All the shenanigans of the last week finally caught me up today. After a day looking about for a suitable place to play, I’d somehow ended up on a bench next to St. Stephens Cathedral, the seat of the Archbishop of Vienna no less !
I was feeling knackered and about to shuffle off back to my hostel when a mighty rain storm came. People scattered everywhere for cover but, being a daft northerner , I showered under the refreshing warm revitalising water. Lovely.
No sooner had the rain subsided that the jumpers were down at the side of this giant monument to worship, and no doubt some posh violin playing mice wearing dicky-bows. With one eye on the cops and cathedral security, I started to ask folk to play . It took a while, but what a cracking game it turned out to be !
George Ablin and Luke Pettican from Essex and their friend Romi Hudakova from Slovakia joined in first , swiftly followed by Antanas Budnys from Lithuania , who had something of the Andy Kaufman’s about him.
Roman from Ukraine completed the line up and joined me and Antanas against the others . Luke was a fibber. He said he couldn’t play but battered his team into a 2-0 lead before the comically serious Antanas pulled a goal back for us . George was everywhere , a good technical player and he soon put his team 3-1 up. Roman stubbed his toe and was replaced by the mighty Andrzej Staniszewski from Raciąż, Poland. At this point we were 4-1 down...but not for long .
We’d drawn quite a big crowd by this time and the game was electric ;end to end in the warm night.
Andrzej was a mighty player ; strong , intelligent and quick . Antanas suddenly sprang to life and was popping up everywhere to receive the ball. Little Mubarak from Saudi Arabia joined our team towards the end and miraculously we won 5-4 , with the fantastic Andrzej scoring 4 ! Brilliant game involving 6 different nationalities out of absolutely nowhere. Love footy ⚽️❤️