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Away Days – Slovakia v Wales |
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This is an Away Days special, covering my experience travelling to Slovakia on Wednesday, if you didn’t like my previous work – please stop reading now, if not I hope you enjoy! I left my house at 11:30 on Tuesday night, and was feeling excited and rather tired for my first ever Wales away game. My mate and I arrived at Heathrow at around 4am, after the typically long wait at any airport we finally set off at 6:15am on Austrian Airways. After an aborted landing and circling in the air for 20 minutes we finally landed at Vienna at around 9am, then before I knew it we were saying Auf Wiedersehen (goodbye) to Austria and a Ahoj (hello) to Slovakia. The coach trip is only one hour to Bratislava from Vienna (the shortest distance between any two capital cities in the World – correct me if I’m wrong!) So I duly arrived in my third capital city of the day in the space of just a few hours. At first Bratislava looked a very bleak place, with dull looking buildings, graffiti everywhere and armed guards on the crossing – a complete contrast to Austria, which is right next door. I was wondering to myself why I was here!? Though when I managed to explore the town a little bit, it was a very nice, and it looked to be developing well, for the better hopefully with all those years of communism – it did look a little strange to see a Tescos right opposite our hotel though! The hotel wasn’t that great, it was very basic and was built in the 1960’s, but I was only going to be there for a few hours. The drinks and food were very very cheap – which is always a good thing. The people were very friendly and most seemed to speak good English – well better than my Slovakian! My mate and I had a quick drink and made our way back to our very basic hotel before catching the bus organised by ‘World In Motion’ (Editor of the ‘Dragon has Landed’ Fanzine). The game was being played in a little place called Trnva – it’s no bigger than Llanelli in population – a very nice small town centre which had a coca cola festival going on by the looks of it, looked quite impressive which events for children and a mini concert – Free cola when walking the streets too. We had a quick meal before making our way to the stadium, which wasn’t the best, for some strange reason we were being housed in a stand which had massive fences obstructing our view, thankfully common sense prevailed and the ‘policia’ moved the Slovakia fans to the other side of the fence. Just after the game started a few hundred Welsh fans then moved behind the goal – where there was a much better view. The funny chants then started, for example us better fans behind the goal sang ‘Is that all you take away?’ with the other Welsh fans replying ‘Is that all you have at home?’ the most ironic chant must have been ‘We’re gonna win 6-1’ (in relation to Slovakia beating Wales 5-1 last year!) how right we nearly were! But all in all a decent performance by Wales and a man of the match performance by Craig Bellamy, it’s the first time we’ve scored 5 away goals in about 11 years – and I was there! There wasn’t much atmosphere from the Slovakian fans; the stadium looked nearly empty but a there was a decent away following (700), some good chants of Men of Harlech and a good support of the team during the game, better than the Millennium Stadium. After the celebrations had finished we made the 40 minute journey back to Bratislava. When we arrived back in Bratislava my mate and I went to the bar of the hotel that the Welsh players we staying in, then in walks Craig Bellamy and sits right next to me, I chatted to him briefly about the game and his new born baby daughter (who is now fine by the way, thankfully) and I have to say he’s a really nice guy, nothing how the newspapers make him out to be, my mate and I were then having a little chat with him about the game and football etc. He seemed really down to Earth, so don’t believe what you read in the papers! I went to a few more pubs along the way before going back to the hotel as we had an early start the next morning. A few hours kip, some breakfast and a bus journey later meant we were back in Vienna where we were joined by Wales midfielder Carl Robinson, he came across as very genuine and he was a little more talkative then Bellamy – he mentioned that he’s enjoying Canada and the MLS is a very tough league. He also mentioned that the reason Toshack doesn’t play 4-4-2 is that now Delaney has retired and Wales haven’t got a right back. Surprisingly he came out and said that also that Toshack and Earnshaw don’t seem to get along – but he didn’t really know why, all he said was that Toshack doesn’t like the fact that Earnshaw only scores goals. The reason why Robinson was not on the Vienna to Toronto flight was apparently the FAW found it was £800 cheaper to put him on connecting flights – now I just want to state that Robinson did say that he didn’t mind the fact he had to catch connecting flights, but to me it does seem a bit of a silly idea. I do know for a fact that FAW representatives get a fully paid trip with all expenses paid for (which would be more than what they weren’t willing to pay for Robinson’s flight) Typical FAW, trying to cut costs, but that’s another debate for another day. Lastly a mildly amusing story – Robinson threw his Wales shirt into the crowd after the game, but coincidently the guy who caught it was on the same flight as him – spooky! But what I was getting to is that Robinson then mentioned to us that the kit manufacturers still make the Wales Number 9 shirt to Hartson’s size (Robinson’s words – not mine!), so it doesn’t fit him and he has to cut the sleeves too, but that’s the reason that Earnshaw & Bellamy don’t want to wear the number 9. It made me laugh if no-one else – Maybe if we ever did sign JH we could give him Bayo’s shirt from last season, it might just about fit him. Finally we landed at Heathrow at around 1:30 and arrived back in Swansea at 6 o’clock on the Thursday. A fantastic result against Slovakia, of all the games to choose I pick the best one so far – I must be Wales’s lucky charm and a obviously little bit mad at the same time to travel all that way! But it was a good experience and I’ll never travel away to Europe watching the Swans, so this is the only chance I’ll get of travelling to far and beyond to watch football and experience the different cultures. In addition I gained some useful ‘inside information’ from the players and was good to hear them being positive about their country and nice of them to have conversations with the fans. I’d also like to point out that I had no trouble with any other Welsh fans giving me grief over who I supported and there was no fear of anyone from Cardiff starting any animosity and vice versa, we all got along as we should and most people were wearing red. It’s a shame I couldn’t have stayed for longer, but it was bad planning on my part, I wanted to be back for the Carlisle game as well, but I’m hoping to go to San Marino soon for a few days, I recommend it to anyone. One last thing – Has Robbie Savage got his blindfold ready for his trip to moon yet? J Thanks for reading What are your thoughts? Share your views on the Message Board |
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