Riga - Latvia - 2007
At
last the next away trip was upon on us, this time it ended up a very nice double
header; Latvia then Iceland in quick succession.
This
trip saw many of the Buckfast Loyal come in from all directions with some
intending to make the trip longer than others.
For this member of the Buckfast Loyal it was a case of joining up with a
few of GAWA men from Armagh. Surprising for being Armagh men, only one liked the
fine wine!
The
trip started as usual with a flight from Dublin airport (just for a change like)
but hopes where high and the situation was simple, win the next two games and we
really could dream of the finals!!! A wee diversion to Copenhagen then on to
Latvia saw us arrive in good time on Thursday for a warm up bounce before the
main event on the Saturday.
The
first impression of Latvia that it seemed like a decent spot was destroyed when
we saw the accommodation, a large number of the GAWA seemed to make Friendly
Franks there HQ and so did we, unfortunately Frank must have been running out of
room as we where put in the store room called “The chill out room to Frank!”
The room had everything a good storeroom should have; 6 beds, spare parts, 14
spare mattresses and a broken washing machine thrown in for good measure! Enough
talk of the quality accommodation, we hadn’t came to Latvia to sleep!
The
city itself seemed quite small and there was a large range of bars about the
place, though none serving the famous 70p pints that everyone seems to talk
about when they speak of Eastern European Countries.
I
won’t speak too much about the city of Riga as the people in it seemed to try
there best to scam anything they could out of the new influx of tourists all
dressed in green!
Maybe
they all wanted to follow in the footsteps of Riga’s fine police force, which
would have been a fine force in the times of Hitler, not the 21st
Centaury. The opinions of Riga were
well documented when all the fans returned home, and the fact that ‘Trip
Advisor’ stopped people giving an opinion on Riga, says it all!
The
police seemed to try their best to upset the carnival atmosphere in the square
on match day with a strict rule of “NO WALKING ON THE GRASS”.
Unfortunately, no amount of bad policing could have prepared us for a
performance by the team on the pitch, which must rank up with one of the worst
ever witnessed.
The
police may not have liked the GAWA but there where quite a few attractive
Latvian ladies who took to the GAWA with large numbers stopping to get their
pictures taken with the GAWA. Although
the first sign of an attractive lady usually found the Latvian ladies mobbed for
pictures themselves!
The
result was terrible but the pain was eased a little thanks to a great
performance by Iceland to hold Spain to a draw with the match taking place just
after our own. The dream could
maybe still be on we hoped, as we left TGI Fridays, (which seemed to do a great
trade from the GAWA) the spirits where lifted once more!
Plans
of a quick exit out of Riga where delayed as we had to wait on our next set of
flights on to Iceland, so we took in a wee cruise up the river to see nothing of
interest, but it passed a few hours and the booze was quite cheap considering it
was mainly a tourist attraction.
As we left Latvia first thing on Monday morning the only bit of sadness I felt was that we had failed to take anything from the game. But it’s a feeling that we should be used to when traveling away and when it does it will be the day we can actually genuinely think of qualification to a major tournament again!
