Things are never the way they seem. Standing there outside the ground waiting for Drax to appear with the tickets there was this loud noise as round the corner came a rabble in strange colours, blue and yellow; singing and chanting and banging around. The magnificent twelve. But for the wrong colours they could have been our lot, but it was the biggest single fan club SAK 1914 could offer – or the only one. Anyway, it was the first time I’ve heard fans march into our place, rather than merely seeing them. Like a microcosm of football fandom, a subdivision of a subdivision. A fat one, a thin one, a tall one, a small one, a long-haired one, several short-haired ones, a thinker, a looker, a hammer, a coal miner, a lawyer and an aristocrat – even the pope was there; but this is the wrong place for a Celtic vs. Rangers debate.
A perfect cross-section of society. And every one of them came in carrying two banners, a horn, a scarf and a smoke bomb; giving the impression the other 2000 were finishing their beers and would be coming in 5 minutes. As they set up camp at the opposite side of the pitch you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching the filming of Charlie Brown – the movie as the ones standing on the outer edges of the group seemed to be standing at an angle of 45° with dust rising from behind them! As it turns out they’re apparently a nice bunch of lads and lots of the Austria fans knew them anyway, so the banter was friendly and there was never any danger of Saalfelden-style silliness from either side.
Some days a crowd of 1600 looks bigger than others, but on Saturday there were certainly at least exactly 1600 people around the ground, so the stage was set for a cracking Salzburg derby game and a 3-0 win for the Austria; or that’s what I had already fantasised. Having got there over half an hour too early I’d already downed the first beer before kick-off and when Christian was foolish enough to ask if I would like a beer, I wasn’t foolish enough to turn him down. (Cleverly hidden subliminal message: Women’s team – now!)
From the kick-off there was this strange feeling that nothing could go wrong. The sun was shining, the crowd was there, Salva and the Ultras were back in action, and I was on my second beer. If you live long enough you tend to find out these are the days when you turn on the radio later on and hear about a natural disaster somewhere, or you get home and find your cellar is under water. From the off we never seemed to get into the game and after just 5 minutes we’d managed to get caught out yet again and the unfortunately named Kastrati netted to make it 1-0 for the away team from the Nonntal district of Salzburg. Seeing as we played our first season after the club was re-established in Nonntal I couldn’t exactly see the point in the chants of ‘Nonntaler – Arschlöcher’. To compound problems Oliver Schmidt sustained some serious injury and had to be replaced by Gerit Kluth after just ten minutes.
Unfortunately, the Austria Salzburg team seems to be suffering from the same delusions as Ricky Hatton did when he got beat shitless by Floyd Mayweather Junior in December 2007. Nobody doubted that Hatton had a knockout punch if he could land it; but he couldn’t. Mayweather ducked and dived, turned and held, pushed and shoved; and every now and then he landed a punch like a kangaroo kick that shook Hatton’s brain cells. This went on for 9 full rounds. Hatton provided a brilliant demonstration of what belief and heart can do, and aimed punches at Mayweather’s head for nine rounds until he couldn’t hit anymore. Head – head – head! Where were the body punches to bring down the defence? Mayweather floored Hatton in the tenth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unPpMgZQdME.
Not that the comparison of football and boxing is always a good one, but week in – week out Austria Salzburg go forward, which is great entertainment, but week in – week out we see teams playing counter attack football and getting behind our defence five to ten times a game. We lost in Saalfelden because we ran out of energy trying to break down a ten-man defence with waves and waves of attacks – head punching! Watching the SAK game on Saturday it was clear that the only thing we know how to do is attack. From a few metres above pitch level you could see SAK were a poor man’s Floyd Mayweather, but they defended, stayed back; only attacked on the break. We ran forward – on and on – and on. But where were the punches to the ribs and the back-stepping to pull the opponent towards us? Where were the passes left and right across the back of the defence to tempt the other team forward? Who dropped back to cover for Peter Urbanek who must have run 15km up and down the wing?
If people want to complain about the referee that would be making it easy. The fact is he played a British style and didn’t stop the game for every fall, or push or whatever. Every time we got near the SAK penalty area one of our players went down and the ref let play continue. All the attacks seemed to break down due to the number of legs in front of the ball. After half an hour you could see the first signs of doubt creeping in and instead of sprinting back behind the ball when possession was lost, our players were walking back to the half-way line.
Soon after it was 2-0 for SAK when Walter Larionows, their six-foot plus captain converted a penalty. Even at 2-0 down we’ve been spoilt so much by lucky wins and turning games in the past that it was hard to see that unless we changed our tactics it would be an uphill task.
SAK seemed to have one trick that opened us up every time; a high ball out of the defence – onto the head of Larionows, and that was enough to open us up by simply bridging midfield completely. And it would also be unfair to say that Alex Trappl looked uncertain. Playing with a 30-meter vacuum between the goal and the defence puts him in the same situation again and again every time a through ball or lob comes over the defence – Do I come out? – Do I stay on the line?
On 42 a generous penalty decision went our way. On good days these goals go in, but Saturday, with the absence of Lubo Neubauer in midfield being painfully obvious, it was not our day. Bernd Winkler tried to place the ball instead of blasting it in and the goalie gratefully accepted the gift. Being two beers to the good at half-time I was still deluding myself we would come back and win 5-2, but as the second half progressed without us making any leeway, the only people enjoying the game were the SAK Rude Boys. Imagine that – yellow and blue smoke bombs at our ground – unheard of. Several people in the stands realised fairly early that alcohol was to be our only saviour.
And so it went on, wave after wave broke on the rock that was the SAK defence; a team with almost no other talent than to defend was beating Austria Barcelona 2-0. With no room or time on the ball Stefan Federer was having a hard time of it and was swapped for Leonhard Telsnig on 55 minutes – who looks to have a good turn of pace and brought a bit of positive aggression back into the game. Whereas Mayweather put Hatton down near the end of the fight, Austria Salzburg had already missed the chance to open up the game and the SAK never put their guard down. The more we attacked – the more they defended. The later it got, the more urgent and manic the moves became, and although there were chances that could have gone in, they didn’t.
SAK could also have made it three, but didn’t, thanks to a stop by Alex Trappl. Tick tock, tick tock. Peep-peep! Full time. Congratulations to the players and fans of SAK. The positives for the Austria were that, regardless of how hard the team was having to work, and regardless of their lack of success, the fans did their best for the full 90 minutes and had to accept we lost fair and square. If the seriousness of the defeat could be measured by the expression on Peter Urbanek’s face after the game, then I guess losing 2-0 to a disciplined mid-table outfit with no real midfield was Peter’s equivalent of a natural disaster; but I can tell you Peter, wait until a woman breaks your heart – your face will look like Ricky Hatton’s.
See you in Puch!
Roger Lord
SV Austria Salzburg - SAK 1914 0:2 (0:2)
Austria Salzburg played with:
Trappl; Urbanek, Schmidt (10. Kluth), Pecaranin, Milic; Rottensteiner, Federer (59. Telsnig), Mayer, Feldinger (70. Oberhauser); Cavic, Winkler
Goals:
0-1: Kastrati (5.)
0-2: Larionows (29., penalty)
Shots: Austria 13 / SAK 8
Shots on target: Austria 5 / SAK 6
Shots blocked: Austria 3 / SAK 0
Corners: Austria 7 / SAK 1
Fouls: Austria 20 / SAK 32
Offsides: Austria 2 / SAK 13
Yellow cards:
Austria: 2 (Pecaranin, 41./foul; Milic, 90./unsporting behaviour)
SAK: 5 (Kastrati, 45. +2/foul; Kaplinger, 60./foul; Daniel Berger, 73./unsporting behaviour; Taschwer, 76./foul; Dominic Berger, 90./unsporting behaviour)
Salzburg-Maxglan, Austria-Platz, 1600 spectators
Ref: Mag. Bernd Hirschbichler; Assistants: Johann Jahns, Franz Schickbauer
