Tales from front - Warsaw

Our Polish correspondent Mark Simmons was in Warsaw for the recent Poland v England game.... both nights in fact and here is his diary and some photographs including one of England's top hoolie!

Monday night - flew to Warsaw

Tuesday - The day of the match, started fine but then started to drizzle just after lunch. By early evening when I met friends in the Hard Rock Cafe it was heavy drizzle. On the way to the Stadium it was chucking it down and we all assumed the roof would be closed. On arrival at the stadium saw that the retractable roof had indeed retracted. At 21.00 an announcement was made that a decesion regarding kick off would be made at 21.45. By 21.20 with no sign of it stopping and, realising that the game would definately not be on we left and went to a bar in the city centre. There we met 5 Brits from Bristol whose flight back to UK was 14.00 on Wednesday from Krakow, and having spent £4k in total on the trip were not going to see any football. When the bar closed ar Midnight, we went to the Polonia Hotel that has an all night bar. Whilst there we met Jerzy Dudek the ex Liverpool goalkeeper who was covering the match for one of the Polish TV stations and had a couple of beers with him. At 04.00 we rolled out of the hotel and got taxis home.

Wednesday - I was a lucky ones and got up at 09.00. One of those I was with last night had a business meeting at 08.30. At 14.30 we met up again in the Hard Rock Cafe and after a couple of beers, to return the body to its previous condition, we left at 16.00 and got the tram to the Stadium. One Polish fan outside hasd a large flag with Poland / England 16-17/10/12 on it. About 1 in 10 of the Polish seats were empty but in the England end it was less than 1/3rd full. With the roof in place, the sound in the stadium was awesome, except on the 31st minute when Rooney scored but then exploded on 70 when Glik equalised. After the match we all slowly made our way down the Polish equivalent of Wembley Way only to find out there were no trams so had to walk the 2km back to town. As everyone was far to shattered by then we had a sober evening and went our own ways.

Thursday - Up at 02.00 to catch the train to airport for 06.00 flight. I have no recollection of the flight. I was asleep.