I was somewhere City based watching too, may have been the One World Sports Bar as it was a regular for me, and there was a heap of people watching the game. It kind of felt like the start of something good for Australian football. Almost like it was the start of our incline as a footballing nation, instead of just being kings of Oceania and then everyone else’s whipping boys.
Helped that it was England and there were ALOT of English football fans acting like complete and utter fuckwits leading into the match (there were ALOT of dickhead Australian football fans too, don’t get me wrong), so it was nice to finally get one up on them.
It was a great venue. Watched ALOT of NFL there too. Used to head there for Monday Night Football instead of to uni. Massive burgers, litre beers, big screen TV’s. Did a Superbowl there probably 15-16+ years ago. They were doing live crosses back to SBS (which was a bad idea considering the venue opened super early and everyone was on the beers from pretty early the morning. Good times.
yeah there were some glorious times and some fairly spicy evenings there - England v Portugal descending into the worst bar fight ever was possibly the highlight.
Sadly it has never been replaced - the casino just doesn’t cut it for me (aside from pre Superbowl beers at silly o’clock in the morning)
I watched that game at Cheers, which was about 80% English. My mate got booed walking in just before kickoff in an Aussie shirt.
We had fun as the goals went in.
One World Sport was great - watched a few Superbowls there, some WC games in 2002 and also both legs of the Uruguay game in 2001. We were right next to the SBS cameras for the away leg which wasn’t ideal. I remember Robbie Slater came up to commiserate with us afterwards as I had a mate crying. He mentioned that we were the perfect age to travel to Germany for the next one, which we’d definitely qualify for, so he was right about that (only time ever?).
haha i watched that at the famous three kings next to west kensington tube station… went back to the pub i worked at and all the regulars bought me a pint… i got so drunk i fell down the stairs and split my lip… ha ha cool story bro
Haven’t watched that game ever since and won’t tonight.
That was the night we contributed to the John Kosmina sacking of Newcastle Breakers coach. We ended idrinking in a Melbourne bar with two directors, very drunk and very upset.
We ripped into them about what a fwit and hopeless coach Kosmina was. There were about a dozen of us. Two days later he got the sack.
On a different note; if we had qualified for France '98 would that have meant that Soccer Australia and the NSL would have lasted a longer longer than it did?
Sounds liek Lyndon Dykes has accepted a Scotland callup to play in the Nations League. Bit of a shame as he was supposedly going to be called up for Australia before covid hit.
He looks okay (watched highlights, so hard to tell much) but I’m hopeful that Maclaren will hit his straps. With Taggart and Boyle there as well we look alright up front. Lads 26ish - we’ve had time to call him up.
He also only really started hitting his straps last season. Was in the Scottish championship the season before, and you arent gonna cap that. Hes big and can move as well, we dont really have that. Ah well…
