Just back from Holland....
Firstly, I have never been so tired but my God it was so worth it.
It was a different kind of trip than the Malmo trip as in we only went to the game, had a night out and came home this morning.
The atmosphere at the game was class, there was nearly double the amount of fans we had in Malmo there... at least 300. Fair play to everyone who made it to either Malmo, Nijmegen or both as the support has been fantastic at both games and we have created a wonderful atmosphere the likes of which we will probably never achieve for an ordinary league game. There was at least 7000 home fans at the game last night but yet for the second week in a row the Rebel Army outsung the home fans and showed them up in terms of colour and atmosphere.
As for the match itself, City played quite well against a superior team. Make no mistake about it, NEC are probably one of the best footballing sides we have ever played and are a million times better than Malmo. The quickness and accuracy of their passing was astonishing, you could see that they all possessed the ability to read the game perfectly and they seemed to play at a far greater pace and tempo to what we'd be used to. However, City put it up to them and we showed what a great team we are.... in truth we could easily have won the game, Billy hit the bar and missed a sitter, Fenn had a great chance, both Doyle and Kearney had chances and George came close (shot needed more power) to scoring a very spectacular goal. If we had converted our chances we'd have won but NEC had most of the posession and nearly snatched it at the end but Mick pulled off a wonder save. In the end this was a fantastic result for us and Dolan's tactics combined with our players (they all played well) ability worked a treat.
Good laugh in the pub after with the banks, ****** song etc and as for that barmaid.... well what can I say! :)
The last two weekends have been up there with my best moments as a City fan, achieving such fantasic results away from home in European competition and seeing so many City fans invading foreign Cities/countries and showing up the locals by creating a great atmosphere both in and out of the stadium cannot be replicated. A good few the lads are not coming home until tomorrow so hopefully they'll have a good time tonight and hopefully we'll get the right result next week so that our European odyssey can continue.
