HMZ
& NUFC BOYS ON THE ROAD TO GERMANY 2006
As 2004
drew to a close, several of the HMZ & NUFC lads considered
their plans for the years ahead. One common theme to arise was
the desire to be in Germany for the World Cup in 2006, hopefully
cheering England to their first trophy in 40 years. We soon
discovered that the best way to do this is to join "Englandfans",
the official England supporters club, who are given tickets
for all England internationals, and provide the only means of
purchasing tickets to watch England abroad.
So HMZ'ers
Jim, Rich, Stu and Smithy, along with NUFC boys Ropes, Adam,
Shippers, Ridgey, and allegedly Rob, all signed up to Englandfans,
and looked forward to a great couple of years of football.
Englandfans
operates a loyalty scheme, where members are given 1 "cap"
for every home game they attend, and 2 for every away game.
This means to have the best chance of World Cup tickets, you
have to go to as many of the preceeding friendlies and qualifiers.
As members were allowed to carry forward caps from the Euro
04 qualifiers and friendlies we had a bit of catching up to
do, and so decided wherever possible we would watch England,
not just for the caps, but also as a football adventure!
And, of
course, we thought we'd take the Nailsea United flag around
with us, and get it displayed at as many landmarks as possible,
and bring you the photos on the website.
The following
pages will be built up to represent a photo diary of our journeys,
hopefully culminating in Berlin on July 9th 2006 with us, Beckham,
the World Cup and the NUFC flag!
Fixtures
9th Feb
2005 - Holland (home)
- Villa Park - 0-0
26th Mar
2005 - Northern Ireland
(home) - Old Trafford - 4-0
30th Mar
2005 - Azerbaijan
(home) - St James Park - 2-0
28th &
31st May 2005 - USA (away) & Colombia (neutral) - sadly
our bank balances didn't stretch far enough for these two pointless
games!
17th Aug
2005 - Denmark (away) - Copenhagen - 1-4
3rd Sept
2005 - Wales (away) - Cardiff - 1-0
7th Sept
2005 - Northern Ireland (away) - Belfast - just 1000 England
tickets for this one, and we all missed out in the ballot, unsurprisingly
given the 3% chance of success we had!
8th Oct
2005 - Austria
(home) - Old Trafford - 1-0
12th Oct
2005 - Poland (home) - Old Trafford
- 2-1
12th Nov
2005 - Argentina (neutral) - Geneva
- 3-2
1st March
2006 - Friendly TBC
