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Thursday was arrival day for us. Ian had been visiting relatives in Kilmarnock and Lou flew up from London after a couple of days’ work. At 4pm, we headed for Foot Locker to meet the players. Yo Murphy didn’t appear, but we were treated to the company of Craig Nall, Jeff Nicolson, Scoups, Yubrenal Isabelle and Chris Ward. The cheeries were outside the store too. We had no idea that there was a Dragons cheerie with such good English – and a Scots accent too… |
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Ian makes some new friends. |
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After meeting the boys, we decanted to TGI Fridays with Preston, H, Lesley, Dom and Graber the Chicken for cocktails. It was a great shout by Preston – who made the traditional call to Shuggie to tell him what he was missing. It was suggested that Shuggie could have a drink on us in TGI Covent Garden, as the computers are linked all over the country, but he declined. |
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Preston tries Ian's special cocktail 'The Green Drink'. He wasn't impressed. |
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Make sure you read Graber’s take on the weekend at cheddarheads.co.uk. He’s very witty – for a chicken! |
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At 7pm, we headed for the party in Merchant’s Square. The Square had a stage, balloons and inflatable players. The cheeries wobbled through a few routines, Karl Byrne performed and we had a few beers and a dance. There was a singing competition too. Dom and Bron represented the Claymores, while Ilse and Erica batted for Amsterdam. The girls in orange ‘won’, and got Claymores tops for their efforts. It was pretty quiet, largely because a lot of the fans were yet to arrive. |
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| "I'd like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmoneeeeee!" | | |
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Ian & Lou with the lovely Anja from Rhein Fire. |
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The evil senior security guard decided that we should all be sat down with our beers – so we did sit down… on the floor! At that moment Stand By Me was played, which we changed to Sit By Me, and we even got Gregori the Dragon to sit by us! |
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Bron and Graber dance the night away. |
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Afterwards, we went to the Travel Inn bar for a couple more drinks, and got hooked on the quiz machine. The favourites were a Q music quiz, a movie quiz and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. At 2am we headed back to our hotel. |
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At least this guy is supposed to be full of hot air! |
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Friday daytime was spent in Kilmarnock, so Lou could finally meet Ian’s relatives up there. In the evening, we went to George Square for a huge party. Sadly, that isn’t what we got! |
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There was a stage. That was about it. The merchandise van had gone. There was one burger van. And no beer. Reminded us of the WB VIII party, but without any beer, fun, atmosphere etc… It was at the WB VIII fan party we got together, so it was a pseudo anniversary for us (the real one isn’t until 24th June). After a very short while, we went to The Counting House for cheap beer and friendly company. We did venture out to hear Fish sing Kayleigh, but scurried back inside after he suffered a power cut. We knew there was better to came… |
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Mo & Lou looking very happy in George Square - despite the lack of beer! |
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Ian does his Niki impression at The Counting House. Photo: Eiko Pate |
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Take one Fire fan, add one Dragons fan and one Admirals fan. Allow to simmer in a corner for several minutes. Garnish with a Monarchs hat and photograph the scene. Fans are friends! |
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Eiko tries one of Ian's favourite tipples, Weston's Cider. |
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While in the pub we were all blinded. Not by too much booze, but by Laura’s new bling. Teflon proposed to her earlier in the evening, and Laura spent the evening waving her hand in the air with the biggest smile you’ve ever seen. Congratulations guys! We think this is probably the League’s first inter-team engagement. |
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We finally got to the real party – Strathclyde University Union – for the TDC fan party. There was even cheaper drink, and another appearance by Karl Byrne (although he’s not in our good books because he refused to mention the Monarchs fans, even though there was a large group of us there) and lots of dancing. The bar even ran out of draft beer – what did they expect? Lou got to meet a few more TDC Forum users at last. We spotted Brigitte doing her bit for international relations…perhaps she was inspired by Teflon & Laura? |
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An English Rose between two Flowers of Scotland. |
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Pst! We couldn't think of a good caption for this photo. Email your suggestions to beerleaders@hotmail.com, and keep them clean! Dom's a nice girl! |
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Sometimes it's difficult to tell who supports which team... |
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After the customary kick-line to New York, New York, we headed back to the hotel to get some beauty sleep before game day! |
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One of the highlights of WB XI came early in the day, with the fan bus. Roy and Sandra organised an open-top bus to drive around the city with a handful of Claymores and other invited fans. It was great fun, waving at other fans as we went three times around George Square, past the Claymores’ office, the team hotel and all over Glasgow to Hampden Park. We shook the pom-poms all the way and had a great time, while sipping ‘milkshake’. |
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Perhaps some of the bus riders overdid it at the TDC party... |
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Laura: Still blingin', still grinin'! |
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Still Monarchs fans...still on the bus! We didn't want to get off, but there was a game to get to, and beer to queue for! Photo: Ruth Hutton |
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It was great to see so many folks in the backfield – although most of them were queuing for beer! Ian spent about 20mins or so in the queue and got two beers each. We didn’t bother again after that, and just guzzled the schnapps that Lou had bought from the World Shop at Heathrow. |
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Roy's hat showed off all things Scottish; Nessie, Irn Bru, Whiskey, Edinburgh Rock, flags and loads more. |
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Not difficult to guess who the fire fans really wanted to face in the World Bowl. |
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Ian had a chat with John and admired the pass adorning his neck, "Sideline/Photo". John told him he could borrow it to take some photos during the game, as he only needed it to get to the press lounge after the game. Bargain! |
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There were huge numbers of Monarchs shirts in the backfield, mostly on people we didn’t recognise. Where are all these people during the rest of the season? Huh? Huh? But the shirts did catch the eye of Clyde 1’s Gavin Pearson and he gave the Monarchs a mention. See Karl Byrne? We do exist!! |
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Ruth parties like it's 1996. Lou parties like it's 1991. 1999 wasn't that good... Photo: courtesy of Ruth Hutton. |
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Niki covered in stickers. No, we don't know why either. |
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Is this a cheddar sandwich? Photo: Heather Dunstan |
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It was a very sunny day in Glasgow. No, really! A combination of the bus ride and standing in the backfield led Lou to get sunburn. She’d done so well in Barcelona – who knew it would be just as nice in Glasgow? |
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Double vision! Lesley looks on at Viv and Dom and Ian & Lou. |
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Is this really Glasgow? With that blue sky? Photo: Ruth Hutton |
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The pre-game entertainment was provided by the |
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We headed into the stadium for the pre-game show featuring lots of bagpipes and flinging. Preston’s dream about Prince William tossing the cabar and killing himself when it landed on his head did not come true. So it wasn’t a premonition, just a stupid dream in Barcelona, probably due to too many cervasas. |
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Once the game got underway, Ian went in search on John, and got himself a sexy bright orange vest to wear, and headed to the sidelines, leaving Lou alone with her pom-poms. Ian says he missed a lot of the game down there, which was just as well really… Read about WB XI: Snoozefest here. |
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Força Dragons. Zzzzzzzz.... |
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...although they perked up when they saw Ian. As did the Triple A (below) |
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David Letterman seemed to enjoy the game... Oh no, it's actually The Commish. |
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Fish kicked things off with a rendition of Caledonia. |
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