Wembley’s awesome – Shame about the football

After a busy day at work, I met up with Andy and the boys at the train station and headed down to Wembley Stadium. My brother and my nephews were already in the front row, behind the goal waiting excitedly to see England vs Ukraine. I’m not a football fanatic and was more curious to see what Wembley was like, than if England would win. In short, it was awesome – all lit up with the dark sky lurking above. There were thousands of people around us and the noise was amazing.
We had to hold up a piece of red card during the National Anthem, to create the red cross of the England flag and the boys bounced in excitement. It was then downhill all the way, as England failed to play anything like football. They seemed to be collecting yellow cards and unwilling to go anywhere near the Ukraine players. The Ukrainian players excelled at falling over and clutching their legs. I had to admire their fans though. There were not many of them, but they stood through the whole match and made loads of noise.
You know things are bad when you spend more time watching the fans trying to hit the fire officer with elastic bands. For some reason he sat in front of us, with his back to us, watching the pitch. He had earphones on – I’m still at a loss as to why? There was also a Response Team, though I’m not sure what they were responding to. All they did was get in the way as they paced up and down. Most of them were overweight, middle aged men who looked like they would have heart attacks if they did need to respond to anything.
Finally there were orange-jacketed people, who sat in front of us, staring at us in a menacing way – ever so slightly disconcerting. But hey, if you like that sort of thing…. To be fair, England did play slightly better in the second half and Joe Hart waved at the kids. I got to see his lovely musclely legs – so there was an up side.
At the end, we left with 68,000 other people and attempted to embark on our journey home. This was the part that I had been dreading. However, London seems very practised at dealing with large crowds and within half an hour of queuing at the station, we were heading home on the train with a bunch of jolly, but tired supporters. The mood was light-hearted and chatty, though the late hour was taking its toll. We got home at midnight (on a school night) but it was worth it!

~ by envisioningutopia on September 20, 2012.