AWAY trips are an important part of football culture worldwide

The idea of invading another team's home town in order to support your own side and have a gigantic party is one that appeals to many fans. In Australia, away trips assume perhaps even more importance, due to the geographical isolation that many footballing centres face. If you live outside Sydney, you face a few hours in a plane just to get to your opponents' home ground - a trip from Adelaide to Queensland is hardly like strolling from London to the Midlands.

The following article recounts one such trip undertaken by a few brave souls from Perth who travelled cross-country to South Australia for the start of the 2009-2010 A-League season. It contains drug references, coarse language, and material that may offend some viewers. Names have been changed to protect the innocent, the not-so innocent, and the outright guilty. What goes on tour, stays on tour... except when it ends up on FourFourTwo Australia.

Thursday

Rocking up in Adelaide on Thursday, the first problem my comrades and I faced was the fact that apparently there's only five Maxi-Taxis in the entire "city" of Adelaide. I'd been warned that Adelaide was a sleepy town, but its depth of slumber surpassed even that of Mr White, who began sleeping on our plane a mere five minutes into our flight. Anyhow, we bundled into two regular taxis - Mr Brown and Mr Blonde in one, and Mr White and Mr Orange with myself. A delightful chat soon ensued with our 50-something local cabbie, whom:

  • Insisted that, as we were not from Adelaide, we must be "country boys".
  • Claimed that as we were naive lads from the bush staying in the inner city, we'd all leave with STDs contracted from "those damn foreigners".
  • Argued that in his eyes it wasn't a good weekend if you weren't drunk or on pills for its entirety (which he claimed to do on a regular basis).
  • Selflessly offered to take us to a club full of "underage girls", which we politely declined.

Needless to say, our introduction to the people of Adelaide was an interesting one; especially when our driver pulled up to the hotel and nearly hit a 30-something man riding a tricycle, who responded by yelling "Haawwwwnnnnkkk!" at the top of his lungs, imitating some kind of crude car horn. That was weird; even for our wacko driver, and Mr Orange made a somewhat prophetic statement about Adelaide being full of "fucking weirdos". After check-in, we met back up with Mr Brown and Mr Blonde, and walked through the city centre. Along the way, we met up with some of the lads from the Glory squad including Eugene Dadi, Adriano Pellegrino, and Branko Jelic. All stopped to have a chat and meet some of their fans, which was pretty decent of them. Had we won, I'd have claimed that my pep talk inspired the win - but as it turns out, I'll pretend we just stood there in silence.

A bit of pubbery soon followed after lunch - first stop was the Woolshed, where we argued the merits of an Adelaide pint against that of the larger, but more expensive, Perth version.  Next up was the Sky City casino, where ironically the first thing to greet us was a giant barrel- supposedly filled with money, but who knows? Remarkably, the five of us managed to pull off a small heist, all emerging as winners to some degree and thus with more money to be spent at our next pub, The Duke. Not that we needed our winnings - $10 for a large pizza and two beers is practically unheard of in Perth, and soon the lads were getting stuck in.

We did have a plan to move to the Garage bar later in the eve, but as we all know the best laids plans can come unstuck- and our plan seemed to evaporate as quickly as my tequila shots did at around 11pm. As each new Glory fan showed up, more rounds were shouted, and the night soon kicked on into a mixture of cheap alcohol, good company, and howls of delight and disbelief at the Melbourne - Central Coast scoreline. Adelaide's regular punters were surprisingly accepting of the small purple mob in their midst; in fact, the only idiot I encountered was actually from Perth. Upon spotting my scarf, he stumbled over, grabbed my shoulder, and proceeded to tell me in slurring words that "I fucking hate soccer; it's a fucking poof game. But you're from PERRRTTHHH; and I fucking respect that". Bravo old chap; but excuse me when I say that I don't return your sentiments.

Friday

Match day morning was spent piecing together Thursday from the team's various text messages. Highlights included the fact that Mr Brown had returned to the casino at some point and lost his earlier winnings, plus "a bit more"; at one point, he was apparently spotted throwing notes at bemused casino staff. Mr Blonde found himself alone in enemy territory, a pub full of Adelaide supporters who soon engaged him in a friendly game of cat-and-mouse. Mr Orange and the newly-arrived Mr Pink had hit the town with a few other lads and didn't re-emerge until five or so in the morning; the somewhat unbalanced Mr Pink waking up the rest of his sleeping team with slaps to the face and drunken punches. Both were awash with tales of booze, bravado, and someone called "The Galloper". Two other chaps had attempted to get back to the rendezvous point via a cab, only for the taxi to drop them several kilometres away after the cabbie admitted he didn't actually know where the hotel was. A drunken, stumbling adventure across Adelaide followed.

"Breakfast", some time around 1pm, consisted of bangers and mash at local pub the Rosemont. Mr Orange then disappeared for half an hour, and a kidnapping was initially suspected, before an explosive time-release kebab from the night before was identified as the culprit. It was clear then that the locals were onto us and trying to sabotage our operation through the dastardly medium of semi-cooked lamb, onions, and garlic sauce. To be honest though, no-one really noticed; the rest of us were too busy learning about an Adelaide law where you can't drink out the front of a pub whilst standing- either consume your beer on your seat or get kicked out. As we were joined by a few other Glory fans, the mood gradually began to lift and the bar suddenly looked more attractive to those who had suffered the night before. After much revelry, playing of ancient video games, and singing of songs and chants, the noisy purple mob took a walk through the streets of Adelaide.

Adelaide's a reasonably quiet place, especially on a Friday afternoon. So when a group of about thirty or so Glory supporters start marching along and chanting at the top of their lungs, it causes people to stop and look. Or as it turns out, yell abuse from passing vans, lean out of and yell abuse from hotel windows (to cries of "jump, jump, jump" in response), or just generally run away. We marched all the way to the central train station, where it was our turn to stare in shock. For those who haven't had the "pleasure" of using Adelaide's public transport system, it works something like this; you queue up at a window to buy a ticket, and by the time you get one you look like Rip Van Winkle. You get two tickets - one for the journey there, and one for the journey back. You validate your ticket to get into the train station, and then once you're on the train, you have to validate it again. Why? I don't know - maybe it helps supplement the diesel engine of the train. In Perth, we have this thing we call "electricity".

In any case, about 30 Glory supporters piled into the train and continued singing.

To everyone's immense surprise, the train didn't start moving. Instead, the driver came out and stood in the carriage, explaining that he wouldn't go anywhere until everyone was quiet. Bemused, the carriage went silent, and the train started to move. Then someone started everyone chanting again, and the train stopped once more. This time, the driver addressed the entire train and said he wasn't going anywhere because of the "boisterousness" of the people on the train, and called the transit police. Everyone laughed at first, but after ten minutes it dawned on us that he was actually serious. The transit guys rocked up soon after and stated (in a very bemused sort of way) that "Right everyone - the train driver is very upset when you sing. So please be quiet until you reach your destination". As Hindmarsh was one stop away, this seemed ludicrous- but surely enough after 20 or so minutes of holding up the entire Adelaide train system, the Glory boys (and girls) were softly chanting "Shhhh, Shhhh" and the train began to move again. Arriving at Hindmarsh, Mr Pink started up a rousing chorus of "The train driver's mum is a very nice person".

Friday Night

A longer than expected walk down deserted streets to the Joiners' Arms followed, but all was forgiven when we encountered a near-empty bar, a result of Adelaide supporters yet to get home from work. It soon began to pack out though- and not with Reds fans. A large contingent of Shed Boys had arrived up from Glenelg, and soon enough there were chants and beers galore. More and more Glory fans filtered in, along with a couple of brave Reds who took our banter in good humour; one of them even managed to join in and start a "We hate Sydney FC..." chant, perhaps without realising that it was soon going to insult his own team. The bar was overworked, the kitchen overwhelmed, and the pool room full of purple. With fans in full voice gathered round the pool table, a litany of chants received a good workout - culminating in the famous teapot dance, during which yours truly managed to smash himself into a wall and spill beer down his new kit. Good times, good times.

Finally, it was time for a march to the stadium. Singing, chanting, and generally looking like a bunch of loonies, we passed quite a few bemused Reds fans and only one or two "wannabe hoolies" of about 14 years of age. There wasn't much of a wait for those of us who had already bought their tickets - but apparently some of the away fans trying to buy at the gate had some significant trouble with the booths actually allowing them a ticket - first there weren't any, then they were at booth one, then it was actually at booth two, then you needed to give a name... For god's sake, just give them a ticket! The stupidest part of the whole thing was that people gave completely stupid names, which were accepted even though their ID was in full view of the ticket seller. I'm not sure if this is an FFA thing, an Adelaide thing, a Ticketek thing, or whatever- but it seems to be a stupid way of "managing" the presence of away fans. Anyway, I digress...

The game itself was a bit of a letdown for the away team; but all the same the 80 or so fans there didn't stop singing. A few had to leave after a couple too many and a small "discussion" with a few of the wannabe hoolies from earlier, but other than that the Adelaide fans were pleasant enough - if not a little quiet down our end. That said, it must be hard to get the motivation to sing when your ground announcer tries to get everyone to chant "A - U, A - U, A - U..." like a bunch of monkeys. To quote a well-known piece of banter, "You don't know what you're doing..."

With the game over, the decision to kick on was made, and everyone split up to determine the best way back to the city. I, along with a few other Glory fans, chose to take the train. I, along with those Glory fans, made the wrong choice. After 45 minutes of waiting- during which I managed to have a long chat on the phone to my other half, walk up and down the platform about a hundred times, and shine my Jägermeister mini-torch (acquired from, er, someone? the previous night) at all and sundry - the train finally arrived. It was one carriage long and refused to validate my return ticket. I rode anyway. (Cue gasps).

Saturday

Much like Friday, Saturday morning was spent piecing together the night before. Apparently Mr White had "done a Mr Brown" after going back to the casino with his winnings from the night before. Mr Pink disappeared altogether, only to reappear in the morning at 6am and wake the rest of us up by repeatedly hitting people with a sausage roll. He then lay down on his bed and promptly passed out, which lead to Mr White seeking revenge by stuffing the dirty half-eaten morsel back onto Mr Pink's face; dead to the world, he remained sleeping with the sausage roll perched there quite happily. Evidently, Mr Pink had a big couple of days- spending somewhere in the range of $1000 in two nights of drinking and debauchery. It's rumoured some of it was spent trying (unsuccessfully) to acquire a lady friend, but this seems destined to remain a mystery... In any case, the song "Mr Pink, Mr Pink, you're a very nice person" was heard throughout the morning.

An early checkout called for a big breakfast - and we walked around central Adelaide in vain for about 20 minutes, unable to find a single cafe that was open. Indeed, it was difficult to spot a single human being, and for a while I was concerned that we'd missed some kind of mass evacuation. Still, we eventually found a coffee shop tucked inside a mall somewhere, and a good old fry-up was the order of the day. Lunch was back at the Rosemont, and a few farewell drinks with some fellow Glory supporters. During a replay of the last night's match (at which time we realised Fox hadn't installed mics at the away bay) a spontaneous game of coaster frisbee broke out, threatening to spill to nearby punters (sorry to the old bloke in the hat- that one was me). Though quickly brought under control, it did lead to one of the more endearing, if not odd, chants of the trip; "Glory boys, we are here- throwing coasters in your beer, Whooaaa-ooohhh-oooohhhh..."

Still, all good things must come to an end... and so must Adelaide. After a final round of beers, it was onto the bus for the trip back to the airport. Evidently designed after an Adelaide train, an Adelaide bus only works if you buy a ticket from a driver and then scan that very same ticket in a machine that sits next to him. Next time I go back, I'll bring my Transperth SmartRider- and thus be revered as some kind of advanced god-creature from the future.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable couple of days; and if you're still reading this (well done!) you now know all there is to know about the trip... well, all that I'm able to tell you upon threat of death, anyhow. I do hope a few of you Reds manage to make a return trip- you're not all as retarded as I was lead to believe, and some of you are actually approaching intelligence. Even if you are just proof that Tasmania can swim, it would be great to have a bunch of you over in Perth for the return fixture, and start up a bit of a fan tradition. We've plenty of nice hotels in Perth - some even have two floors for those of you willing to try something new - and if all else fails, I'm sure we can rustle up a few barrels for you.

Until next time...