Just when you think everything is going well the hammer comes down.
My mind goes back to a previous German tour in 2007 when we were due to play Dynamo Dresden. I had a call at around 7pm 2 days before game saying the match had been called off and another arranged in Liberec. A thousand skin heads were alleged to be coming to greet us. It took me 25 minutes to rearrange the coach from Dresden to Liberec and disaster avoided.
This trip was at short... notice and had already had an extra match tagged to the end of the tour. It had a venue move and a kick off change. Not a good start.
I got wind of the cancellation when the organisers sent me details to collect the match programmes the night before departure. Last two games only with them saying the first game may be cancelled but not decided yet.
Fingers crossed I picked Alex and Tony Short up at 7:30am and the coach departed at 8.Pick up in Leeds and everyone is giddy .I hand out the tour t shirts and all is good. Our group only gets together on these tours so it's catch up time.
No traffic end route. No People at check in. Security lanes are quiet. Free Jager with ginger in duty free what could go wrong? I had been monitoring the Ingolstadt web site and twitter feed all morning. Our team were in the airport and on the same flight to Munich a few Wolves fans also. Then the news broke and the mood changed. Thank you everyone who messaged me to advise of the cancellation. Now it's will we arrange another game? I change the Sunday match to a planned trip to Hitler's Eagles nest with a proviso of no game being arranged. We book in to the very nice Holiday Inn and regroup. I get in touch with Adam Pope on Radio Leeds to see if anything arranged. I end up on the radio discussing the cancellation. My thoughts are the organisers knew this game would not take place when the second game was moved. As for professional hooligans attending the game I would have thought not. We are now awaiting any news .We split into two groups and some go to a local Chinese We head for the beer Keller it's raining so taxi down .Nothing like a stein of beer and a plate of sausage to cheer you up Chris Johnson.
Kev and Heath Ochiltree join us until throwing out time .Its back to the hotel and the bars still open. Day 1 and you could not make these story's up.