Loftus Road stadium is not generally regarded as one of the great stadiums of the world, however it seemed like a more than adequate venue for what I expected to be a not very well attended friendly soccer game between Australia and Denmark. In the end, 12 000 people turned up, and given that Loftus Road is located in Shepherd's Bush, the vast majority of them were Australian.
And so it was, freezing cold and very hungry that we pushed our way through crowds of people to the turnstiles. Had to really resist the urge to stop at a takeaway van named 'Chubby's Chow'. One look at Chubby himself was enough to make me think that eating his food would not be in my body's best interests. Clearly, Chubby was a fan of the food that he sold.
Enter the stadium and squeeze into seats. Oddly enough, the ground itself appears to have tied down a potentially lucrative sponsorship deal with Sellotape, ads for sellotape covered one side of the front of the stand next to us. Not really sure what sellotape have to gain from this deal, its not like theres a lot of competition in the transparant sticky tape market, but I could be wrong.
So, take find seat. Immediately notice that there are a huge contingent of Aussies around, a huge section of gold. Most seem in high spirits. The Danish anthem is played. Jimmy Barnes was booked in to sing the Australian anthem, sadly he cancelled, that really would have been worth the price of admission. We had to be content with the acapella version supplied by the hoardes of boguns around us. Barnsey would have been very proud of their efforts.
And so the game got underway. It then became obvious that the Australians in our section were very, very orgainised. They had warcrys, lots of them. It was like being back in school. They varied from the imaginative 'Australia, nanananananana....', to 'Your next queen's an aussie', to 'The only great dane is a dog (woof woof)'.
Within 4 minutes, Denmark scored their first goal. Right in front of us too, the cheek! It was a good goal, our goalie didn't even bother trying to stop it, but needless to say the reaction from the folk around me was quite an honest assessement of their mood. The cheering and encouragement continued soon afterward though, but it was noticably quieter when Denmark scored again after about 20 minutes.
We seemed to be getting back into the game after that, a disallowed goal was proof, however you really got the feeling that the Danes would score again. They did, just before half time after a really wonderful passing movement which made me think that they were just toying with us - 'you score' 'no you score' 'oh go on'. They did, 3-0 before half time. There were no warcrys left after that, the encouragement was replaced by people shouting 'come on you useless bag of (censored for mum's benefit).
Half time came. Loads of people left at half time despite the fact that Khe Sahn was blaring out of the PA system. Even that couldn't help the crowd. I left 12 minutes early, 3-0 was probably enough.
Twas an excellent evening.
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