Brentford FC : Shrewsbury Town

Our first day of groundhopping in London took us to Football League Two - specifically the London suburb of Brentford. After visiting the Imperial War Museum in the morning and enjoying a few pints in an adjacent pub, we set off by underground.

As we had only had a limited look at the route in advance, the distance between the underground and the stadium was negligently underestimated, making the walk rather long. So we had already learned something - always ask in advance how to get to the stadium.

In the end, we reached the stadium, which is located in the middle of a housing estate. There is a pub on every corner of the stadium - making it unique in England. But there was no time to visit one (or more) of them, because we had made a second big mistake. As we had already enquired at home about the date of the match, we forgot to take the time difference into account - as a result, we didn't get to the stadium until the start of the second half. But we didn't miss anything - the score was still 0-0.

Surprisingly, a lot of away fans from Shrewsbury had arrived. Numerous buses came to support the players - any Austrian Bundesliga club would be jealous. In the end we got to see 2 goals, which made us forget the problems at the beginning. Afterwards we went back to the underground. This time we wanted to orientate ourselves on the bus line - but this also led to confusion as we forgot about the left-hand traffic and checked the timetable on the wrong side.

So our first groundhopping trip in England was one thing above all: quite instructive ;-)