Once we knew the date of the away leg & where, with my friends it was always a yes we are going.
With an average age of 40, we had all waited for this moment & there was no way we would not go. My best mate Dave & Jes decided to look into the options of going independently. It wasn’t just about the money; it was we wanted to be free of the crowd. As it turned out the saving were some £250.00 per person, so there was no argument. I did pass the information on in the Vital forum & Rug & his mates did the same road trip.
We left Portsmouth on Thursday morning at 4.30am. 2 ½ hour drive to Stansted airport. 2 hour flight to Valladolid in northern Spain. Then a 4 hour car drive to our host city in Portugal. By the time we checked into our lovely hotel it was 4.30pm. 12 hours from A to B.
A quick shower & change & into the city. 5 hours until kick off. Lots of hooting cars from the local Portuguese as we strolled down the street in our Pompey shirts, but all in good spirit. We soon met a dozen Pompey supporters, so we joined them for a beer. We had a quick look around the beautiful medieval city & were soon approaching the market square. We had invaded. A good 1,000 supporters were there. The noise was fantastic. We had flags all over the walls. Lots of beer & singing. An experience none of us had ever had before & we were all going to enjoy every minute. We had a lovely meal with a few bottles of wine, then back into the square for more beer & singing. Then off to the match, army style, marching, singing & no trouble.
We had all paid good money & certainly a lot of effort to get here & we so desperately wanted to qualify for the group stages.
We started badly & it got worse. 2 down after 35 minutes & we were in shock. A realism that we could be going home & our little European dream was over. We held out to half time with the aggregate scores level. But if we could score then… but it was a big but as we looked poor. The second half started & all of sudden it was us looking good & they were looking scared. We dominated but couldn’t score. Extra time came & we carried on where had left off & then that moment we had waited for. Peter Crouch scored & we all went mad. We knew that was it, they had to score twice now & we knew they hadn’t the fight anymore. Then Crouch scored again & we all went mad again. By now the game that had started on Thursday night, was into Friday morning. We didn’t care; we had done what we had came to do. We walked back to our hotel & by now it was 1am.
The alarm went off at 4.45am so quick wash & dress, we checked out, too early for breakfast & left at 5.30am. 4 hour drive to the airport, 2 hour flight back & back in Portsmouth for 5.30pm. 12 hours from B to A.
Home, exhausted & emotionally drained. Can we do it again please???!!!
Written by storagematt.
The views within this article are the views of the individual who wrote and submitted this piece, sometimes solely theirs. They are not necessarily shared by the Vital Pompey Site Journalists.
