06.05.2017 36th match day of Regionalliga Southwest SC Teutonia Watzenborn-Steinberg - SV Elversberg Stadion Wetzlar Result: 2:4 (0:1) Attendance: 386 (80 away fans)
Here it came the last away game of the regular season, after securing the place in promotion play-off, this and the next game doesn’t really matter anymore.
Our destination of the day was Wetzlar in Hessen, which took us almost four hours by bus from the centre of Elversberg. SCTWS (please excuse my laziness to write the name, but what an abbreviation) couldn’t play in their own stadium in Steinberg or whatever city that are from because of security reason, so they had to play rent the ground in Wetzlar in order to play in the Regionalliga.
We travelled with a french bus and a french driver who couldn’t speak German, and we couldn’t speak French too. There is still an advantage of having a french bus though, people can’t recognise where we are actually from by checking the license plate!
After four hours of travelling, the bus finally arrived at a parking space across a river. It was sunny and warm in Wetzlar and we could simply wear only T-shirts during the game!
SCTWS had annouced days before the game that the away section would be closed and asked the Elversberg fans to enter from the main entrance. This basically wouldn’t create much problem because SCTWS don’t have fans (no fan groups and ultras at least), so there couldn’t really be a clash between fans.
So, now the away block is closed, where were they going to settle us? We didn’t know until we were at the ticket box when we asked for a Stehplatz (Standing place). “But you are from Elversberg, right? The away block today is at the seating zone,” said the SCTWA staff. That meant, just because they closed the away block, we had to pay for a seat.
Another thing was about the ticket price regulations in Germany – away tickets price has to be as low as home tickets. If home fans are paying 5€ for a Stehplatz (which is also the cheapest ticket), then the club has to offer away fans with the same price. On that day, Stehplatz was available for home fas, and they only had to pay as low as 8€ to watch the game while away fans were force to pay 12€ simply because they assigned the away fans to be in the seating zone. To be honest, we were annoyed by this for the rest of the day, that’s a rip-off!
So we went to the other side of the main stand and started hanging banners (no flags today), and then went to get food and drinks. With 3.50€ you could order a fresh fried Schnitzel! We simply had a feeling of having a picnic under the nice sunshine and forgot for few seconds that we were here for football.
Since there were less than 400 people inside the stadium, it made the 80 Elversberg sound really loud. They were indeed having a good atmosphere, chanting and clapping for the whole first half.
SCTWS were (and are) the second last of the league which meant they are going to relegate anyway. Elversberg, who were the second of the league, easily dominated the game. The first goal happened at 19th minutes, then nothing much happened.
During the break, everyone from the group went away to get food and enjoy the sunshine while others were sitting on the stand and be like “I am not going to get up anymore, I paid for a seat!” 😀 They slowly gathered again finally after 10 minutes into second half.
Elversbergers celebrated their second goal soon after the restart of the game, but suddenly, SCTWS scored two goals in few minutes. At that time, some kids from SCTWS started chanting for Elversberg and they even celebrated for the away team’s third and fourth goal that came at 74th and 76th minutes!
So, Elversberg collected the expected three points in Wetzlar and overtook Mannheim, who were going to have a game a day later, in the table to be the top of the league. What made the fans happier was that Mannheim lost to Nöttingen who were on the bottom of the league!
Nöttingen will be Elversberg’s last opponent in the regular season, and if Elversberg don’t lose next week, then they will finish the season as the champions, and we will get free beer after the game!