Starring
The Godfather (Ted)
The get away driver (Adi)
The Irish charmer (Eamonn)
The bull (Raymondo)
The whisperer (Steve)
The alcoholic (Tom)
Ali Danny G (Dan)
The Hacker (Matt S)
Bob farting Marley (Ben)
And a guest appearance from The Salsa dancing Gay icon (Paul)
Day One
After a steady and quiet drive to Folkstone, the Baptists boys finally woke up. The talk was only of football and taking Duisberg by storm as we happily munched on our breakfasts. Eamonn was managing to get a number of handouts after losing his wallet somewhere at some point, and had just enough to get some breakkie and a drink. On returning to the van it mysteriously turned up!! I must try that one some time!! We soon hit foreign soil and after what seemed like a few minutes we had arrived in the picturesque town of Duisberg. You have to see it to believe it, when the boys said on the way about the industrial green tower I thought it was some sort of wind up!! On arriving it was straight off to the town hall where we all received a warm welcome, infact “the hacker” received a rather special welcome from an old friend called Hans, worth going for that wasn’t it? Shortly after we set up at the church allowing rather generously Eamonn to have his own room, can I state for the record this was nothing to do with his alleged snoring problem, it was purely out of respect!! Then it was off to the arena for a warm up and a kick about with Matty S scoring from every possible angle, hopefully a sign of things to come?
Night one began with a visit to a bizarre pub where Adi and Eamonn were welcomed like kings, it was almost like the return of the prodical sons, the only benefit to the rest of us was that we were given a free drink. Shortly after we hit a local sports bar and this is where the evening became a nightmare for one young quiet lad called Tom. After downing a few large Vodka’s en route Tom now decided to calm down a bit and order some tequila with Dan, oh dear! At this point Tommy began to sway so we ordered him a hot chocolate, which he promptly head butted (Roy Keane style) all over himself. One kind squad member sat there moping chocolate off his arms and head, and Tom went off to the toilet, where he spent the next hour hovering over the sink and the next hour after that sitting on the toilet. At this point we thought it best to head home. What can happen on a short walk home I ask, well Mr. Deacon and Mr. Burns managed to find themselves a 30” TV which was bizarrely sitting outside some kind of sex shop which much to Ben’s disappointment was infact closed! After much excitement we discovered the TV did not work on arriving home so we decided to donate it to the team next door, and on that note we hit the hay around 1am.
Day two
We were due on for our first game against our “neighbours” at the church Herford, we were all well up for it and did not disappoint with a dominant performance against a young side, the only problem was that we weren’t taking our chancing and it wasn’t until the final 2 mins when “The bull” found himself in acres of space and fired home, 1-0, seconds later a thumping drive from the skipper and it was two for him and two for us, as the hooter sounded we confidently walked off happy with our first performance. Match two we played a strong team called Wetter who I think we underestimated they eventually ended up 4th overall so a decent organized team. We took to the pitch and felt quietly confident, and for the first 5 mins matched them, until they broke and scored. At this point we really started to chase the game and were caught again 2-0, Tommy grabbed one back with a minute left and we really believed we could do it, we pressed and pressed but they grabbed the clincher with 10 seconds remaining, game set and match. Gutting, only a miracle would now get us through to the next stage. Match three and we were already out, we played Tubingen and they were group leaders. We had a terribly slow start and before we knew it we were three down and were more than shell shocked. We did put up a fight literally, “The bull” was booked and amazing Matty S was sin binned after three or four dirty fouls, hence the name “The hacker”. The crowd were demanding him to go and he did in the end. Raymondo grabbed one back but we got hit late on and lost 4-1. I think we learnt a massive lesson, that we need stop chasing the ball round and get a decent system in place like the other sides.
We were dejected and decided the best thing to do was to get the train to Dussledorf and try and forgot about the days football events. During this train ride, Eamonn turned into a social monster, chatting to just about everyone possible, and this led to us meeting a strange young girl who thought we were a party of homosexual men! She did however show us where O’Neill’s was shouting at the top of her voice, “come on gay people, keep up” it was quite funny, honest. After watching a rather drab game between Man U & Reading (sorry Ben it was mate) we realized there was a massive party going on outside. The street were packed with people partying to a festival that last 5 days to celebrate the passing of some kind of ghost, the costumes were amazing, everyone bar us was in fancy dress. However we were in luck as we found a great hat stall where Ben got a Bob Marley hat, Eamonn a tremendous curly Keegan wig, myself a tall joker hat and Mr. Coates some kind of bright green gay cowboy’s hat. We talked to people and danced in the street for hours, finally about 1pm heading back to O’Neill’s for a final drink or five! At this point Adi grabbed 4 of the lads and headed home leaving Eamonn, Raymondo, Tommy, Coatesy and myself. Tom’s eyes were popping out of his head at the sight of some of the women and three young Dutch ladies particularly wanted to take him home and mother him, infact he begged them to take him, we pulled him away and eventually left at 2am, arriving home at 3am!!
Not ideal preparation for the Sunday but a very enjoyable night. I have never laughed so much as I did on the way home, it was a scream.
Day Three
We were all knackered as we headed off for the German church service, the dancing Angels certainly woke everyone up and once they started dancing to YMCA, we decided we could only respond in one way, by donning our party hats and marching up and down the hall doing YMCA, the crowd loved it, who said Brits abroad are idiots!! After this we headed off to the B tournament and it finally hit us at what we had let ourselves in for, it was a tiny hall with tiny goals, nothing like as glamorous as the main hall. We did lose both of our next games but we absolutely dominated both but just struggled to score in the tiny nets, we were by far better than the teams we played but the playing conditions were crap. We lost both 2-1 with Raymondo scoring his fourth of the trip and Danny G scoring his first and only. We headed back to the main tournament and enjoyed the final games; once again it highlighted exactly how we need to play if we return next year. We took the floor to receive our certificate for 20th feeling highly embarrassed, so embarrassed that our master tactician Ted stayed up in the stand!!
We went for a quiet night on the Sunday and mulled over the weekend, should we have prepared more, should we have had a drinking ban and all gone to bed at 9pm? Course not, the footy might not have gone to plan but as for team bonding and fun, the trip was magic.
Day Four
We got up early packed up and headed for the tunnel. Whilst on the Euro tunnel we decided to have a kick about in an empty carriage and we actually played some our best footy of the weekend!! It was like watching that advert with the Brazil team at the airport, well sort of. And that was that as we were dropped home one by one, we needed the music to Ocean’s Eleven as it was like the end scene to the film
A brilliant trip, I think everyone had a super time, thanks to the boss for arranging it all and here’s hoping that if we go back, we play some better football!! |
Steve Burns |
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