Trencin
31/07/2014
Stadion Pod Dubnom, Zilina
1 Visit
31st
of July 2014, history was made. Hull City played their first ever game in a European competition; yes, Hull City in Europe! We’d lost the F.A. Cup final a couple of months earlier but, because Arsenal had already qualified for the Champions’ League, we took their place in the Europa League. We were a little bit lucky in a sense in that this was the very last season when the rules allowed the cup runners-up to qualify but hey, who cares, WE WERE THERE.
The following weeks over the summer were dominated by the desperate need to know who would be our first ever opponents and where we would get to visit. There were so many teams from beautiful and exciting parts of Europe taking part, it was almost impossible to pick a favourite. The draw for the first round was made on 23rd June and the 2-legged ties were completed by 11th July so, by that point, 39 teams had already been wiped off the list. But the very strange nature of the structure of this competition meant that another 41 teams joined at this stage so the list of our possible opponents was back up to 80!
A lot of my chums had been making plans and trying to organise their travel arrangements even before we knew who we’d be playing, based on the outcome of the first leg of the second qualifying match that would decide our opponents. FC Trencin, from Slovakia, had won rather convincingly, 4:0 at home, to the Serbians from Vojvodina. That was good enough for some of them to book flights and hotels but I, typically cautious, decided to wait until it was confirmed. Well, the Serbians gave everyone a real shock by taking a 3:0 lead in the second leg but just couldn’t find another goal to take the tie into extra time. Trencin it would be then. Except no, the UEFA bods that decide these things deemed that Trencin’s stadium wasn’t fit to host the 3rd round game and moved it to the city of Zilina, about 60km away. I took the easy way out of planning the trip by signing up for the package that was organised by the club.
And so it was that, on the morning of 31st July 2014, I got up at a quarter to four to allow enough time to get to Humberside airport for 5.30 and to check in for the 6.50 charter flight to Bratislava. Everything went reasonably smoothly although the coach transferring us from Bratislava did get caught up in some delays on the motorway and stopped for far too long at a service area, but we still made it to the very lovely city of Zilina by early afternoon. A short walk got me to the centre and it didn’t take long to find some friends sat outside in the glorious sunshine at one of the many bars around the perimeter of the main square. I strongly suspect that I had a huge grin across my face for the next eight hours; everything was just perfect.
I don’t recall much about the game at all other than Tom Huddlestone having a second half penalty saved and then, somehow inexplicably, blazing the rebound way, way over the bar from just a few yards out. But it didn’t really matter, the day was all about the experience, shared with great friends, and being able to say “I was there.”
The journey home seemed very long, travelling overnight, but I did get a fair bit of sleep and this time, thankfully, there were no delays. As I pulled up in front of the house back home in Sheffield, I checked my watch which read 03.46; 24 hours and 1 minute after I had got up to start this fantastic day out.
The big question now, could we win the second leg and make it through to the Play off round?
Games
| Date | Score | Scorers | Competition |
|---|---|---|---|
| 31/07/2014 | FC Trencin 0 Hull City 0 | Europa League 3rd Qualifying Round 1st leg |
