding at a massive rate in order to save their organisation as a whole, and cutting spending on such frivilous things as sports teams seemed to be the place to do that. As investment dropped, performances and crowds dropped and then SK bemoaned the fact that no-one was turning up whilst the fans suggested that was because they weren't investing. A bit of a vicious circle, but SK said they remained committed to working things out and improving the side. Ironically enough they enjoyed a much better 2005 season, missing out on the championship playoffs in the final minutes of the season, but behind the scenes they were working on a plan to revitalise the team. That plan involved relocating the team 450km south to the island of Jeju, taking up residence at the Seogwipo World Cup stadium and becoming Jeju United. All this was done secretly and the first hint that anything was going to happen came when the team owner stood at the Seogwipo stadium about a month before the 2006 season and said "ta-da!". So that's that - SK continue to operate their team on the island of Jeju but, three seasons on, it hasn't really provided the massive shot in the arm the team needed. They finished fourth overall in their final season in Bucheon, whereas they came 13th in 2006, 11th in 2007 and 10th in 2008. Average attendances are effectively the same, if one discounts the ridiculously high opening-day attendances that every single club gets, and have dipped into three figures on several occasions. Where next? |
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5:32 AM Nov 23
