TeBe Party Army

E- Block International - A Weblog for "Away Fans" of Tennis Borussia Berlin.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

FC Hansa Rostock (A) 2:0 TeBe

Saturday 9th December 2006, Volksstadion, Rostock

Team: Greil - Duygun, Thiam, Below - Scholl, Griesert, Weidner, Thomson, Kadow - Fuß, Savran. Subs: Eckl, Lemcke, Vuckovic

Attendance: ?


Last game before the winter break, last chance for a bit of hope to carry us through said break. Not to be. Babelsberg finally dropped points for the second time this season, we could have closed the gap to eight, but now it's twelve and it's Goodnight Vienna. My first defeat of the season, too

Prelude to this match: To thank the fans for their great support, and to show some solidarity with them, the team and management donated 10 'weekend [train] tickets' for the fans to enable them to travel to Rostock for free to roar on the team. As usual, when there's a freebie going, everybody wants a piece, so we managed to get 65 to travel, a cracking away crowd for us. For those 'not on the list', a hat was handed round in the train to raise the extra money for tickets, so I paid 2 EUR for a 6-hour return journey :D

I got on one station later than the assembled posse, and it was great to see the last carriage filled with Purple and White, not to mention at least 10 huge cops. The fans seemed to have been organised themselves into two camps; the quieter, mostly older (30s) crew downstairs in among families on daytrips, and the mostly younger drinking crew upstairs and in the aisles. The atmosphere was good, it was nice to see so many travelling away, but already a few alcohol victims could be spied, those who hadn't gone to bed and had drunk through the night. As usual, the 'merry brigade' were singing plenty of songs, but it all stayed in good spirits, even with the police, who had been less than friendly the previous weekend. No problems this time, they even chatted with fans, bored witless no doubt. I decided not to drink for this journey to see what it was like and because of recent stresses. It made the day very interesting and eye-opening.

We got to Rostock 3 hours later, nice day, and all waiting outside the station for various stragglers, people buying more drink, peeing etc, and had our first victim, a younger member scooped for 'urinating in public' - 15 EUR fine :-/ We then started to walk to the ground, a good 40 minutes away, and it was the usual carry-on, everything taking ages, walk, wait, walk, wait. Eventually a group of around 8 non-alcohol-fuelled people had enough and walked on without stopping, much to the chagrin of Fan Rep PPA. We were accused of a lack of solidarity and egoism, maybe justifiably. But tbh I felt no solidarity with a group of loud growling pissed people, and egoism works both ways. Very strange to have the shoe on the other foot for once.

Well the others got on the bus and got to the ground before us. Poetic justice you might say. But it was a nice day, the walk was nice, and I got talking with someone who had become an honorary member of the Green And White Army (Northern Ireland) and had been to Denmark at the same game as me, all from meeting NI fans in Berlin! Very cool.

We passed Hansa's glossy lego-like Ostsee Stadium on the way, we were playing on an old training ground, and entrance was 2,50 EUR, bargain. The Party Army had assembled close to the TeBe dugout and were already in full voice. We soon found out that a friend's banner was not allowed to be unfurled in the ground because of the political message on it:

"Not an inch of ball for Fascists: Greetings and Kisses from Friedrichshain"

Which in the light of the spate of recent football violence, right-wing chants and symbolism, is an absolute disgrace. As a result, at the end of the game, we unfurled the banner and held it up in the block, singing all the while.

To the match. TeBe were playing in all-black. The first half was a good game, open, lots of attacks, TeBe, slightly the better team, with a few half-chanes, but Greil had to be sharp to make a few good saves from Rostock too. Ryan Thomson was his usual all-action bustling self, Benny Griesert was weaving his magic on the wing, including my moment of the day when he skinned two Hansa players before lofting this deft deliberately-sliced pass with the outside of his foot to Scholl, worthy of the Bundesliga, and the left side was strong thanks to Below's strong preformance. Sascha Kadow, on the other hand, was not at the races at all, and I'm amazed he lasted 45 minutes, let alone the whole match. We seemed to be playing 3-5-2, with Kadow as a link man, but he looked lost, afraid of the ball, without bearings. I really don't what our best 11 is, our what our formation really is. We really missed captain Petrowsky yesterday, he has that bit more creativity than Ryan, for all the good work he does. We do lack some real inspiration though, and didn't put in enough crosses. For me, Thiam didn't have one of his better days, made a lot of elemental errors, which were all the more noticable because of their rarenes. Duygun laboured hard, and I like him as a guy, but I don't think he's quite good enough. We missed Schalle too I think.

Anyway, onto the second half. Unlike the team yesterday. Who stopped. It was ALL Hansa. We left the right wing uncovered all day (just like in the BAK game) and it cost us again, as that was where the corner stemmed from that led to their first goal. The only people that came out of the second half with any credit at all, were Thomson, who ran himself into the ground, and to a lesser extent, Manu. Fuss laboured, but he was too greedy on occasion. We missed two gilt-edged chances, or should I say the keeper made 2 great saves, one when Fuss was clean through, and the other a double save, first from a piledriver from the edge of the box from Fuss, which he parried to Thiam 6 yards out, who STILL couldn't convert, hitting it straight at the keeper.

The second goal, in injury time, was a comedy of errors, with a Hansa handball in play too. Defenders slipping, a weak shot from a tight angle, but the keeper off balance and not looking his best in trying to reach it. Then a bit of stress: some fans, already fuming about the handball and goal, flipped out when the Hansa players ran over to the TeBe fans and made provocative gestures. Some TeBe fans stormed forward to unleash their verbal rage, and the anal stewards, who had been itching for a fight all day long, piled in, started shoving and pushing, leading to an escalation. The final whistle went immediately after, and full credit to the players, they came over and deliberately INTO the block to show solidarity with the fans and to make sure no shit was going on, full credit to them, esp. Duygun, Fuss and Ryan (head up, big man).

As for the fans, it was mostly good. They sang all match, and there seems to be a new youth section of the Party Army with a couple of new songs. There was also a group of older fans who were very vocal. I also saw a surprising number of unfamiliar faces, obviously in for a freebie. Some things were less good. As usual, due to the inebriated nature of many of the fans, the clapping and singing was up the left, and some unnecessary things were shouted, eg “Rostockers are all fucking Nazis”. Really not needed. There were one or two more, but I’m not writing them here.

We all piled onto a bus back into town, without paying of course, on instruction of the two police accompanying us, then made our slow way to the station, via shops, a supermarket to stock up on supplies for the journey home and a long slow walk back, together this time. I couldn’t believe how relaxed and laissez-faire the police were with us. Only 6 of them, very reserved, and it made me laugh how they just let our fans throw firecrackers about the place, even right beside the police, and did nothing!

The journey home was amazingly peaceful, I expected the inebriated nature of fans and possible misunderstandings to provoke a police response, but nothing. The quiet crew sat in the non-smoking section, the rowdy bunch in the smoking compartment. It was really nice to chat with some of the older stuff about TeBe politics, what’s next, do crosswords and joke around. It was really nice that I had some fellow non-drinking accompaniment in Endi, Mirko, Daniel etc. Cheers, would have been hard to take otherwise.

One more Cup match on Wednesday which I can’t attend due to work, and then the fu cking two-month German winter break before the next game. There’s nothing to look forward to anyway after yesterday’s result. It was telling that immediately after the final whistle yesterday, the first song the fans sang was

“Pokalfinale, Pokalfinale, wir fahren jedes Jahr zum Pokalfinale”

[‚We go to the Cup Final every year’]

That is our only hopeleft for this season. Pity.

German match report maybe soon on ultras71 (though the reporter was very drunk ;) )

Denis took some photos too, not many of the match though, here.

Doughnut Boy to upload photos soon, he’s promised…

2 Comments:

  • At 9:35 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    thanks for the report. very good read, as usual.

     
  • At 4:25 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    don´t fear. i wasn´t too drunk ;-)

     

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