There’s a convoy of about a hundred vehicles following the England supporters around the country, these are not your everyday camper-vans as you might expect, oh no, they belong to our Riot Squad!
A pal of mine who works in the Police Service phoned me and said that he’s never seen so many in his life. Okay, he’s too young to have worked during ‘the you know what’ for ‘you know who’ when sights such as these were common but that of course was 20 years ago.
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They were stationed at a warehouse perhaps a mile from the stadium, the hundred or so vehicles move around the country to supplement the local units. I visited the mess at our largest local police station yesterday for a quick beer only to find all the normal parking bays suddenly designated to Brigadier so and so or Captain such and such, obviously some upcountry members who had come down for the match (I parked in Brigadier Roos’ spot!)
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I wonder if that nice Mr. Blatter paid for all these nice new toys?
As it turned out England won, our lads put their toys away and now move on to Bloemfontein.
My report on the atmosphere at the England match is here if anybody is interested, electric to say the least
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Boadicea's Chariot 
Or maybe the cops were just promised free tickets for the Ingerland games?! 🙂
They had that as well Janus, I’m told that there were 2,500 stationed at the ground alone!
Soutie – I been meaning to ask you, what is the capacity of the stadium? 🙂
48,000 on a good day. Fifa have reduced it though for this tournament to 46,000 by blocking off the 3 or 4 rows of seats that are closest too the pitch.
as this picture of the Germans about to have a penalty saved by the Serbian goalkeeper shows!
Soutie, the England roar at Wembley has to be heard to be believed! The krauts can’t match it, you’ll see!
Janus I believe you, I was also at the Germany v Serbia game, the English fans will outnumber the Germans (who were also quite noisy) for one and secondly the English never sit down or stop their singing.
If the games were won on supporters enthusiasm England would have this tournament sewn up unfortunately…………….?
Hope springs eternal. The secret weapon is ‘sang froid’ which the krauts don’t have.
Now I understand, I was wondering why they kept saying the stadium was full yet I kept seeing the same row of empty seats at most games, obviously for safety reasons 🙂