Coruna Report - The Branch Road Trip

Easter Week turned into a tour of football grounds for the LUSC Tractor Boys Branch. Fridays trip to Anfield involved trekking up the M6 past Birmingham, Walsall and Villa Park and then parking up by Everton before witnessing a superb team performance at Anfield. The journey back involved a traffic jam busting detour that took us past Port Vale and Stoke.

A days rest and another early start saw us heading for Heathrow where our plane took us to Lisbon and an aerial view of Sporting Lisbon's ground and then the real Stadium of Light. A connecting flight took us onto Porto and the chance to add Boavista and Porto's grounds to the list as we drove into the city centre. For the first time ever our trip to a European game didn't involve us sharing a flight with other Leeds fans, I guess flying to the wrong country will shake most people off, and so for once there was still some beer left when the plane landed J.

A night out in Porto followed. Had a beer with some breath-taking views across the gorge to the Port houses, I'm sure Gav was tempted to swim across to them, then a traditional Portuguese Chinese meal. Up early the next morning to check out some more sights, impressive station, before we all piled back into the people carriers, for the trip into Spain.

A decent journey with some great views along the coast by Vigo and we made our next point of call, Santiago by early afternoon. Hotel was called the Congresso, so we went into the 5-star hotel next to the Congress centre (and the football ground), where they gave us directions to our hotel once they'd finished laughing. As promised our hotel had a swimming pool just a shame there was no water in it. Into Santiago where after re-painting one of the vans with part of the ticket machine in the smallest underground carpark in the world, the dulcet tones of a Yorkshire choir told us that we'd found some other Leeds fans at last. As the guide book said Santiago had a big f*** off Cathedral, but more surprisingly had a bar with a great CD collection. How many bars in England have every Pavement album and so we drank and danced the night away to the punk hits of the late 70s.

Tuesday morning and we took our hangovers with us on the road to Coruna, which turned out to be a gorgeous place. The local people were very friendly despite the fact that the local papers had been running English fans hooligans stories for the previous couple of days. A wander around town and a climb up the Tower of Hercules to the windiest spot on earth, before holing up in a bar pre-game.

A few beers and then we moved onto another bar to meet our Coruna host Paul Ryan, this proved a bit difficult as the bar was packed and most of us had no idea what Paul looked like. But eventually Betty tracked him down and Paul turned out to be a top bloke as did his mate Juan, who'd sorted the accommodation for us in Coruna. The first bar had a fair contingent of the Leeds United muppet brigade over-excited by the sight of sea, sun and sand all in the same place. However, the Deportivo crowd were happy enough and a couple of broken tables was the only damage.

Paul took us to one more bar before moving onto the ground, where we joined a somewhat dangerous crush to get in. Leeds stewards sent us to one turnstile, when we got to the front the turnstile operator tried to sent us back to the other entrance, which was impossible because of the crush outside. When I eventually got in, of course one half of the Leeds end was over-crowded whilst there was plenty of room in the other. Chaos.

A good compact ground and a pretty fantastic atmosphere throughout, the Deportivo fans being the noisiest we'd encountered all year. We started off pretty confidently with the fans in good voice but the early penalty induced panic on the pitch and in the stands. Too far away to say if it was a good decision or not but Djalminha but the penalty away confidently enough. A few minutes later what looked like a better penalty shout as a Coruna player went over a stray Leeds leg but luckily the ref didn't give it. We remained under pressure partly due to the inept performances of the Australian contingent. Kewell kept losing possession and the lack of TV coverage meant Viduka couldn't be bothered to move his huge arse out of the centre circle. Luckily Dacourt was immense and saved us on more than one occasion. Alan Smith was having a great game but missed a chance to settle the nerves when he intercepted a poor back header, went round the keeper but hit it into the side-netting from a poor angle after taking one touch too many. The ball was bobbing around our area far too much for comfort and we were relieved to get to half-time only one down.

A customary Champions of Europe, becoming increasingly symbolic all the time, led onto a better performance in the second half. We kept possession better and looked like we were starting to take some of the passion from the Deportivo fans. We missed another good chance as Matteo put a free header wide but were still hanging on at times with the ball hitting our bar twice, once via a fantastic flying save from Martyn. Deportivo bought on extra attackers and the ploy worked as Tristan scored the 2nd following a quickly taken free-kick. About 20 minutes left and we were now incredibly nervous, probably more tense than the Milan game as having had the big lead the pain of losing would probably have been even worse.

Although Deportivo had a lot of possession they made few clear chances towards the end and both Viduka and Dacourt after an astonishing 50 yard run had chances to finish it. Smith was everywhere making tackles in our box and holding it up at the other end and the team battled hard to secure the win. Thankfully only 2 minutes of injury time to endure despite some time-wasting though conversely the Coruna ballboys were throwing the ball back so quickly there were often 2 on the pitch.

In the end another great night in a great season, but we made hard work of it. The Deportivo fans we met before the game were probably right in that they were a superior team but had blown it by sitting back too much in the first game. They played some great football yesterday and if they'd have tried to would probably have scored at ER.

Scores

Some serious text-messaging at the final whistle confirmed we were going to Valencia and within a few minutes we had 19 flights booked, with the price already rising. The Deportivo fans mostly clapped us off although there were a couple of dickheads with Turkish flags, luckily someone had translated "You are the Weakest Link goodbye" and put it on a banner. We were kept behind so that left time for some celebratory singing; "One team in Europe" and "We're all going to Benidorm" being favourites, before the team came out to do their turn, although Bowyer was drowned out by the local drummers. While we waited we got to amuse ourselves by taking the piss out of the quieter half of Leeds fans, who the "F***ing hell are you". We eventually got let out and got lost so failed to locate the rest of the listers after the game, but still found a bar to celebrate in.

Wednesday morning meant the drive back into Portugal, though we made a detour near the border to visit the football ground in the village of Godojamar - OK Gav got us lost - not surprising, finding an entire country from a range of 5 miles is really difficult. Pretty uneventful trip back though the pilot diverted over London to allow us to add Palace and Brentford to our list of grounds seen.

Another great trip - 4 days in the sun in a beautiful country or 2 with your mates and a previously unthinkable Champion League quarter-final victory. Thanks to Paul and Juan for helping out. Long may the fantasy continue.