19th Match Day of German Bundesliga Second League SV Sandhausen - Erzgebirge Aue Hardtwald Stadion Results: 2:0 (0:0) Attendance: 4.783 (about 500 guests)
We haven’t been travelling a lot since the new year started. As the football leagues in Germany are slowly starting again after the winter break, we decided to go to Sandhausen last Saturday as our second trip this year.
We had plans to go to Sandhausen earlier but we seemed to pass in the last minutes because we found better plans. Well, SV Sandhausen are the smallest club in the second league and don’t have many fans compared to the teams around the area.
After some months of groundhopping, we have already visited most of the stadiums and interesting grounds in the southwest of Germany. Inevitably, it was now time to visit SVS’s home ground, the Hardtwald Stadium.
It took us about two hours to drive from Elversberg to Sandhausen, via Kaiserslautern. The parking space near the stadium fits exactly the image of a country side club; it was a simple a mud field you could only enter through a pathway that leads to a ranch.
To avoid paying 5€ shipping fee from pre-ordring tickets online, we simply bought our tickets at the ticket box half hour before kick off. We paid 11€ for a standing ticket (9€ for concessionary ticket), which wasn’t too bad for a place just at the middle of the pitch where we could see both home and away fan groups.
The strange thing about the stadium was that the away block was located right next to the block where the main fan group of Sandhausen stand, which we didn’t think was normal in Germany. It seemed good for people who like to take photos of both fans, but it gave us headache when the two groups of fans started chanting. Imagine when one side started singing and then the other side started they drums with a different beat.
The guests on this day were FC Erzgebirge Aue from Sachsen of East Germany, a club we already saw twice last year. Coincidentially, Aue won both games away with three goals up.
Aue were freshly promoted from third league this season, alongside their biggest rival Dynamo Dresden and Würzburger Kickers. While Dresden and Würzburg are doing well in second league (5th and 8th respectively), Aue are struggling in the relegation zone to keep up with the standard.
Although Aue are not doing well so far, the fans seemed not to be bothered. Being a rather smaller club from East Germany who are not famous for travelling with huge amount of fans, there were still about 500 Aue fans who travelled with the team, and with a choreo- a big flag with their traditional logo surrounded by lots of purple and white flags.
At the beginning of the game, the guest sector was much louder than the rest of the stadium. Almost all away fans sang their well known chants and created a good noise. However, they went quieter as their team wasn’t playing well.
The home side started with only about 50 people chanting; Most of the chants were well known, so nothing special but one chant from Werder Bremen, where all the fans jumped from left to right. The atmosphere became better as more fans joined in chanting with the small group behind the goal after Sandhausen scored the first and second goal.
The game was fast in the beginning with many challenges and yellow cards, but there weren’t many chances created from both sides. In the second half, Sandhausen got the better start and scored after a corner out of nowhere. Aue then tried to push more towards the goal. Sandhausen were only defending and waiting for the counter strike, and scored again after 75 minutes into game.
We left the stadium at once when the referee blew the whistle as the weather went worse and cold. We went back to the mud field under rain and started our way back home with a stopover at Burger King! (We didn’t get anything at the stadium because we didn’t want to get those pre-paid card and spent hours after game to get the deposit back)