No Repeat Of Norrkoping 1982 Wanted ! Part 2.
Tuesday, 25th Aug 2015 09:36

If Saints supporters thought that the home leg against IFK Norrkoping had been bad, things were about to get far worse and not just on the pitch.

Two weeks after the disastrous 2-2 draw at home to Swedish part timers IFK Norrkoping in September 1982, Saints travelled to Sweden for the away leg.

Back in those days there were no such things as budget airlines and travel across Europe was not as easy as it is today, the trains were pretty good but scheduled airline flights were not the norm for the average person as they are now.

Given that no one could work out how to get to Sweden by train it fell to local purveyor of travel to Saints supporters and six years later co founder of this website Clive Foley to organise a trip.

The club did not arrange any travel and apart from those 40 or so hardy souls who travelled on what was famously known back then as "Foley's Coach" there were very few other Saints supporters who made the journey.

I think the cost was around £110 a fairly hefty chunk in those days and dearer than my flight to Copenhagen for the trip to Denmark.

As you can see in the photo, the coach was hardly state of the art, indeed it might have been once upon a time but that year was probably 1972 & not 1982, back then coaches did not have toilets, videos etc, they were pretty basic and according to the RAC route planner the distance was 1,150 miles and also included two 6 hour ferry journeys.

So we set off in the early hours of Monday morning to drive pre M25 to Sheerness in Kent and catch a ferry to Holland, apart from a delay in Holland because the Duch customs werent sure that the driver as completely sober the first part of the trip was uneventful and we settled back for a long trip across Germany to Travemunde for the ferry to Sweden.

This was where the first fun and games started, someone had tried to put up the Union Jack on the back of the boat and had lowered the Swedish flag in doing so, this annoyed the crew who turned up mob handed in the bar lead by a shaven headed colossus who would not have looked out of place in a World Federation Wrestling bout.

Luckily a combination of Sven the friendly barman on the boat and Clive Foley's diplomacy skills stopped a major incident taking place and we arrived in Sweden to be turned over by a combination of Swedish Customs and armed police.

Eventually we proceeded on for the six hour drive to Norrkoping ariving at our hotel in the early hours of Wednesday morning, so far we had been on the road for around 44 hours.

Wednesday morning we set off to see the sights of Norrkoping, ten minutes later we had seen them and after the novelty of stopping trams had worn off and we realised that there appeared to be no pubs, at least not ones open during the day, we stayed in the hotel for most of the day drinking the duty free beer we had bought for just such an occurrence and watching English language films with Swedish subtitles ( They were mainly black & white 60's films and not the Swedish films you are all thinking).

Eventually it was time to set off for the game. more of which in part 3

Photo: Action Images

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