Southgate’s second successive European tour saw us take two teams, one Vets and one open-age to Lisbon…after taking one team to Berlin last year. We made the decision to fly out a day early on the Thursday in the hope that we’d drink so much on Thursday night that we couldn’t stomach it Friday leaving us in prime position for the tournament Saturday…isn’t that what the pro’s do?

Unfortunately at 5pm on Wednesday our flight for lunch time Thursday was cancelled…those cheese eating, baguette loving, onion smelling, wine drinking, polka-dot jersey wearing Frenchies decided to have an air-traffic control strike…clearly the 35 hour week they are working is just too much…

Cue panic…3 lads managed to get a 6am flight from Heathrow to somewhere via Lisbon and 3 other lads managed to do the same at 8am. That left 8 of us…after spending hours Wednesday night trying to sort something we booked a flight at 9am from Southampton to Faro…3 hour train from Faro to Lisbon and job done…

The revised plan was to meet at Waterloo Thursday morning to get the 5.30am train to Southampton airport…7 of the 8 made it…one, Danny Marchant, didn’t…he was in a car frantically trying to get to Woking station to catch our train. We set off from Waterloo to be told the train would be diverted due to flooding on the track…ok we thought…2 and half hours later, leaving Woking 2 hours after we should have been (and after picking up Danny) we were told that because of the delays our train wouldn’t be stopping at Southampton airport. We eventually arrived at the airport at 9.10…to be told we couldn’t board the flight…it was on the runway still but we were too late…

It was a sombre atmosphere so we went for a beer to mull over our options. A night in Southampton was considered, as was Bournemouth…go back to London…and work on Friday? Meanwhile Declan O’Leary wasn’t content to let the weekend die…so he booked 8 flights to Amsterdam from Southampton that afternoon. We found possibly the worst hostel in Amsterdam and booked some flights to Lisbon from Amsterdam on Friday morning…Southgate’s European dream was back on. After almost getting thrown off the flight for smuggling whiskey on-board we arrived in Amsterdam and set to task on drinking ourselves silly…a good night had by all, some better than others, with Amsterdam’s main evening sights all explored…

After barely any sleep, and literally no sleep for some we were up at 7am to go to Amsterdam airport…only to find that our flight to Lisbon was delayed by over 4 hours…what more could go wrong? Eventually we did leave though and 3 hours later landed in Lisbon…about 6pm…36 hours after our scheduled arrival the Amsterdam 8 had finally arrived, and were reunited with the Lisbon 6. As you can imagine there was a party atmosphere and any thought of taking it easy to prepare for the tournament went out of the window…we hit Lisbon hard and as with the night before some more than others. The scene at 8am Saturday morning, getting up for the tournament, was like a crime scene…some lads had just come in…

We arrived at the stadium and just plonked ourselves down. To start with the Vets…they had 5 group games and went from terrible, to bad to not so bad. After a couple of heavy defeats without threatening the opposition goal they were really competing in their third game when Stumpy scored a great goal, lobbing over the keeper…the only problem was the keeper was Cliffy…a comical OG. The Vets fourth game ended in their most valiant defeat yet, but unfortunately another defeat without scoring. Their final group game was for pride and some was restored with a 0-0 draw…5 games, 4 defeats and draw, with zero goals scored…I guess when you have Declan O’Leary leading the line and Cliff Lovett as last line of defence what can you expect? Not a great tournament for the Vets but on a positive note it can only get better next year…

Vets team; Cliff Lovett, Stewart Street, Pat Ball, Gerry Clifford, Keir Wingrove, Matt Bisogno, Declan O’Leary.

The open-age team fared a little better. They only had 4 group games, won two convincingly and lost two by a single goal. The teams who inflicted the two narrow defeats went on to contest the main Champions League final. Southgate dropped into the Europa League (which was always what we were playing for…). Our semi-final against Shrewsbury Townsend was a fairly comfortable 2-1 victory. That set up a final against Your Mum…a team we dispatched 3-0 in the group stages. It was a tight 0-0 affair at half time before a flowing counter attack saw a deflected strike from Simon Hicks fly into the net to give us a deserved 1-0 lead. With Tony Sayers getting loudly booed by the watching crowd for holding the ball in the corner in injury time he showed great feet to wriggle free and smash the ball home…which also meant Tony finished the whole tournament as joint top-scorer. 2-0 final score…Southgate were Champions of Europe! We walked the famous Lisbon stadium steps to lift Southgate’s first European trophy…the first of many I hope.

Open-age team; Stef Shamlian, Ryan Kerby, Neil Spackman, Damien O’Brien, Danny Marchant, Simon Hicks, Tony Sayers.

We hit Lisbon hard Saturday night…parading through the narrow cobbled streets flaunting our medals. 7am Sunday morning was tough…our fourth tough early morning in a row but the travelling saga hadn’t ended yet. With the issue of cancelled flights Gerry Clifford had somehow managed to change his return flight from 10.25 Sunday morning to 10.25 Tuesday morning…and sure enough the plane was full. Gerry managed to get on a flight at 9pm Sunday evening so enjoyed another day in Lisbon. And still it wasn’t over…Simon Hicks stayed up the coast from Lisbon for a few days to recover…when he boarded his flight to return to London on Wednesday evening it was diverted to Birmingham! The trip that keeps on giving…

In summary it was a mad few days…most of us ended up with sleep deprivation and with a deep hit to the bank account with all the extra travels…but winning Southgate’s first European trophy definitely made it worthwhile! Already looking forward to next year in Mallorca, 10th June 2017…