 Wednesday, 16th Jun 2010 03:36 by Oliver Dean My World Cup hardly got off to the best of starts – Kenya Airways lost my suitcase! Luckily I managed to get it in time for the England game so all was well in the end. We arrived in Johannesburg in time to watch the opening game on the TV in a pub, before watching the Uruguay v France game at the pub in the evening. The atmosphere was brilliant, with all the vuvuzelas making plenty of noise. Me and my mates are staying in an apartment in one of the districts of Johannesburg and on Saturday we made the two-hour drive from there to Rustenburg, which was in the middle of nowhere. We got there at 3pm and it is quite a tribal area, with a few houses dotted around. One was a kind of house-pub with a big garden where we could all mill around before the England match in the evening. There were some TVs inside so we were able to watch the Argentina game against Nigeria while we waited in the afternoon. American fans were there too and the atmosphere was great with some good banter but I don’t think the owners were expecting anywhere near as many people as the numbers that turned up and the bar soon ran out of beer. Once we were finally inside the ground I was stunned by how many England fans were there. They outnumbered the amount of American supporters inside the ground quite easily. It was strange driving down to the game because we kept passing cars with South African flags attached to them but when you looked inside the people were wearing England shirts. There was terrific support for England. Inside the ground there was a lot of fancy dress and near us there were four fans dressed up as Fabio Capello, with the suits and big glasses. It was a fantastic start to the game for England but, obviously, the result in the end was disappointing and there were some fans grumbling afterwards about travelling all the way to South Africa to watch that. We were sat behind the goal in which Robert Green made his mistake that gave the USA their equaliser in the first half. But we were sitting quite low down so we couldn’t see very clearly what actually happened. It looked like an innocuous shot and we were only aware of the mistake by Green when we heard the groans around us. Everyone was shocked. It was interesting watching the reaction of the other England players. They didn’t go over to say anything to Green, they just headed back to the centre circle. I think a few of the fans were questioning some of Capello’s decisions before the game started. Some didn’t want to see Green in goal, while others were surprised to see James Milner start the match, only to be substituted quite early on. But, hopefully, we will get it right for the next game against Algeria. Before then, we have got tickets for Holland against Denmark in Soccer City in Johannesburg today and then we are going out to Cape Town on Tuesday to have a look around before England’s next game there against Algeria on Friday. But it’s a 15-hour drive to Cape Town, so I’m not looking forward to the journey.
Oliver Dean is documenting his journey to the World Cup regularly in the DET and we thank him for allowing us to re-print his diary columns here on RamZone!.... Keep an eye out for his next diary entry soon!
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