Olly Huddlestone spreads the Crawley Town word on his travels
When Reds’ fan Olly Huddlestone left to go travelling a few weeks ago we gave him a Crawley Town shirt and told him to spread the gospel about the club to as many football fans in other parts of the world as he could.
Here's his latest update from Bali...
Bali, what a place! After struggling to find football in Hong Kong and Malaysia it took me just five minutes to spot a sports bar with multiple TV screens showing different matches.
A lot of the pubs were dominated by Aussie rules as Eastern Australia met the West in the semis, but lucky they all finished just in time for the real football to kick off.
Everywhere you looked the place was crawling with football tops, mostly replicas of course, but luckily no dodgy Reds shirts being sold for cheap - good news for our shirt suppliers Puma!
As I walked up and down Kuta beach looking for surfing lessons I bumped in to an Indonesian man who was wearing a Bayern Munich shirt but supported both the German champions as well as Arsenal.
After turning down many offers from others to teach me to teach me how to surf, I took up his bargain of about £10 for two hours simply because he clearly enjoyed football and talking about it.
His name was Olot and he told me his favourite player was Welsh playmaker Aaron Ramsey. When I asked who he wanted to win when Arsenal meet Bayern in the Champions League group stages, he said Arsenal because he likes the English people who he teaches to surf every day in Bali.
When we got on to the topic of Crawley Town, Olot confessed he did not know much about League Two but told me his friend is in the UK having trials at lower league clubs.
He took a liking to the home shirt and said he will be looking out for Reds’ results in the future, adding that they would be easy to spot on television thanks to the similarity in colours of Man United's red, black and white home shirt and the iconic red devil.
Next stop for me is Australia, where I will be hoping to meet some interesting people, animals, insects – and maybe a few Crawley Town supporters!
