Germany v Australia… from the Concordia Club on 14 June 2010

At 1:30am, my alarm tossed me out of bed and into a taxi.

“To Darling Harbour?”

I was actually headed (replete in my Australia-gear) for the Concordia Club, a German Club, but what the hell, it would be good to savour the mainstream Sydney scene.

“To Darling Harbour then! Many people about?”

“Too early to tell.”

I leapt from the cab at Darling Harbour with my train to Tempe due to leave Central Station in about 15 minutes.

The scene tasted like sick. The official ‘Fanfest’ appeared to be already full and, outside of the flashing lights of the compound, on the cold pavement of Darling Harbour, I weaved through brutish boys and girls drinking and stinking and swinging punches in the air. I climbed the stairs near the Imax and passed a woman lying in a planter box, waving, a cigarette in her mouth, stars bouncing about on her head.

Cars hooted on by as I tumbled into another taxi and took a short ride to Railway Square. I had figured it would be best to go to the German Club via a train in case it presented an opportunity atmospheric in the form of passengers Germanic.

The station was silent. On my long and brisk walk down the Devonshire Street tunnel, I passed no one - not an Australian or German. The station screens announced that there would be no trains, but with faith in the timetable I had studied the night before, I purchased a ticket from a machine and hustled to the platform.

I arrived just in time to hear an electronic voice announce ‘doors closing’ and leapt into a train. At last, I was warm in my skin in the cold of the night.

The train seemed to have been stunned into stillness by my sudden entry. I removed my gloves, and more importantly my beanie, so I could cool off and have a better opportunity to detect approaching thugs. But as the train growled to life and trundled through Redfern and then Sydenham, I remained all alone. It was an eerie delight to be chauffeured about in my personal ghost-train in the dark of the night.

And as the train approached Tempe, I looked out the window and felt sure I saw lights and movement inside the Concordia Club. The train arrived at the station at 2:42am. I exited, alone, and traversed the empty walkways, and crossed the road.

I thought, for a moment, my eyes might have deceived me as the movement inside seemed to have died, but, peering through the glass doors, locked, and jammed with a chair, I spotted a lone figure sweeping inside.

I didn’t want to bang on the glass and scare the poor chap, so tried to catch his attention by waving. I moved around to another set of glass doors and, at last, caught his surprised and disappointed eye. He came to the door and opened it just a crack.

“We are not open for at least one more hour,” he said in a German accent.

“Are you Manfred?” I said, pleased I had telephoned ahead for a name I could drop.

“No, Merrick. Manfred is still sleeping.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” I said. “I rang him and arranged that I would watch the match here, for a blog I am writing called ‘Drinking with the Enemy’.”

“We are not the enemy!” said Merrick.

“That’s what Manfred said! Look, I understand if you can’t let me in yet, I can just wait,” I said stepping back.

“But I can’t leave you sitting out here in the cold.”

And - good Merrick - he let me in. I took up a position on a plastic chair at one of the long tables, set up as if in a great drinking hall. Merrick went back to his sweeping for but a moment.

“Do you want a coffee or something?”

And - (ever so) good Merrick - he set about searching for coffee and milk and sugar for me while I approached the bar and admired the surrounds. There were black, red and yellow balloons on the walls, along with some green and gold. There were strange dolls and doilies, little German regional flags and a giant photo of Wagner glaring down from over the bar.

Merrick presented my coffee and was just explaining that he had been up working all night when a few more souls appeared at the door. Merrick rolled his eyes, paused looking down, and then let in three more.

“Looks like you’re going to have to make some more coffees!”

The three fellows traipsed over to take up a spot close to the (not all that big) screen. I followed and sat nearby, sipping my coffee.

“You Germans?” I asked.

“No way! Aussies.”

And now the groups started arriving in waves. Merrick soon realised what he had done. By letting a few in he could hardly refuse more. There was no sticking a finger into this dyke. He quickly called for help and a tired and broken looking fellow in a German football shirt arrived to help manage the onslaught.

The three who had arrived after me persuaded Merrick to start pouring the beers. He protested the absence of a float, but somehow we patrons managed to combine to scrounge up the right money to keep the beers flowing.

I sat, inevitably with my compatriots, drinking an ‘Erdinger’ while we waited for 4:30am to approach.

“This is like school camp!” said one, sipping her beer. “Feels like we’re sitting around waiting for breakfast after being chucked in a river.”

At last, a German arrived in the form of an old woman bearing a flag for each country.

“What is this?” she said glaring like Wagner. “If I wanted to see grumpy people with no smiles, I would have stayed home. It is time to start smiling! Orsi, Orsi, Orsi!”

An accordion-player appeared, to lift to the mood, and started dancing around the dance-floor following his strange instrument’s lead.

The music brought out a man who had to be Manfred and he started doing the rounds. Everyone was shaken down for five dollars - in exchange for entry, a sausage and a glass of gluhwein.

Two police officers entered and Manfred welcomed their presence. He started the heater near where they stood, and, with the heat blasting from their side of the room, I felt compelled, unusually, to be near boys in blue.

“What brings you here?” I asked one.

“We want to watch football. Why are you here?”

“Erdinger,” I said. “Can I buy you one?”

My generous offer was met with a sneer. More police officers arrived and I slinked away. No sense of humour for a guy with a beer in his hand.

At last the match was due to begin and, with perhaps a couple of hundred now in the room, the chairs became scarce. I spotted one near the accordion-player at the back of the room and rushed over to join him.

“Are you German?” I asked.

“No, Dutch,” he said. “You?”

“Also Dutch,” I said.

“So we should stick together,” he said patting the seat next to him.

My fellow Dutchman and I cheered for Australia as the match kicked off - and, for about ten minutes, it was good fun. Australia probed and attacked and we started to fantasise about what might be. Until Germany slotted a goal. The small patches of Germans in the room revealed themselves in the waving of flags.

It was not long before a second German goal followed, and the room groaned and the focus became sausages, gluhwein and beer. While the German club was full of Australians, I can’t say they seemed all that disappointed. This sort of outcome was expected, though perhaps we had all hoped for something more of a game.

By half time, the count was eight police officers and two German goals. My Dutch comrade sighed and took to his accordion to wheeze a new tune.

A journalist stole his chair for a moment and sought my view on the match.

“I must confess,” I explained. “I expected more Germans.”

When the second half started, the Dutchman rushed back, and soon in I took leave from my seat for a moment to go to the toilet. I returned to more misery in the form of an Australian red card. We knew that was it. It was time for the drubbing. Soon another German goal made it three-nil and Australians tried to salvage new matters of pride:

“I told you the margin would be three-nil!”

Four-nil now.

At the final whistle, the room was slightly aggrieved, but slow to clear out. I thought about hanging around, but it was the Australians who were kicking on. The victorious ‘enemy’ saw fit, with the job done, to vacate their club and head home. I decided to follow them out and walked across the icy car-park, listening to Germans speaking about ‘Ghana’ and ‘Darghling Hgarbour’ in their mother tongue.

Tempe train station was empty again, and for eight minutes I paced in the cold while the first planes of the day started to pass overhead. After joining a train of commuters, none wearing football colours, I detrained at Central and walked to a falafel shop by the YHA.

Inside, a drunken foreigner started giving me crap.

“Four nil, eh?”

“At least we didn’t screw up as much as you,” I said thinking the man English.

He looked horrified. I swear he almost punched me in the face. Then I realised.

“Oh, you’re Irish,” I said trying to work out where they stood in the scheme (they don’t).

He accepted his place. I helped him pick out a falafel, and then I left.

I took a bleak and dreary bus ride home with my fellow Australians - gloomy, sleepy, somewhat stinky, and fat. I fear we will need something better for Ghana…

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