One Paddle, Two Boards, and a Room Full of Silence: The 78-Year-Old Who Calls Kastamonu Matches Without Saying a Word

There's a moment in every Kastamonu home match that confuses first-time visitors. A goal goes in, the crowd erupts, and then — right as the noise starts to settle — several hundred fans in the standing section turn away from the pitch entirely. They look left, toward a small wooden platform near the corner flag, where an elderly man in a flat cap is holding up a red paddle with a white numeral painted on it.

Then they cheer again. Louder.

The man is Hacı Osman Demirtaş. He's 78 years old. He has not spoken a word into a microphone at a match in his life, because there has never been a microphone. There doesn't need to be one. Osman has his boards.

The System He Built Before the Stadium Had Speakers

The story, as longtime supporters tell it, starts in the late 1960s, when the ground had no public address system and no plans to get one. Osman, then a teenager with decent handwriting and a talent for carpentry, got tired of fans in his section finding out about goals thirty seconds late — or worse, learning about a red card only when the player was already halfway down the tunnel.

So he built a solution. A set of hand-painted wooden paddles, each with a meaning. A red board with a number is a goal, the numeral telling you who scored. A yellow paddle means a booking. The black board, held low and steady, signals a substitution. A small green square, flipped twice, is halftime — and the sideways wave that follows means the tea urn in the back concourse is lit and ready.

That last one might be the most popular signal in the whole system.

Over the decades the vocabulary has grown. There's a paddle for a penalty appeal (held at arm's length, tilted). There's one for a VAR-style delay, adopted half-jokingly in recent years even though nobody at this level of Turkish football is getting a video review. The fans learned it the way kids learn a family's inside jokes — by osmosis, by standing next to their fathers, by asking the guy in front of them.

Why Nobody Wants a Loudspeaker

Here's the thing that would baffle an American sports fan used to jumbotron replays and sponsored timeout entertainment: the club could modernize tomorrow. There's money in the budget for a basic PA. There have been offers.

The fans have declined. Politely, but firmly.

Part of it is superstition, and if you've followed regional football anywhere in the world — minor league baseball, Friday night lights in Texas — you know superstition doesn't need a rational defense. The season Osman missed three matches with the flu, Kastamonu dropped points in all three. Coincidence, sure. Nobody in the standing section cares.

But part of it is something deeper, and it's the reason this story resonates beyond one corner of Anatolia. Osman's paddles are a one-way broadcast that somehow feels more personal than any announcement. When he raises the red board with a 9 on it, you're not hearing a recorded voice reading a sponsor's name. You're receiving a message from a man who has held that same spot for longer than most fans have been alive, who watched your grandfather stand in that same row, who remembers the 9 who scored the famous cup upset in the nineties.

The Limits of Technology, and the Point of It All

American sports culture has spent the last twenty years automating the stadium experience. Apps order your food. Screens tell you when to cheer. It's efficient, and something quietly gets lost.

Kastamonu's standing section is a small counterargument. The information flows through a human being, at human speed, in a language only the community speaks. Visitors can't decode it. Broadcasters can't capture it. You have to be there, standing in the cold, watching an old man's hands.

Osman, for his part, is characteristically modest about it. Asked recently whether he'd ever retire the boards, he shrugged and said the boards would retire when he did, and he'd decide when that was. His grandson has reportedly built a backup set, just in case, and stores them at home.

The club, to its credit, has stopped asking about the PA system.

Some signals are worth more than sound. Ask anyone who's ever turned away from a goal celebration to check a wooden paddle — and cheered twice.