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© 2006 nashNET.
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Horsham – home and start on the 23rd
July 2001-11-18
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Portsmouth – blagged free ferry ticket to Caen courtesy of Miss. Hope
and her side kick Richard (photo coming soon).
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Caen – First pitch invasion with the table, I think we played the goalie.
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Paris – PSG training session: Anelka threw a tantrum and refused
to play on the table but good sport French and PSG central defender Dehu
did.
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Perpignan – Got off the bus for 3 hours
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Barcelona – Met second wood
chopper from Bangor, Wales. Interview with Sport Barca (don’t mention
Figo), Nou Camp officials on very long lunch so table had to take the
official tour. Failed to
hitch a boat to Italy.
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San Sebastian – Caught in middle of riot between scary Spanish police
and Basque terrorists. Bit
of sun. Sadly saw the departure of Mike.
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Bordeaux – Second pitch invasion,
Bordeaux Stadium, apparently Wiltord used to play there.
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Marseilles – Still no reply from written request submitted at Olympic
Marseilles HQ challenging Frank Le Boeuf to a game on the table. Third pitch invasion, getting good but table got caught by
sprinkler systems.
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Rome – Italian FA wouldn’t play but gave me a poster of the under
21’s…hmmm. Fourth pitch invasion,
the Olympic Stadium with the loony French boys who never sleep, Hakim
and Michel. Italian Super
Cup Roma 2, Fiorentina 0 suspect that the Romans are a bit happy about
winning the Scudetto.
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Basel – Meant to be an escape from football, visiting a friend,
Hil. Basel F.C. now managed by, favourite at the Lane, Christian
Gross and with a new stadium had to be greeted by the table. Andy the
builder and Jan Peterson the stadium manager granted all access from roof,
to pitch, to underground VIP carpark. Jan nearly became the table’s first
victor with a nail biting 10-9 on the pitch spurred on by his tales of
Danish greats. Hopefully
we’ll meet again as he’s working for the Germans in Korea!
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Zurich – Had phoned Fifa HQ from Basel requesting a game with Mr. Blatter.
They refused, said that they had a World Cup to organise, or something.
Turned up on their doorstep Monday morning and obviously they couldn’t
resist the power of the table. Good
sport that he is Mr. Blatter came down, graced the table and predicted
a victory for England in Munich.
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Munich – I WAS THERE! Pitch
invasion 3 days before with Middlesborough man Paul Flynn and Aussie Stewart.
Legends Murray, Pete, Seb, John and Andy ensured a day of mayhem
which resulted in the table appearing on the front page of the Guardian
and being spotted on and interviewed by CNN, ITV, Sky sports, Channel
5, and BBC News 24. Snuck
into England training session and press conferences. The match itself needs no explanation but I enjoy sharing with
you that when I asked a representative of Munich police at their HQ whether
the German team would collapse on Saturday he laughed and said “No, no,
no I don’t think so”
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Vienna – Austrian FA said hello and that they highly enjoyed the Munich
result.
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Prague – Slavia Prague pitch invasion.
We asked the guy who let us in to say to the camera welcome to
the Czech Republic in Czech. So he said “Welcome to the Czech Republic
in Czech”. Brilliant.
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Krakow – Cold. Left quickly. Met some Irish. They didn’t like football.
I sang “Hey baby” in my sleep….
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Warsaw – Colder. Polish FA said “Everything about Polish football is a
joke. Everything is really funny apart from the results.”
Rather happy about qualifying for their first world cup in 16 years.
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Riga – Bus stopped here, apparently this is where Southhampton’s little
man comes from.
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Talinn - Got vice pres of Estonian FA on the table and had a kick
around on the pitch of their new Wembley as graced by Holland Italy and
Ireland. Matt joined the table-tour with instant success. Glad for the
company as we venture forward behind the Iron Curtain.
St Petersburg - Far too cold
to do anything
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Moscow - Went ski jumping with the table. Pitch invasion on Luzhniki
Olympic stadium and managed to get press passes for a torpedo Moscow match.
Sadly the Russian FA big guns were on holiday and nobody else was authorised
to say anything. Several Russian soldiers guarding the Chinese embassy
got distracted from duty by the table.
Sochi - 24hrs stuck on the
ferry but, in port, we added a ships captain to our list of 'playees'.
Table survived its first storm.
Trabzon to Tehran - confined
to nonstop bussing but finally found out that Beckham had equalised in
92nd minute to send us to Korea!!!!!!! We'd had to stop watching the match
in the 80th minute to catch a ferry...
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Tehran - Knocked on door of Iranian FA: press passes for Iran v
Iraq! Found ourselves having dinner with the FIFA referees from Korea
in their 5 star hotel the night before the game. Spoke with Karimi and
Kavianpour (8 and 7) and the president of the FA.
Esfahan - Interview with
Esfahan FA president and guest at their under 10s regional top gun school
and u21 tournament.
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Shiraz - Watched on TV as Iran crumbled to a 3-1 defeat in Bahrain
dumping them into the playoffs. Table graced the ruins of Persepolis.
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Bam - We could be seen for miles when we set up the table on top of the
old mud citadel Fortune of the highest order meeting Swiss relative
of FIFA executive on top of ancient mud city deep in what became George
Bush’s “Axis of evil” territory.
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Tehran - Dashed back when found our passes were valid for the first leg
playoff with UAE. Set the table up in Mick McCarthy's hotel's lobby nut
missed him. Same ref from Iraq game though appeared so we played him!
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Dubai - Flew in to UAE for 2nd leg. UAE F.A. gave us passes no probs.
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Abu Dhabi - 2nd leg. Spoke with UAE manager, goalie and more of the Iranian
players. McCarthy was there again but refused to play.
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Dublin - Complimentary tickets for 1st leg playoff against Ireland.
Bumped into Nick Hancock! His friends and Emma helped get Ali Daei, Ali
karimi, Mehrdad Minavand and Hamed Kavianpour on the table the day before
the game. I got interviewed by Trans World Sport.
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Bombay - met and stayed with some tibetan monks. Went to Wankhede stadium
- couldn't resist could we?
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Bangalore - The England cricket team: Nasser
Hussein said no, David Gower
said: "quite frankly I couldn't give a monkeys about football."
Elaborate
Indian security amongst the heightened terrorist fears allowed two strangers
minus any type of ticket let alone pass to get through 4 sets of security
with a giant purple object. Well done lads. |
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Kanha (not on map) - the table went on a tiger safari. To say our
guide was bemused would be an undersatement. Little brother Malc gave up
pursuit of rock stardom to join the tour. |
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Agra - the food poisoning capital of india (as we discovered). Taj Mahal
is awesome, go there, just ignore all the bloody locals. Played some local
street kids after getting a boatman to give us a lift across the river to
behind the Taj for an awesome sunset. |
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Varanasi - took the table mid-stream in the lovely clean ganges where dolhins
swim alongside dead bodies. |
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Dharamshala - home of the tibetan government in exile. Managed to get the
table inside the home of his holiness the Dalai Lama. Sadly he wasn't present
but his general secretary gave us a frank interview about the tibetan situation
then a game. There is a wonderful tibetan film called "The Cup" about monks
sneaking out to watch the world cup. They love football. |
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Bodhgaya - got visas for a footy tournament in Bangladesh but their
dodgy FA were suspended by FIFA and the tournament cancelled. So got a train
to
calcutta to watch an England cricket one dayer. But managed to get on the
wrong train from delhi, got off at Gaya to wait for our train which arrived
at 1.40am with all the doors locked and the lazy sodding scum wouldn't get
out of their seats to open them! Bitter, bitter moment. So
stayed in Gaya where ten minutes down the road were 200,000 buddhists gathered
for the Kalachakra initiation. Police had to
restrain the crowd when we set up the table. Madness. Monks fighting for
a view. One monk turned out to be the cousin of the bhutanese national goalkeeper! |
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Katmandu - Table made it all the way on my poor back to over 5,000m
in the Himalayas and Everest itself. Met an American goalkeeper who was
applying to become goalkeeping coach of Bhutan. Small world. |
Singapore - Football Asia interviewed Andy and I and followed us round with
a film crew for the day. Managed to arrange to get Nick Faldo and Ian Woosnam
on the table but Woosnam did badly and went home early in a huff and for
once Faldo did well and came second so he had to go to the winners banquet
instead! |
Malaysia - Hit the headquaters of the Asian Football Federation and got
a few people on the table. As usual there was a Brit working there and he
was a Spurs fan
so we were happy. |
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Bangkok - Got the table on the National Stadium in the centre of
Bangkok and was interviewing a reporter from the Bangkok Post only to be
kicked off by some
old guy who thought i was filming a commercial! Met Peter Withe, manager
of the Thai national team. Our first ex-england international and he scored
the winner in the 1982 European Cup final for Aston Villa
against Bayern-München! |
Phnom Penh - Unbelievably helpful, the table met the technical director
and the president of the Football Federation. Joined in a training session
with the Cambodian national team on a tennis court (no decent
pitches in Phnom Penh) and had great fun reminding the German coach of a
certain 5-1 match, which he took very well! |
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Vietnam - Chairman of Referees Association, FA General Sec, National
Stadium invasion. Immensely proud that one of their players beat Beckham
and Veron in the Pepsi Skills Challenge a few years back. |
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Laos - Arrived in time for the Laos New Year. This transforms everybody
into 9yr olds. They drive round in the backs of trucks throwing water,
flour, berries at everybody else for three days. On New Years day itself
we walked straight into (well, over a wall) the National Stadium and had
an Anglo-Danish penalty shootout on the pitch (result not mentioned, but
we're English - you do the math) watched only by worst security guard
in the world, a dog and a man in underpants. Returned the next day, but
were thrown out by now-clothed man in underpants. Also, see the sunset
shot in the pics section.
China - Shaolin
monks and a Great Wall.
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Korea (Jeju Island) - SUCCESS. A first hand look at the
surprise package
that is the S Korean team in a 1-1 draw with England. No fewer than 4
of the England team on the table, including Owen, famous commentators,
ex players and a certain Mr Sven Goran Eriksson. Media attention explodes
and all of a sudden everybody wants a piece of us.
Japan - An incredible
welcome by the fantastic Japanese, a breathtaking number of Beckham shirts,
continued media interest, and more famous people.
Chewed finger nails against Sweden, euphoria against the Argies, afternoon
nap against the Nigerians, congas against the Danes, and sheer disbelief
against the Brazilians (partly at the disgraceful antics of Rivaldo).
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The Final Furlong...
Good old blighty and the
small job of putting everything onto paper. Not a bad job, it only took
Virgin and Andy 4 years to produce "23 Sweet FAs" and come to
terms with parting with the Table which has been put to auction on eBay!
All money raised goes to the BBC's
Sport Relief campaign.
Somehow, phenomenally, the
documentary has still not been aired so the boys have something to keep
them occupied and relive the tales of the Table. Any takers for over 70
hours of prime 3 Chip footage should contact us pronto on tablefootball@hotmail.com.
The film aside, the end of
the road appears to have been reached. But then that's just the start
of a whole new chapter… Thank you to everyone for all the support, the
encouragement and the belief. You are all coming on the next one.
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