Yesterday, on Sunday, I was woken up by my (and Yuni's) friend Harumi with a phone call and the question if I wanted to join her and her Boyfriend Rodney at the FAI (Football association of Ireland - very much the Irish DFB) Cup Final at the famous Lansdowne Road Stadium (now after rebuilt 2007 - 2010 called Aviva Stadium).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviva_Stadium
Still half asleep I agreed to their proposal, not knowing anything about either team that were playing. For the record, it was Drogheda United against Sligo Rovers. My Friends are from Drogheda, so there was no question whom I shall support. Light blue and purple are their colours. Nothing of that sort in my closet... dark blue will have to do.
Unfortunately Yuni was already planning to go to church that afternoon, so I texted my friend Marinko as we already planned to visit a Irish league game. Sadly he was working.
So, I had to make my own way down to Aviva. Luckily it is only a few minutes on the Dart (the Dublin S-Bahn) and as for a proper Football final day... the sun was shining with only a couple of clouds on the sky.
On the way to the Dart station I spotted this beautiful red London Bus and thought it's worth an appearance in my new Blog.
When I arrived on at the stadium I met up with my friends at the nearby Clyde Court Hotel.
First thing I realized was that football (or soccer for those who call gealic footfall just football) fans are much more civilized in Ireland than in Germany. There was no pointless shouting or throwing bottles, just a few friends or families who went to enjoy the match. This continued when entering the hotel foyer. There was plenty of beers going around but Sligo fans were standing next to Drogheda fans having a chat. I'm not that much of a football goer in Germany but I remember this to be fairly seldom.
Anyway, I walked through the crowd and was just about to call Harumi, to see where they are when I realized I stood right next to her.
I joined them with a beer and at 3:15 we made our way to the stadium (note the game began at 3:30 - no rush here). When finally we had found our way to the seats we enjoyed the match.
And what a match it was, Drogheda being the big underdog with 5:1 odds going into the lead at the 13th minute and keeping this lead until the 70th minute, when Sligo equalized and six minutes later taking the lead. We were fevering and thought it was already over when Drogheda scored the equalizer four minutes into stoppage time, just to have all hopes destroyed again seconds later by another goal of Sligo.
Well done, lads... it was a extremely exciting game and I really enjoyed it.
For anyone who is not too tired of reading yet:
http://www.rte.ie/sport/soccer/2013/1103/484417-baraclough-and-north-reactions/
What better way to celebrate the loss by heading over to the local pub and chatting on with Fellow Drogheda fans as well as these Sligo people? And even after the match with plenty of drinks for everyone around there were no fights or vandalism (bar one incident where a guy was kindly asked to leave the pub).
To top it all off, my lovely girlfriend rang just when I was about to make my way to the train station and asked if she could pick me up in our sporty little red Mini.
Instead of giving her the address of the pub I simply (with some technological issues) sent here the GPS coordinates via smartphone and a few minutes later she arrived in front of the pub. What a great girl! :-)
We dropped Harumi off on the way and went home. There I filled my belly with different sort of leftovers from the fridge and went off to bed... What a great day to practice my blogging!
Thank you also Harumi and Rodney for the invite!
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