Der Lowen 1 Vfl Osnabruk 1

It was a relief to get away from the Bantams grim performances for a change, but we were met by one that was not a whole lot better. Osnabruk are currently a cats cock hair off the relegation zone, but you would not have guessed it in the first half. Time and again they came forward, and when in the fifteenth minute, Heidrich broke through one on one with the keeper and scored, it was barely a surprise. TSV were struggling to string two passes together, as Osnabruk created, and spurned several chances. But the best chance of the first 45 minutes fell to Benny Lauth, who after latching onto a poor back pass, had only the keeper to beat. Instead of shooting he, tried to go around the keeper, and put the ball into touch. This was met with a chorus of "Are you Conlon in disguise" by myself and Shouty.

The manger must of put the mother of all rockets up Der Lowens backsides during the half time interval, as they looked a different team. All of a sudden it was the purple shirts of VFL who were on the back foot. The game got a little ugly, and some X rated challenges began to fly in. Of course the reaction by fouled players of both teams was Shakespearean to say the least, after all we were in the land of Klinsman, but the referee did a pretty good job of spotting the play acting. With game reaching the hour mark, TSV made a good chance, that at first seemed to have been spurned, but good play Johnson, who chased down a ball that looked to be heading for touch, turned the ball back from the byline, where Lauth was lurking. Benny made up for Conlonesque miss in the first half, and found the bottom corner to level the game. The last half hour saw 1860 press forward, but with ten minutes left, VFL nearly took all three points, when first half scorer Heidrich rattled the crossbar. Lars Bender didn't play, out injured, but brother Sven put in a good shift in the midfield, although he was booked. 35,800 showed up for the game.

This means mid table mediocrity beckons. Der Lowen are ten points of play off place FC Nürnberg,in third, with only 8 games remaining. Yes, this does seem enough time to turn it around, but dropping points at home against opposition like Osnabruk is not a good omen. Unfortunately relegation seems more of a possibility, we are only seven points off the third from bottom, but we have a far superior goal difference to any of the teams in the bottom half of the table.

Major Watch- As we were abroad, I have decided to bump Crespo Watch in favour of the Bender Squads favourite Swiss geezer, The Major. Along with Duggy and Dance Mat, he had been in Munchen a day longer, and thus had been on the lash longer. He was a bit worse for wear, but stuck to the task in hand, and unlike myself, Crespo and Shouty managed not spill his ale. But he scores a shed load of points for getting us in to the stadium, in €20 seats no less, for the princely sum of €2! A tout was outside, and pulled me to one side, but being half cut and as fluent in German as a dead goldfish, what he was saying passed right over my head. Luckily the Major is from a country that posses a good educational system, and understood that he had seven tickets, and only wanted €14 for the lot. He also looked very fetching in his sparkling new TSV sweatband. 9/10


Wurst Rating- Alas, the great British pie doesn't travel well on the Continent, and the likely hood of coming across one in Europe is slim to non existent. Add to this that almost no one fancied any grub, and we nearly didn't have a food rating at all. Just as well we had the eating machine Sprocket with us. All weekend he grazed around Munich, and the Allianz was no exception. He had a hot dog, that looked well tasty, tell he got a bit heavy handed with the Ketchup and mustard. the Wurst was good, and the mustard even better, but the ketchup made it well messy. It is for this reason I have no picture, as I didn't want my camera covered in red sauce. Instead it is a picture of him eating in a Brau Haus, something that was not difficult to find. 6/10