Only Ian was travelling this weekend and after landing on Friday afternoon in Düsseldorf, a swift train ride took him to Cologne.

Ian was particularly happy as he found they did Strongbow by the litre stein!

The party started dying at about midnight as a lot of the fans wanted to do sensible sightseeing of the town in the morning and the London posse were still delayed in Stansted and not going to arrive until very late. Roy hatched a cunning plan. "Let’s go to the Knoten." So three intrepid adventurers Roy, Lesley and Ian boarded the slow train to Düsseldorf and arrived at about 1am into the second Altstadt of the night. We were warmly greeted at the bar, which apart from our Swiss friends was rammed with lots of non-football fans. We became the centre of attention as curiosity about our kilted colleague took over.

At about 5.30am, Isa persuaded us that they really needed to close the bar, so the plan was made to do breakfast in McDonalds. After Big Macs all round we finally headed to the train station at well past 6am, but our beds were still 30 miles away.

Roy and Lesley slept on the train but Ian had to stay awake, if he had fallen asleep on the international train they all would have woken up in Vienna!! We finally hit our beds in Cologne at 7.30am.

Saturday morning was very relaxed for Ian and Roy as they went to the Hard Rock Café to eat (and maybe drink the odd cocktail). However, the free cola refills also came in handy. Roy bought up half the merchandise shop.

We found all the other fans at the waterfront drinking Kolsch. Dom was particularly happy to find a town where the cathedral and the local beer share her name.

Roy’s ‘Mad Hat’ was looking particularly impressive with a spinning claymore sword and a centurion hatted dummies head. However the glue was not properly set, and as he carried it around town it fell to the floor and disintegrated.

So Roy just salvaged the centurions hat and wore that instead. At this point the FTP unveiled the trophy to be contested at the game the Eau de Toilette bowl.

At the tram station, we met our first bona fide Centurions fans. They introduced themselves as members of the first official Cologne fanclub ‘First Down’ and escorted us to the stadium

Then it was decided to play gladiators with pugel sticks Dom & H went first and after a hard fought battle Dom won.

Preston and Roy then had a go. They wore their own helmets and went into battle.

Battle was very quickly brought to an end when Preston lunged to knock Roy off and knocked him so hard he came off the end of the inflatable mat onto the grass headfirst. It was the hardest hit the Claymores produced all day and Roy was certainly feeling it all weekend. At least he saw some stars off the field if not on it.

To read what happened in the game, click here. And don’t forget to read the Cheddarheads and FTP reports.

After the game fans went all different ways and Ian was escorted by Dom and Preston back up to Düsseldorf. Note the fans that had escorted him the first night thought better of trying to do it again. Once we reached the Knoten at about 1am again we just talked in the street with all the fire fans until 3am when Ian went to spend the night at Sonja and Michael’s house.