A day in the life

By neacail

RAPID VIENNA WIN AUSTRIAN LEAGUE

I do like watching football, but when my brother in law said he had tickets for the potentially championship deciding match with Rapid Vienna v SCR Altach (SCR are the sponsors), I must admit to not expecting all that much. Don't know why, maybe some sort of misguided arrogance that other countries football isn't as good as ours.
Went up on the underground (see previous blip!) met my brother in law who put a tin of beer in my hand. "Isn't drinking in the street banned here?" I said, "no". So went up to the game, got to a turnstile, the man pointed at the can, I assumed he wanted in binned, but no, he handed me a plastic beer glass to put the beer in and took the can away!!
On our way into the stadium, there were beer tents galore, and music blasting away in the sunshine, and a general sort of good vibe.
Took our seats, everyone is smoking and drinking (smoking's not banned in the ground either). The ground was sold out and the atmosphere was brilliant. At both ends of the ground, the fan clubs provide a couple of people who stand on a wee stage in front of the fans with a megaphone and start the chanting/singing off, and generally whip the crowd up into a frenzy very effectively. There are massive banners and flags everywhere (not banned either!), and everyone's got a bit of coloured paper on the seat which they hold up over their head for one of these olympic style giant banner things, very cool.
Then as the game starts, everyone scrunches them up and starts chucking them on the pitch or at the opposition players (this seems to be acceptable too). It looks great with the kind of sea of green and white balls flying in, but I missed getting a photo which was a shame.
The game itself was pretty good, but Vienna got 2 goals in the first 10 minutes which turned it into a bit of a victory parade, 3 - 0 final result so they won the league. 5 minutes before the end the anouncer says "everyone stay in your seats please" - (in German!), final whistle goes, everyone starts to pile on the pitch, anouncer says "everyone pile on the pitch, but slowly please" absolutely hilarious! The Austrians are so chilled out, I think our cops and stewards could learn a thing or two from them. It's a crying shame we'll not be there, boo hoo.

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