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Some background information for ease of reading and understanding:

1) I moved from North London/Hertfordshire to the Gold Coast nearly 4 years ago.

2) I had never met a Stoke fan whilst living in London.

3) A good friend of mine over here is a Stoke fan, not your average, thick northern monkey Stoke fan but a proper old school Naughty 40 Stoke fan.

4) All immigrants from Europe are known by their football team rather than their name, hence Cockney Paul, Stoke Simon, Cardiff Christian and Gay Ricky (as you can guess he doesn’t like football).

5) We are 9 hours ahead of you here!

As with most match day Saturdays the banter actually starts on a Friday, over a few beers at the local Tavern. This week I was joined by Stoke, Christian and some random Kiwi bloke who didn’t know how to converse in the English language. Now up until last season the conversation revolved around Mickey Mouse Championship games but then suddenly we find Stoke, inexplicably, in the same league as the mighty Tottenham Hotspur. Unfortunately this also coincided with our worst start to a Premiership and Stoke’s best start (and only start but it can be used as a valid argument when beer is involved), culminating in us being beaten by Rory Delap at the Brittania Stadium. Now, in hindsight and possibly without the impact of about 12 Coronas (the draught beer is shit so I have an excuse) I should never have made the assertion that Stoke would never beat us again in a Premiership match in my lifetime.

Saturday 24^th October 2009 began like any other Saturday here on the Gold Coast, I woke to a minor hangover at 8.00am, the sun streaming through the window and a clear blue sky outside. This all bode well for the day as the plans were a) help the missus do some housework, b) go and bottle my own brew beer, c) go to a mate’s house for a poker evening and then culminate in d) watching the game at home basking in the glory of seeing us annihilate these Premier League Interlopers and help send them back down to where they belong (hopefully along with West Ham and Blackburn).

All was going well, I buggered up the washing so was told to piss off and do your beer thing (plan A was therefore a resounding success), Bottled 150 beers ready to bring home, 20 of which were going to the poker night. The night started with pizzas made in my mate’s wood fired pizza oven, some beers and general chit chat about the night’s football with the general consensus that in 7 hours or so Spurs could potentially be on top of the league.

Unfortunately the poker was to become very much like the match later, I made some good moves, threatened a lot but generally had no end product and was caught by a sucker-punch double bluff at the end. It was now 11.50pm and 10 minutes to kick off, no taxis available so had to walk home, missing the first 15 minutes of the game, it was during this walk that I received the first of the texts from Stoke, “you have no fans”, followed  by “Woodgate off injured, home fans embarrassing”. Now I took this to be a bit of an exaggeration on his part until I got home and lo and behold he was right. This made me a bit nervous as it suggested it could be one of those days when the crowd aren’t sure we could do it.

The first half was patchy but generally we offered a lot more so I wasn’t too fussed. Then Harry made his masterstroke moves, take off Robbie for Pav and Hudd for Jenas, therefore putting our two target men up front and our best passer of the ball on the bench. The game now became Stoke v Stoke as all finesse drifted out of the game, but unfortunately for us Stoke are actually quite good at being Stoke whereas we are not. The goal was inevitable as was the barrage of texts.

 It was now 1.50am, hangover beginning to kick in, being abused by (and I have counted them) 27 texts from one Stoke fan! To top it all I was booked in to take my wife shoe shopping in the morning.