A v Holland 15.11.2006

Holland v England 15 November 2006

There's Brighton here, there's Brighton there! Well I have just returned back at work for a rest after Amsterdam. I flew out on the Tuesday evening but didn't get into central Amsterdam until about 23.30 as the flight was an hour late, then they couldn't get the plane plugged in at Schipol airport so that added another 15 minutes or so! I bumped into my first Sussex person (Man City Dave who lives in Worthing) as i got off the train. I met up with my mate Graham (one of the BHAlba) in a bar near the station. I got a call from Mr Blackman who was with a couple of other lads from Crowbrough, he was with Stuart Adams from Bexhill and his mates. We didn't meet up as Phil was unable to give me directions by that time of night!Graham and I had a few more beers, a nice friendly local kept buying us some local brew, no idea what it was, but it was nice. The bar shut at 1am, so we headed towards the Leidesplein and closer to our hotel. We went past the bars with dancing girls (they wanted money to go in!) and settled into the Jazz club as that had free entry until 3am. We headed back to the hotel via a kebab shop just before the place closed.


Wednesday morning and it was a late breakfast purchased from a cafe as we missed the hotel breakfast (that finished at 10.30am - way way too early!). We headed to Rembrandt square and met Phil and the others in the Irish bar (I think there are now more Irish bars in Amsterdam than in Dublin!!). They had been in the place since 9am, and soon the beer was flowing. 4 more of our mates from Brighton including listee Andy Shall soon turned, then Andy Stonestreet and his mates also turned up. Next thing a group of about 10 Moulescoomb lads turned up! There were Brighton fans all over the place. We didn't see Jon Vallance for a change, guess that's why he said he didn't see any other Albion fans as we kept bumping into them! Next Little Kev from Worthing pocked his head through the door to say hello before heading off to a different bar. The day just drifted away and before you could say "time for another pint" it was time to head to the ground.

We squeezed onto a metro to the Amsterdam arena, then it was a 5 minute walk and we were in the queue for the away end. Once in the ground I bumped into Gary & Sue who go on Straw tours to away games, and then as I wandered around looking for my seat bumped into Steve Ferris, who was sitting in the same block as me, so went and sat with him and his mates for the match. The match was a typical friendly, no real atmosphere, i would guess at about 8,000 England in the ground, but I think they said the crowd was 44,000 so well short of the 52,000 capacity. The match seamed to fly by and we headed of before the end (and yes I did miss the Holland goal) so as to avoid massive queues getting back onto the metro. So it was straight back onto the Metro and back into the city centre. The beer flowed as freely as before the game, Graham and I walked back to the hotel and boy did we get lost. We started about 15 minutes walk away, decided we better ask as we didn't recognise anywhere (the canals all look the same) and we were now about 25 minutes away heading in the wrong direction! We did finally find the hotel, but stopped to get a kebab! This brief break really was a feast of beer and chips and kebab, luckily it wasn't for toooo many days!


Some pictures from the match

Thursday 16th November

Thursday morning and by the time we had surfaced we had missed breakfast again and would probably have missed lunch! We ventured to the Rijks Museum and saw the Rembrandt gallery. The last picture you see is the famous "Night Watchman". Its very impressive and also very big! After spending a couple of hours looking round we decided we could manage some food so found a nice steak house for brunch sort of time meal. We met back up with Andy and the other Brighton lads, well when we met then they were down to 4 as one had already returned to bed as a bit worse for wear. Another followed within a few minutes whilst the other 2 sat down floating the afternoon away! After a couple of hours people reappeared and seamed to recover! With a second wind we took the opportunity to head for an Indonesian meal about 8pm. It was a great meal, one of the more popular types of food in Amsterdam. After the meal I headed back to the Hotel at about 10am as had to be up at 4.15am (3.15am UK time) to get a taxi to the airport for the 7am flight back to Gatwick. SO finally back to work, now to find a quiet corner for a snooze........zzzzZZZzzzzZZZzzzz

Pictures taken from 3Lionsontour.com


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A v Scunthorpe United 14.10.2006

pictures by John Willoughby








As usual the day starts in the Honest Lawyer pub not far from Scunthorpe station. We win the game 2-1, one of the pictures shows Gary Hart being mobbed after scoring infront of the Albion fans!

Mark R

A v Croatia 11.10. 2006

Croatia v England 11 October 2006

Football is a funny old game, well that was an old expression I hear many times, at the moment I cant find much to laugh about on the pitch. Wednesday started with the alarm clock going off at 3.50am, then the short drive to the Gatwick south long stay car park and I was checking in at 4.45am for the Flight Options day trip to Croatia. Jon Vallance and his lot were on the Thomas Cook "official" trip, plus quite a few other Albion fans (Thimble Keegan, the Jones family, Steve Ferris, Uncle Buck, Andy S etc) were at the airport, so nice to see some familiar faces. We took off about 7am in the pouring rain and with the 1 hour time difference landed in Zagreb at 10am. We jumped into the waiting coaches and just after 11.30am were dropped off in the middle of nowhere at a make shift coach park. We walked into the main square and then headed off to the road known locally as "the street of a thousand bars", well it would have been rude not to have gone and had a look. People had various times to be back at the coaches to go to the ground (ranging from 3pm to 4pm, way way too early for a 7pm KO), but we opted to DIY. The first bar we settled into saw us sitting soaking up the rays, drinking various different lagers. We started on Heineken (bad choice but the West
Ham lads just ordered on sitting down as they were thirsty!). Next it was a local beer called PAN, which was nice, we then moved on to a couple of other local ones, Ožujsko was interesting, the Karlovaèko was not so good, so it was back to the PAN. After having some excellent food (Pork seams to be the main dish in Croatia), we decided it was time to move on. We had been warned almost not to mix with the locals as volatile and unfriendly, so the next stop was a local bar, heaving with local fans. We were made to feel welcome, and the bar owner insisted on buying us all a beer. They played some song that got all the locals singing, we then had our turn to sing the National anthem, then they played the same song again and again. All the locals fans wore shirts and it made for a colourful scene.

At 5.30 we decided we really should head for the ground. We walked back to the main square, jumped on Tram number 1. The tram was about 80% England fans who had also ignored the rediculous stay clear of local bars and places and it was once again a great sing song all the way to the ground. We got talking to a group of Hadjuk Split fans, who said they hated being in Zagreb and were more of a target to the local Zagreb people then we were. The tram eventually got us to near the ground, the stop before ours saw riot police running down the road battons waving with tear gas, no idea what was going on, but we stayed on until the next stop which was opposite the England section. It took just a few minutes to pass the security checks, even less to pass on the chance of a 0.5% can of local lager, and we were soon in the ground.






Our end was an uncovered section (as was the whole ground). Each stand was totally isolated from each other, all starting about 10 feet in the air, a bit like the South Stand at Withdean, must have been strange for the players. The local fans in the North end of the ground were already bouncing around and singing, the England end slowly filling up. Just before kick off all hell broke out by the entrance. An England fan without a ticket tried to get in, the stewards answer to his attempts to get in was to punch him in the mouth, wrestle him to the floot, call over his mates and put the boot in. Needless to say the England fans reacted and went in to stop this, to which the Police batton charged everyone. People came in with various bruises and cuts, we luckily missed all this and had taken up our seats right behind the goal. The chaotic scenes eventually meant those without tickets getting in, but lots with tickets held outside, batton charged again, before being let in about 15 minutes into the game. Croatia having th European Championships in 2012, your having a laugh! The match - more rubbish and lack of committmet and fight. Croatia deserved to win, and I felt for Robinson who after some great saves, saw us go down 2-0. The Croatian fans made plenty of noise, let of quite a few flares and didnt want to go home. They had a strange passion for waving irish Tricolours at us, hoping to wind us up I guess, to which England fans responded wiith chants of "Serbia" which didnt go down well. We were kept in the ground for about an hour, saw Garry Mills and his boy Jake (they go to the Albion games with Straws tours), eventually got let out, the England players emerged the same time as us and got told in no uncertain terms that the passion and fight was missing from there game. We got back to the airport about 11pm local time, and landed back at Gatwick about 1.45am. So Holland away next on the 15th November, time to try some new players if we want to got to the Euro finals in Austria/Switzerland.

Mark R

Pictures taken from 3lionsontour.com


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A v Macedonia 6.9.2006

A v Macedonia 6.9.2006

Another great trip following England abroad. Only a short visit this time, I went with Stuart Adams who runs the A21 supporters club. Stayed over at Stuarts on the Tuesday night as it would be a nice early start on the Wednesday morning. Our flight left Luton at 7.30am (we bumped into Kev Jones and family plus little Kev at the airport as well as a few other Albion fans (Andy S ex listee plus a couple of others) and a few other people from Brighton who support other teams Ian - West Ham, Tim - Everton!) We landed in Skopje about 11.30 local time (they are1 hour ahead), the awaiting coaches took us to a bus park near the ground which was only a 15 minute walk from the ground. There were I think in total 16 coaches for Flight Options who ran 2 flights from Luton, 1 from Birmingham and 1 from Doncaster, and there were official trips from Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham, so another 12 coaches for them, so it was a busy Skopje airport and coach park. We bumped into loads of people we knew at the airport (including 2 cracking lads from West Ham way - Kev and Tony that we had spent a couple of weeks with in Japan - they said hi to Mr Blackman). significantly since my last visit 3 years ago, there were lots more posh hotels, shopping centres and loads of bars and cafes. We settled down in a bar on the riverside and sort of got stuck in the chairs
so didnt see that many different places. The locals were friendly and the local beer very nice indeed and at 80p a pint a bargain. The locally brewed beer was great stuff, 6% and called CHYVLLOT, well thats what it looked like, we just made sure we asked for the local draught beer As the day wore on more and more locals turned up and there was the occasional sing song from the Macedonians but this was actively discourage by the local police. The weather was hot and sunny, it was about 28 degrees during the day and it was still in the mid 20s when the sun had gone down. There were handful of beggars about, but nothing like the number from last time, plus loads of locals trying to sell perfume at £10 a bottle or lucky stones! We got talking to one of the kids begging, he spoke pretty good english and he perfected such a good cockney accent that West Ham Tony and Romford Kev gave his a few Euros after he had gone round telling everyone "up the Hammers". Just before we left the bar he came back to shake our hands and said thank you about a hundred times with a very big grin on his face, he seamed genuine enough. He lived with his bad in the hills behind Skopje, I think they were probably travellers but his english wasnt that good and by then our lot were up to the Fatty Taxman in standards of talking rubbish due to alcohol (BTW Pete - Bernie from Tottenham was asking after you)! At 8pm we decided we better head to the ground. Just before we set off we had bumped into Jon Vallance and his lot and they were drinking cans from the super market at about 10p a can probably, Jon got himself involved in some sureal conversation with a bloke on the table behind us as to why there were so many English people in the local bars. Jon explained slowly (if in a slightly slurry manner that there was some type of football game going on).



It only took about 5 minutes to pass through the security checks and we were in the ground. Our view was poor, large fences and low seating, but the result was OK. The Macedonians created a great atmosphere, especilly the "ultras" behind the goal who sang for 90 minutes. The match was a close run thing with England eventually breaking the deadlock. Crouch it was who netted the winner and it finished 1-0 to England.

After the game it was back to the coach park, we were on the 2nd flight to leave Skopje and we were back at Luton for 3.30am this morning.

So its Macedonia at home on the 7th October, then a real test, Croatia away on the 11th October. Anyway time for bed said Zebedee (well after a few hours work)


The following pictures were taken by Daniel Rodbourn








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