It was a busy weekend for the travelling Nailsea United flag (now found again!), as it visited landmarks such as UEFA HQ, the United Nations building and Lake Geneva, as well as the Stade de Geneve for England's stunning win over Argentina.

The UEFA trip was organised by a group of Englandfans members, and saw around 150 England supporters travel 25 mins from Geneva to Nyon, where we were treated to an official reception by UEFA, a traditional Swiss lunch (of chicken & rice!) and then played a friendly game against the UEFA staff, which we won 1-0. The trip received a lot of media attention, for example this story on UEFA's website, and was aimed largely at improving the image of England fans with the governing body. It was very interesting to see and hear about UEFA's work, and provided us with lots of photo opportunities with the UEFA trophies. We promised a photo of us with the World Cup at the start of the year, well we have now got the Champions League, UEFA Cup and European Championship trophies so that's not bad so far!

The Stade de Geneve is a nice, fairly new venue, although situated between a shopping centre and an industrial estate on the edge of Geneva it's not the best located ground, and the buses and trams struggled to cope afterwards, England fans singing and dancing broke at least one tram. The 7000 official, plus a few thousand unofficial England supporters made plenty of noise throughout the night whilst the Argies were largely silent, despite the continual reminders about the Falklands. The game featured a fantastic comeback by England with 2 goals from Michael Owen in the last 5 minutes winning it, although it was such an open game with so many chances for both sides just about any result was possible.

The night got better still as England fans cheered on Switzerland against Turkey, and celebrated long into the night as the Swiss won 2-0, leaving Turkey a big task to make it to the finals.

So the England supporting year ended with us seeing victories over Northern Ireland, Azerbaijan, Wales, Austria, Poland and Argentina, with a draw against Holland and defeat in Denmark. The flag should get one more pre-World Cup outing with a midweek home friendly due in March 06, but the anticipation is now building towards the draw on December 9th, when we find out where we'll be going next summer. Click on the links below the photos for the other installments in the photo diary.