Cardiff weekend

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What a weekend! Thursday and Friday last week I was getting very nervous about the match, but on Saturday I was pretty calm. Carmen, Anja and the kids dropped me off at the airport, and I had a smooth journey to Cardiff via Stansted and Heathrow (by National Express coach). Arrived in Cardiff at 21.45, and the town was already busy, mainly with Wednesday fans. I hadn't arranged to meet anyone on Saturday night so I went off for a (delicious) Thai meal on my own then off to the hotel (400m walk). The room was very basic and small, it looked as if the hotel was designed specifically to capitalize on (ok, profiteer from) all the sporting events played at the Millennium Stadium. To cap it all there was no hot water in the shower, and I couldn't be arsed to complain about it on the big day. For various reasons I couldn't sleep anyway - too many Red Bulls I guess, combined with Wednesdayites singing in the corridor at regular intervals through the night. Luckily the room did have satellite TV (Sky News, Sky Sport news, Paramount comedy channel, plus a couple more) so at least I had something to watch while I was awake.

I was up early on Sunday, ate a reasonable breakfast at the hotel and went out for a wander. Bought a Sunday paper, had a cup of tea in a café and watched more and more Wednesdayites arrive. The first person to arrive who I'd arranged to meet was Richard Pashley at about 10.30, followed shortly thereafter by Dave Moran, a fellow translator who'd flown over from Sweden. Cardiff is an excellent location for these matches, the stadium is perfect and perfectly located right in the middle of town, minutes away from all the bars, restaurants and hotels. Shame it's going back to Wembley next year, with all of London's horrible access problems. Various groups had arranged to meet at various pubs, and we settled at one of these, the Wellington, where the London Owls had arranged to meet. It was good to see a bunch of familiar faces from previous trips to Sheffield and abroad, and put some faces to familiar names off the email list.

At about 2 o'clock we started heading off for the ground. It looked from the tickets as if Dave Moran and I were sitting virtually next to one another, and this turned out to be the case, as an amazing coincidence among 40,000 other Wednesday fans. I was one row behind and two seats along, touching distance in other words.

Well I'm not much of a one for match reports, so I'll leave that to the experts. Suffice to say it was a total nailbiter of a match, full of drama, and the relief and elation that swept through the Wednesday part of the ground when they pulled ahead in extra time and then went 4-2 up with only a minute to play was amazing.

Afterwards Dave, Sean and I headed back to the Wellington, where we met up again with Martin and Richard Gladman and a few other London Owls. Dave, Sean and I moved on to a couple of other bars later on, until at one point, after pub closing, they went into a club and I got turned away by the bouncer for wearing a 'sport top' (a really non-sporty McGregor rugby shirt) and trainers (which looked much less trainer-y than what 70% of the other men/lads he'd let in were wearing). But I wasn't really bothered, wasn't much in a clubby frame of mind anyway, so I waved goodbye to Dave through the window and headed off to the coach station.

There was a coach to Heathrow ready to leave, but I couldn't get on it, unfortunately, because there were apparently loads of people getting on in Bristol, so I wandered off again to get some food then settled down at the coach station for the 2-hour wait. I was knackered after my lack of sleep the previous night (and a long and exciting day) and nodded off. Luckily I was woken up when the coach arrived - by a Hartlepool fan!

I was wearing my Wednesday scarf against the cold, and on the coach I put one end over my eyes to keep out the light, and feel straight to sleep, only waking up as we approached Heathrow. I had a 75 minute wait there for the Stansted coach, but once I was on board that one I fell back to sleep again immediately. I had a long wait at Stansted before I could check in, so I had a cooked breakfast in O'Neills, read the reports in various papers on the match - and bought some birthday presents for Daniel.

Dave's flight was leaving at the same time as mine, from the same airport - another bizarre coincidence - and we bumped into each other again as we were heading for the gate. He and Sean had slept in Sean's car and then driven to Stansted at what sounded like the speed of sound. They'd offered me a lift, but there was never going to be room for 3 of us to sleep in the car anyway, so it all worked out fine in the end.

Boarded the plane on time and promptly fell asleep again ;o)
It was a bit surreal coming back to Cantabria after such a weekend. It's now 9 pm (8 UK time) and I'm fading fast, expect I'll be tucked up in bed within the hour.