Haka

The draw for the preliminary round of this years champions league originally saw us drawn to play in Israel but due to them fielding an illegible player, our opponents where to be Haka of Finland. Whilst I was looking forward to a trip to Tel Aviv, I must admit the tales of £7 a pint in Finland were not too appealing.                   

Anyhow we booked a flight with Buzz and got rooms quite cheap at the Helsinki Holiday Inn, so at least the journey wasn’t too dear. The only drawback was a drive to Stansted, made all the worse by Hogo’s snoring! When we arrived at the check-in desk, Bobby Wilcox pulled his wife’s passport out and immediately threw it too the floor. The queue was in chaos & I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. We ended up booking Bobby onto a flight for the following day as he got the train home to retrieve his passport.

Myself, Frank, Darren & Hogo boarded the plane in stitches. The Helsinki Holiday Inn was very plush, and as Frank had stayed in Helsinki before he acted as tour guide. The bars in Helsinki were very crowded for a Tuesday night, and the night-club we went to was bouncing. The lager was nowhere near as dear as we had been previously informed, about £2 to £2.50 a bevy.

frank enjoying a joke

Haka switched the game from their normal ground to the National stadium in Helsinki because of the support Liverpool have amongst the locals, and the fact of course, that Jari and Sammi were in the team. Jari is undoubtedly a national hero in Finland! Bobby arrived five minutes before the kick-off. We never really had to get out of second gear in the game and run out easy five-nil winners. 

After the match the town was absolutely bouncing, apparently Wednesday is the main night out in Helsinki, one local told me that the locals never go to work on a Thursday. In the club the locals were great, we even found a Finnish toffee with Ferguson on his back, after ten minutes of leathering him his bird binned him! The club was open till 4 and the placing was chocka till the end. Outside literally hundreds of young Finns were walking the streets looking for cabs.

Darren with Finland number 1 toffee & i thought they were all from county road