BEING BELGIAN: It's Super Sunday!

The distance between Ostend (Belgium) and Folkestone (Kent, England, UK) is a mere 121.8 kilometres (75.68 miles or 65.72 nautical miles) and it is therefore unsurprising that occasionally infections arrive on Belgian shores from perfidious Albion. In this instance a desire to split the weekend's football action into an implied Shit Saturday yet Super Sunday! This weekend Belgium fell prey to a Sunday of Club Brugge vs AA Gent - the derby of Flanders - and Standard Liege vs RSCA Anderlecht - quite possibly the derby of Belgium. A weekend of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'Two Tribes', all it lacked was Richard 'the lionheart' Keyes telling us that it was the most significant thing to happen in Belgium since the Battle of the Golden Spurs. In 1302, just to put things into some perspective. A militia of guild workers from the Flemish cities defeated the, even at that time, frog eating French, removing their spurs for good measure, and ending Philip the Fair's desire to conquer Flanders. Today the region is split into 5 provinces, two of them eponymous - East (capital Gent) and West (capital Brugge) Flanders. Last season Gent humiliated Brugge 6-2 in a game that had appeared to mark an almost definitive shifting of power from traditionally dominant West to newly empowered East. This (Super) Sunday Brugge came out of the blocks determined to set things straight, Kouemaha, Geraerts and Vargas easing 'Blue-Black' into a 3-0 lead within the first half hour. Yassine El Ghanassy scored for Gent before half time to give The Buffalos hope. Bernd Thijs got a second for them from a deflected free kick in the second half but Brugge held out to give Dutch coach Adrie Koster some welcome respite after a series of reverses. Meanwhile in the south of the country - where the Battle of the Golden Spurs enjoys somewhat less of a following (it has even been insinuated that the Francophone Walloons were sympathetic to the French enemy. Not here, I add hastily...) - Anderlecht visited Standard Liege in a match that saw the two biggest supported teams in the country, the two most recent Champions, the two largest rivals, go head to head. 5-1 Liege, BOOM! A seismic shift in power, Standard back within a point of Anderlecht. The big winners may well have been Racing Genk who were not even playing on this Stupendous Sunday. They extended their lead at the top of the table to five points having come from two down to draw with fifth placed KV Mechelen.

Results below, table here.

KV Mechelen 2 -2 Racing Genk

Lierse 0 - 1 Cercle Brugge

Lokeren 1 - 0 Germinal Beerschot

Kortrijk 1 - 0 Eupen

Sint Truiden 1 - 2 Westerlo

Zulte Waragem 1 - 1 Charleroi

Club Brugge 3 - 2 AA Gent

Standard Liege 5 - 1 Anderlecht