St. Pauli: On the ball. The Hamburg club go to Norwich

Words: Ben Bray

“Oh my god, this is literally a half and half scarf game for me.”

Norwich City, my first footballing love, announced a pre-season friendly at home to FC St.Pauli, the club for whom I run a Southend based supporters’ club after their social conscience and punk rock ethos captured me over the past decade.

Fast forward six weeks, it’s Saturday August 3 , 8am and the Bray household is awake and alive to the smell of Lorne sausage being cooked.

“There’s no way you lot are drinking all day without having a decent breakfast first” - the words of my very loving and understanding wife Sammy, who is cooking the Scottish delicacy of roll and sausage for the nine members of St.Pauli-On-Sea who are about to make their way up to Norwich on the 9:46 train out of Rayleigh, Essex.

The rolls are hastily consumed ahead of the first of our two changes en route to the fine city and the first beer isn’t cracked until we are on the final leg from Chelmsford as we desperately try and contain our excitement in a way that should be far easier than it’s proving for a group who’s average age is definitely well into it’s mid-30s!

We arrive in Norwich just before midday and meet up with one of our founding members Rui who we don’t get to see too often these days due to work commitments and the fact he lives in London.

We also chat with a member of the official St.Pauli delegation who can’t unfortunately join us for pre-game drinks due to the fact that they will be accompanying senior St.Pauli officials to meet with their Norwich City counterparts.

We decide to forgo the “official” pre-drinking destination of the Coach and Horses to check out a bar that is new even to me as someone that frequents the City on a regular basis, Bier Draak.

It’s been recommended to us by someone I know via twitter: Richard, who runs both football travel company; Covert Footy Trips and German mystery shirt box providers; Bundesliga Boxes.

Richard has been a keen supporter of what we are doing at St.Pauli-On-Sea and I’m told will be easily spotted at the bar as he is wearing our current Kit and Bone home shirt.

As we make our way up to Bier Draak, and as is customary on an away day, we begin decorating relevant lamp posts with our Misfits inspired stickers when we hear in a German accent; “oh my god, I’ve got that trikot!”.

We stop and talk to the guy in question who is referring to our St.Pauli-On-Sea away shirt being worn by a few of our group, he tells us that he’s over from Hamburg for today’s game and how he got the jersey from his mum for Christmas!

You can’t help but feel a tinge of pride that local Sankt Pauli supporters like what we do and think it’s cool enough to buy, especially with current economic pressures.

We naturally thank him for his support and give him some stickers but he declines to join us at Bier Draak as he seeks his next (and clearly not his first) pint of the day elsewhere.

Fair play to him!

Bier Draak is as advertised, very much our kinda gaff, chilled out, with a large selection of Belgian and German beers (including beer of the St.Pauli neighbourhood and club sponsor - Astra).

It’s filled with people who want to chat about all things football and learn more about our group and our love affair with the Kiezkicker.

We meet Richard and share a couple of beers with him and the lads running the bar who are adorned in some classic St.Pauli shirts themselves.

All are great company and we discuss Richard’s beloved Everton and he implores us not to release a red St.Pauli-On-Sea shirt as he would struggle to add this to his collection due to his aforementioned Merseyside allegiances.

We spend a good few hours in Bier Draak making a severe dent in their Astra stock and exchanging stories and stickers with a wide range of supporters, from fellow UK based St.Pauli supporters’ clubs such as the brilliant St.Pauli Eastbourne, to David a great guy and Union Berlin fan and plenty who share my passions for both of today’s clubs.

We make our way to the ground and both my dad and I purchase the aforementioned half and half scarf. I know this is taboo among a lot of football fans but as supporters of both clubs and with this fixture unlikely to happen again, I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to get a scarf representing the two footballing loves of my life.

It was a strange feeling as we made our way to the away block in Carrow Road. I’ve been here countless times before and even enjoyed the privilege of playing on the pitch twice but have never even seen in this block for obvious reasons.

We meet a few other UK based groups on the concourse including our friends from the two, London based St.Pauli groups, without whom St.Pauli-on-Sea wouldn’t exist as we originally started as a 6-a-side football team that represented St.Pauli London a couple of times.

We then headed down to the front of the South Stand to tie our flag to the safe standing railings joining the esteemed company of Manchester St.Pauli and London St.Pauli among many others.

I also bumped into Nik from Bristol St.Pauli who is a top man and someone we met when St.Pauli women came over to play Clapton last year (which still ranks as one of my best days at the football).

The game itself was fairly typical pre-season fare and with both teams transitioning to new styles of play under new head coaches.

St.Pauli were a good few weeks behind Norwich but despite a good start from the Canaries who created a number of early chances, it was the Boys In Brown who looked more cohesive and raced into the lead through a header from skipper and SPOS favourite; Jackson Irvine.

New signing Morgan Guilavogui and Jojo Eggestein added a second and third before half-time, much to the delight of the away block who were in good voice throughout and were captivating the very different and somewhat younger than usual City supporter base gathered in the normally vociferous lower Barclay end.

At half-time, we went and grabbed a beer and a pie and chatted to more supporters and bumped into our mate from Hamburg again who’d clearly found those additional pints (who are we to judge at this point as we were far from sober) he handed us various stickers and we had a drink with him and his friends, to the point that I missed Norwich’s only goal of the game through Jonathan Rowe early in the second half.

The atmosphere went up a notch in the second-half and while naturally a pre-season crowd will never reach the levels of an in-season game, it was the best atmosphere I’d experienced in a warm up game and it was great to hear some classic chants from the Sudkurve mixed with some English language chants led by Nik and ably supported by the nine of us!

By the closing minutes of the game the youngsters in the lower Barclay were joining in the “Sankt Pauli” chants to which the away fans returned a chant of “Yellows” and before I could start welling up at the fact my two footballing loves were seemingly forming a fan friendship, the final whistle blew.

The St.Pauli players began making their way over to thank the supporters as is customary in German football but wait a minute… Jackson’s leading them into the stand…. Cue much fanboying from the SPOS lads as we try and shake hands with as many of our heroes as possible as the club photographer captured a brilliant shot of the players in the Gasteblock with the supporters.

Dad and I make a quick stop in the club shop before we head towards Bier Draak again.

Sadly the bar was rammed and knowing we’d already drunk them out of Astra, we decided to have a quick one in Last Pub Standing on the same street before heading back down towards one of my favourite pubs in the City, Pogue Mahons for a few pints of Guinness.

We had met and caught up with some great people, discovered new, cool gaffs in the City and had a fantastic day at the football where the result was pretty irrelevant as it was preseason and I couldn’t really lose!

We arrived home suitably drunk but not over the top, Sammy asks me how it went… I replied; “it was everything I hoped it would be and more!”

On The Ball City

Forza Sankt Pauli