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Seb White of the On To Victory Fanzine
gives the first of his updates from Antwerp on the Glovers 2003/04 pre-season tour of Belgium
and Germany. Take it away, Seb ......
Early start ... sorry very early start to get the plane in the morning as myself
Jon and Chris meet at Manchester Airport at 5.00am. The new shirts were on
display and yet no sign of any druken Rangers fans wanting to beat us up.
The obligatory overpriced breakfast soon followed and without delay boarded
our plane to Brussels. Smooth flight, sorted ourselves out with a train to
Antwerp at a bargain price of six Euros on prompt and very clean trains - Railtrack
take note! But bollox, I get a text from Badger - the game is off! The rest of
the journey is spent asking what to do instead and how can you possibly have
a waterlogged pitch in JULY!
Arrived at Antwerp central station. Yeovil Pen
Mill it is not, as we were given a taste of some fantastic architecture, which
we have found out is a standard feature of the city. A scary taxi drive
through Antwerp - Chris was getting worried that he hadn't got travel
insurance! Booked into our hotel - very clean! And quickly onto sampling
Belgium's finest ales. The early start coupled with a few ales started to take
its toll so a power nap was required, which was rudely distrubed by our other
roomate Mr Ranner.
Even better news followed - the game was back on at a place
called Zelzate. Now what followed is a story in itself (buy the next OTV for
the full story of what following Yeovil over land and sea is really
like). Anyway somehow we got there and by all accounts even the team itself
was lucky to find a ground not too disimilar to Sherborne Town's but which
had a bar!
The match itself was a typical pre-season friendly. Lively start
particularly by Yeovil with Gally looking fitter and even faster. Lee J got
involved in a couple of handbags with both teams not shirking the tackle.
Lokeren apparently had 5 first teamers including a couple of internationals but
that made no difference to Plucky who I seem to remember well and truly plucking
the Icelandic International striker - their best player. Gav's injury just
appeared out of nothing and the lad was in a bit of pain - not helped by
having no stretcher as his team mates did the honours.
Lokeren got into the game
more in the second half and forced Wealey to make a couple of good saves. Eight subs
broke the game up and Yeovil looked good without actually threatning
too much. Final score 0-0. Simon from Amsterdam gave us stranded Glovers a lift
back to Antwerp (cheers for that Si) and what was planned to be a few drinks
actually turned into a quiet end to a long day. But the day ended on a high
as myself and will ate cherry sweets of some bird's leg - again another
story. The plan for Saturday is to go to Holland and watch Willem II vs FC Wil
in the Intertwobob. More updates tommorow.
Antwerp Greens: Chris, Jon, Seb, Will
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Belgium Diary : July 4th 2003
