Indeed, on days like these it’s not easy to be an Austria Salzburg fan. Or maybe that’s a good excuse in itself. For the last couple of home games I’ve been over on the other side of the grandstand because it’s easier to find somewhere to stand and get a beer without waiting for 10 minutes. Gone are the days of sunshine, goals and sing-songs. These are the days of ash clouds, of ooohs and aaahs and f***s and so on; or maybe I’m just not doing enough myself. To be honest, my main contribution to the success of the club at the last three home games has been to boost the funds coming in via the bar. Maybe I’m becoming one of those armchair managers that know everything better that everybody else, but haven’t kicked a ball in 30 years.
I said before the game, from memory the away game in Anthering was a scrappy affair and we were lucky to come home with a win, but since the start of the spring half of the season we’ve forgotten how to get in behind defences and our opponents have realised, all they need to do to get a point is park the bus in front of goal and chase after long clearances. Every other team is doing it, including Hallwang. We are still trying to reinvent the days when the ‘beautiful game’ really was beautiful, and instead of going forward in the final third of the pitch we are passing the ball from side to side and looking for half chances to welt the ball goalbound.
As if to prove me wrong, a well rehearsed free kick almost led to a goal a couple of minutes after kick off and after just eight minutes a typical bit of ferreting around the back of the defence got Mario Schleindl in to an ideal position to feed Bernd Winkler, whose shot was parried but whose follow-up hit the back of the net. 1-0 to the Austria and having finished the first beer on ten minutes there was a sort of relaxing feeling that everything was going to be OK. With the parallel game featuring Hallwang still at 0-0 we would have been six points ahead.
So of course the rest of the half was spent waiting for a second goal against a clearly inferior team; a second goal that never came. So despite dominating the half we went in just 1-0 up and the only thing going down perfectly was the beer. After ringing home and not getting an answer I was three beers up at half time, making that plus €9 (including tips) in one half. If everybody invested as much in beer as I do we would have a very rich club. 1200 fans x €18 = €21,600 and that’s on top of ticket sales.
Obviously, life’s not as simple as that and by the time Drax or was it Barbara went to fetch the beers again there was a horrible crashing noise coming from the metal hoardings across the pitch where the Anthering fans were standing – both of them! So I missed how we managed to let Anthering back into the game, but they were back in it on 53 minutes as Rene Hinker scored to but the game at 1-1. Drax rolled his eyes as he always does when things go wrong and said ‘Oida!’
‘Oida’ is a word younger Austrians and Drax use to express just about everything surprising or disappointing or annoying or depressing, and you have to understand the Austrian mentality to know exactly how it is meant. It can mean old man, friend, dude, but it can also mean ‘f***’, boll*cks’, ‘idiot’ or whatever. It’s like Chinese. There are lots of words that are used for thousands of situations, but the meaning changes depending on the tone of voice. The word ‘gleich’ in German means (literally) ‘straight away’, but in Austria it means any time between 2 and 20 minutes. Can we have the bill please? ‘Gleich!’. Another example is ‘Sicher,’ which means ‘sure’, ‘absolutely’ or ‘definitely’, but in Austrian it means ‘no’. A good example would be: Are you going to pay back the money you borrowed?’ If the answer is ‘sicher’ you will never see your money ever again – ever!
When Drax says ‘Oida’ after the other team scores you can assume it is not meant in a positive sense. In fact after three beers on a cold afternoon and the prospect of Austria Salzburg opening the door on the championship – our championship – an unhappy Drax’s ‘oida’ expresses the full soul encompassing sadness of ‘my life has no meaning and I want to die’, but without having to struggle to find the right words. But on the positive side, with the beer flowing at least our money was filling up the club coffers.
Although Mario Schleindl had skied a couple of shots at the beginning of the first half, his hard work was the reason Bernd Winkler was able to get our goal. Mario gives us pace going forward and after he was swapped for Stefan Leitner it seemed we couldn’t get through into the box anymore and a lot of the rest of the game was spent oooing and aaahing and ‘aaarrggh’ing as nothing seemed to come of the crosses we were raining in. With two natural support strikers up front there was more laying off than in an 80’s coal mine, but bar here, post there, shot over, deflection – and nobody seemed to get a clear shot on goal and, as we don’t have any giants at the front, it seems naive to send in high crosses and hope that Lubo or Oberhauser are going to jump higher than the hands of the keeper, but it’s easy to criticise when you’re not under pressure on the pitch, which I would be if I was, but I’m not.
In the second half the air got colder, perhaps because of the Icelandic ash and dust, perhaps not – but somehow Mr Unhappy’s face was telling me it wasn’t going to happen. When Ivan came on for Heli Rottensteiner I didn’t even hear the word ****, but I could see it! For all the desperate scrambling around in the last twenty minutes there was no way through and as most people already had the latest update on the Hallwang game (Eugendorf 1 – Hallwang 2) the air was turning colder by the second and everybody was doing the ‘oida’ face at everybody else. At full time even the players were doing the face in the realisation that with just four games to go the whole season was looking ashen.
After the game we saw no other alternative than to go to the Chinese Austro-Croatian tennis bar restaurant behind the goals to dissolve our misery in fatty food and alcohol – so that’s exactly what we did – OIDA!
Austria Salzburg played with:
Trappl; Milic, Reifeltshammer, Schmidt, Hirsch; Rottensteiner (63. Pecaranin), Mayer, Neubauer, Oberhauser (87. Kluth); Winkler, Schleindl (54. Leitner)
Goals:
1-0: Winkler (8.) (Assist: Schleindl)
1-1: Hinker (57.)
Shots: Austria 29 / Anthering 7
Shots on goal: Austria 13 / Anthering 1
Shots blocked: Austria 4 / Anthering 1
Corners: Austria 10 / Anthering 0
Fouls: Austria 22 / Anthering 21
Offsides: Austria 4 / Anthering 15
Yellow cards:
Austria: 2 (Schmidt, 27./Foul; Reifeltshammer, 83./Foul)
Anthering: 4 (Hinker, 34./Foul; Klaushofer, 68./Foul; Humer, 87.; Kemetinger, 88./Foul)
Salzburg, Austria-Platz Maxglan, 1200 spectators
Ref: Reuf Salihovic; Assistenten: Wolfram Aufschnaiter, Gerhard Freidl
