Actually, for footballing purposes the weather was perfect. Not hot – not too cold. After having picked up Daddy Drax and done my uncley duties we headed off for the game with that sort-of: don’t-know-what-to-expect-but-we-should-win feeling in my stomach. Having got there we realised none of the others we normally hang around with were there – except for Mikko, who was hanging around somewhere in the middle of the mob. The colder and wetter the weather, the more people head off for the shopping centres, so I presume half of the usual lot were sifting through piles of reduced t-shirts instead of supporting the Austria.
Does this mean that if we had end-of-the-world weather – hailstones, driving wind, lightening, thunder – everybody would congregate in the shopping centres? Yes, it does; as my girlfriend and I found out one Saturday about five weeks ago when it was absolutely pissing it down. It took us half an hour to get from the car park back onto the motorway. Actually, we’d gone there to buy some books as torrential rain is perfect reading weather, but as for the other 98% - instead of rounding up the giraffes and elephants and getting in the arc, they were all fighting and gnashing their teeth over last season’s fashion leftovers. Some people pursue a logic I do not understand.
When we were kids, which for me at almost 45 is a f***ing long time ago, we had one joke it took me years to understand:
What’s the difference between a duck?
Neither of them can drive a tractor!
This was the logic driving the first half of the Austria Salzburg vs Reichenau game. That is to say, there didn’t seem to be any logic to the affair. The effort was there, but apart from a lot of huffing and puffing nobody seemed to have a clear game plan. This is often the case in games when one team has come to play defensive pressing in midfield and the other attacking pressing. Nobody had any time on the ball and there were lots of high balls and skied clearances. We had chances, but so did they. If they were hoping to pull us down to their level – in the first half they succeeded. We could have been 2 up or 2 down at half time.
In the absence of a clear game plan myself, I headed off to the bar just four steps away for some liquid refreshment and one of the finest fried chicken breadcakes money can buy. As we’d already had a beer at Drax’s before we set off and another on arriving, this was the third and we were quickly mutating from devoted daddy and good uncle to drunk daddy and evil uncle. If we had joined Mikko in the mob, none of this would have happened – but we didn’t, so it did.
So at half time it’s 0-0 and we are three beers up. Drax has said he’s not going to get drunk, but he is going to have another beer - I have to question the logic of this statement. Karl Popper said for a scientific statement to be of any value – it must be falsifiable. The statement ‘God exists’ could be true or false, but it can’t be proven false because it is merely an assertion. The statement ‘all swans are white’ can be theoretically proven to be false, but on a practical level it would be almost impossible to falsify because you would have to go all around the world and find every single swan alive – in Patagonia, Siberia, Cameroon, Huddersfield and Seekirchen, and even then you couldn’t guarantee that a black swan hadn’t been born somewhere else in the meantime. No, for a statement to be falsifiable it needs to be easily testable. Drax’s statement – ‘I am going to drink beer and not get drunk’ has been tested since time immemorial and been found to be seriously flawed. However, as this statement is falsifiable – it is scientifically valuable. But I digress...
The teams are out for the second half, the beers are in our hands and we are feeling scientifically valuable – the second half of the game can begin. As usual, the second half started as the first half ended, but after 52 minutes a foul on Nico Mayer by Reichenau’s keeper led to a penalty converted by – who else?? – Marko Vujic!! The goal seemed to stun Reichenau as up to then they had looked just as likely of scoring. However, four minutes later a Borozni free kick fell to Nico Mayer who scrambled it into the net and with Austria Salzburg 2-0 up Reichenau were starting to look ragged and were now chasing the game.
We were looking ragged too, Drax and me, that is! Mikko and his youthful good looks and boyish charm allow him to drink gracefully. When you’re old and ugly you just get on with the drinking. Thingy was there too – you know – from Upper Austria – friend of Barbara’s – wears glasses. Why is it I can talk to people a hundred times and still not remember their names? Three of us went out afterwards – me, Mikko and Thingy, but my memory has a non-stick surface NASA would be proud of. I hope my memory loss is not connected to alcohol consumption, because if it is there is always the danger I will forget to stop consuming! Sorry Thingy!!
Anyway, after the 2-0 we were a bit more relaxed. 2-0 is a margin that this season’s team can deal with. It would not be enough to calm Christian down, but seeing as he wasn’t at the game we decided not to tell him the score until after the game. Ten minutes later Lubo and Cavic were on for Mayer and Wührer, and just a minute after that it was a Lubo Neubauer corner that landed on the head of Marko who? Vujic!!...to make it 3-0 on 66 minutes and I was beginning to get that sneaking suspicion we have caught the Jukic bug again. How many games did we see in which Jukic scored almost all the goals? And now, Vujic has got more than a-goal-a-game average. We have to hope he never, ever gets injured...ever!
On 82 minutes Bernard Kletzl set Lubo up perfectly to make it 4-0 and a couple of minutes later the frustration reaps its just reward as Reichenau’s Buchacher is dismissed with a second yellow for criticism. At this point, Drax, not known for being a big risk-taker, makes a bold statement. At 4-0 up with four minutes to go against ten men he says: ‘It’s going to be hard for Reichenau now’. Your homework for this week is to tell me, would Karl Popper consider this to be a falsifiable statement and would he consider it to be of any scientific value? Against Seekirchen we will be considering Freud’s role in the development of post-industrial analytical materialism seen in the light of a 40 Watt light bulb.
Reichenau were unable to solve the riddle and went home with zero points. Still, at least they got home again. I went out with Mikko and Thingy until the small hours and got home round about 8am.
See you on Wednesday!
Roge
SV Austria Salzburg - SVG Reichenau 4-0 (0-0)
Austria Salzburg played with:
Huber; Kreuzwirth, Schmidt, Milic, Märzendorfer (70. Oberauer); Borozni, Kletzl, Reifeltshammer, N. Mayer (65. Neubauer), Wührer (65. Cavic); Vujic
Goals:
1-0: Vujic (52., Elfmeter) (Assist: N. Mayer)
2-0: N. Mayer (56.) (Assist: Borozni)
3-0: Vujic (66.) (Assist: Neubauer)
4-0: Neubauer (82.) (Assist: Kletzl)
Shots: Austria 16 / Reichenau 7
Shots on target: Austria 8 / Reichenau 3
Corners: Austria 7 / Reichenau 4
Fouls: Austria 23 / Reichenau 21
Offsides: Austria 4 / Reichenau 2
Yellow cards:
Austria: 3 (Schmidt, 10./foul; Vujic, 59./unsporting behaviour; Milic, 72./foul)
Reichenau: 3 (Buchacher, 49./foul; Hörtnagl, 52./foul; Oberortner, 86./foul)
Yellow/red:
Austria: 0
Reichenau: 1 (Buchacher, 84./criticism)
Salzburg-Maxglan, MyPhone-Austria-Stadion, 1200 spectators
Ref: Zdravko Lucic; Assistants: Josef Gell, Matthias Hasberger
