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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Pre-season match A v Le Harve 21.7.2006

So for the second year running Brighton played away to Le Harve in a pre-season friendly. This game was part of an EU funded initiative to foster links between Brighton and Le Harve. Brighton lost 2-0 in front of 1,669 people. The highlight of the day being the Fatty Taxman moaning at the players for not coming over to clap us, he was too drunk to realise at that time it was only half time!!!

World Cup 2006 v Portugal (Gelsenkirchen) 1.7.2006

Words by Mark Raven
Pictures by Liz O'Brien

v Portugal (Gelsenkirchen) 1.7.2006
So its Friday morning and Liz and I set off from home to Waterloo to catch the 14.37 Eurostar to Brussels. We met Liz's nieces on arrival for a quick hello, they then jumped on a train with us to get from Brussels Midi to Brussels central as they were away for the weekend so needed to get a train from Central station. Unfortunately they jumped on the wrong train so we ended up in Gent, 30 minutes away, so roughly 70 minutes after meeting them we managed to get from Midi to Central which is about 5 minutes away! They helped us book our train for the next day to Gelsenkirchen. They headed off and we headed to our hotel, and were soon out in St Catherines part of Brussels and in an Italian restaurant. They had about 10 staff working, 8 of whom were watching the football and 2 trying to do all the work! We had a good meal and some nice beers and toasted the Italian win over the Ukraine. As we strolled back to our hotel the Italian residents were out in force, hanging out of cars waving flags and beeping horns. Within the hour the city was in gridlock and the noise of beeping horns incredible! We finally managed to doze of and were soon woken by our 5.45am alarm call.

So it was now Saturday early morning and time to get a taxi to Midi and we were soon on the 6.25am train to Koln (quite a few England fans on board, sitting next to us were our Charlton mates, all a bit worse for wear after deciding on all night bars instead of a hotel!). We arrived into Koln just before 9am and then it was a train to Essen (leaving our bags in left luggage), then a local train to Gelsenkirchen. We arrived about 10am, headed for the ticket exchange point and by 10.30am we had our tickets. We walked back into the city centre and the place was heaving, Gelsenkirchen is small and couldn't really cope with 60,000 thirsty England fans. There is only one tram line to the ground, so we got that,deciding to go two stops past the stadium. We spotted a bar as we headed into the stop, so walked back to that. The owner was a really nice guy and we soon had some cold beer in front of us. We got talking to some local Schalke 04 fans and this was one of the main drinking holes for them. They had set up several TV screens and it was reasonably busy. We sat in the shade, drinking local beer, food from the BBQ they had set up and looked forward to the match.About 3pm we decided it was time to head to the ground. We caught the virtually empty tram back to the ground and queued up and were soon inside and ready for the match. I was behind the goal near the corner flag in with the official England section, Liz was on the half way line towards the back in a neutral(ish!) section. The stadium was fantastic - the closed roof kept it cool to start with but it got hotter and hotter and stickier and stickier as the place filled up.
The atmosphere was fantastic around me,non stop singing and the expectation was high.The match - gutted. We had changes, didn't see the Rooney incident, hated the cheating diving Portuguese - I would even wish France to win the tournament rather than them, but as Jon said in his report I will be rooting for the Germans. They have on the whole made us welcome and the locals we spoke to genuinely wanted a Germany v England final. The penalty shoot out was painful - my record now reads
WC Semi final 1990 v West Germany - LOST 3-4
EC 1/4 final 1996 v Spain - WON 4-2
EC Semi final 1996 v Germany - LOST 5-6
WC 1/4 final 2002 v Argentina - LOST 3-4
EC 1/4 final 2004 v Portugal - LOST 5-6
and now another defeat, even worse than the other defeats 1-3 on penalties!!.
We battled to hard to get to penalties, then went to bits and always looked like losing. I left after the final penalty, the Germans outside looked almost as gutted as us. I sat down on the concourse and waited for Liz. We then headed back to the bar we had been to before the game, had a quick drink,said our goodbyes and headed back to Essen on the tram and metro to avoid having to back into Gelsenkirchen main station. We got back to Essen, taxi to our hotel and then had a great meal and a few final cold beers and sat sort of bemused and disappointed by the defeat.

Sunday morning and another early start. A taxi to the station then a train to Koln then a train to Brussels and Eurostar home. We left the hotel at 7.15am and got indoors about 8pm. We had 4 hours in Brussels, ventured to the huge marked outside Midi station and then had more food and drink (mmm that theme seams to come up quite a lot) Anyway what next for England. I am glad to see Sven go, this squad should have been playing attacking adventurous football, then we might be heading to Munich and Berlin.

Mark R

Picture from my mobile phone

World Cup 2006 v Ecuador (Stuttgart) 25.6.2006

Stuttgart v Ecuador 25.6.2006

..........so it was back to Germany on Sunday for the Last 16 match against Ecuador. On Saturday I was at a mates wedding in Salisbury. The wedding was a 1pm kick off, followed be free beer/wine until about 7pm and then it was a pay bar. I was there until 9pm, before heading up to Heathrow. I arrived just after midnight, why did I have so much beer? I had to keep walking round terminal 1, I know if I had fallen asleep I would have missed the flight. Luckily the Costa coffee shop is open 24 hours, so a large coffee helped keep me going. Dave a Villa lad I know from other trips turned up about 4am, and gradually more and more arrived for the 4.30am check in. We had our boarding cards by 5am and then had to wait for the passport control to open. Flight options had managed to put on 5 planes for this game, good going at short notice (2 from Heathrow, I from Stanstead and 2 from Manchester). The passport control finally opened, all of us going to Germany were subject to a hooligan check by one Policeman on his computer. his neanderthal mate was loving the power said that he had the say when the plane could leave (due to take off at 6.30am) and that the checks would take as long as it took. The machine was playing up and it was taking about 4 minutes to send/receive info on people. The man doing the actual checks decided enough was enough and resorted to random checks, so we were able to board our plane as scheduled! We landed in Stuttgart at 9.30am, had a chat to the English Police Spotters as we queued up at the German passport control. They said the trouble had all been handbags and the local Police had a policy of prevention by detention, so wrong place at the wrong time and you call be locked up for 48hours as per German law. They had been delighted with the fans behaviour so far, and they were off to watch the Italy v Australia Last 16 match, the first game they had been allowed to go to! We caught the train to the ticket exchange place, we queued up for about 45 minutes and boy was it hot. Precious tickets now in our possession and it was time to find a bar! We found one in a back street and at 2.40 Euros for a large beer (and air conditioning) it was a paradise. Soon our mates from Middlesborough, Doncaster and Leeds all stumbled across the same place. So it was time for a few cold beers, a mixed grill to keep me going for the delay and ermmmm a few more cold beers. It was now about 3.30pm so time to wander to the ground. It was about a 25 minute walk and the heat was extreme. We passed one of those temperate/time displays and it was reading 34C.By the time we queued up to get in it was about 4.15. Bumped into fellow Brighton fan Andy Stonstreet who was sitting in the row behind and Andy Shall who was sitting about 10 seats along from me. Great ground, but the heat drained a lot of the atmosphere away. I wont go into the game as i expect people saw it on TV, but the goal was weird. Beckham hit the free kick, it sailed over the wall, it was down the other end so nobody was sure what was happening, then Beckham put his arms in the air and wheeled away to celebrate, everyone was standing bemused for a few seconds followed by wild celebrations. At the final whistle it was party time, the players came round and applauded and they looked exhausted. So it was time to wander back to the subway and catch a train back to the airport for our 9.30pm flight back home. Bumped into West Ham Tony and Hornchuch Kev at the airport and we celebrated the win. Looking out the window and it was one hell of a storm going on. They closed the airport for about 45 minutes as was raining too hard for the ground crew to work in, but we finally got on our plane about 9.30 to face a delay of about another hour as we had to allow planes to land as they had been held away from Stuttgart to avoid the thunderstorms, the sheet and fork lightening was spectacular! Finally got back to heathrow about 11.45 English time, to find the underground shut, but luckily a coach got me back to Gatwick (£18 ouch). Luckily Liz was at Take That at Milton Keynes and I waited at Gatwick for about 45 minutes and Liz made a slight detour on the way home and picked me up! Anyway, Liz and I are back out to Germany (via Brussels) on Friday morning. Managed to book a hotel in Essen (very close to Gelsenkirchen) on the Saturday night (153 Euros - ouch again!), and back home Sunday, so next installment should be Monday 3rd July! All we need now, apart from a win of course is a ticket for Liz - anyone got a spare???? (Liz only had tickets for the Last 16 and 1/4 finals if we played in the larger venues which need us to lose the group! We are Ok from semi final onwards as both have vouchers for those - lets hope we need to use them!!)

Come on England Come on England

Two pictures taken from my mobile phone