Diary of my trip to Beziers

By Denise
December 12 2002

Another successful trip down to the south of France for the team and a great weekend for the supporters. Here is an account of my trip to Beziers on the LTASC coaches.

Friday:

The seasonal penance of punishing myself with a ridiculously long coach journey to the south of France was here and I couldn't sleep, I could feel a cold coming on… great, just what I need! I writhed around for a bit until I finally decided to get out of bed and posted a couple of things on the message board and wrote half an article. After it turned 6 o'clock I got back in bed where I stayed until midday just to make sure I had had plenty of sleep before the torturous journey.

The plan was to go to Kent see the parents and then meet up with the LTASC on the M20 around 9pm. So after packing the suitcase and getting all the stuff together I phoned my mum to tell her we were on our way and she said that the dog "was on the way out". "A nice way to start the trip", I thought hoping it wasn't a portent of what was to come. So off we went to wonderful Medway, where we had a lovely roast dinner and saw the family for the first time since the season began.

The dog indeed looked in a very bad way but he was still breathing when we left to catch the bus at Maidstone services later that evening. Just as we had got in the car the phone rang "Guinness Express Service" was the greeting - an on board ordering of 24 more cans of Guinness for the journey, so we had to make a detour to Tesco and ended up getting 32 cans…carrying them was going to be interesting.

So now fully laden we resumed our journey to Bearsted to meet the bus at 9.30pm. We got there with about 10 minutes to spare but then had to get a ticket for the car and what have you so the bus had arrived just as we were getting the stuff out of the car. It was too much for 2 of us to carry - I blame the Guinness! John and Deano hopped off the bus to give us a hand and help us find the bus, we ended up running around in circles as the bus had done a loop of the services, we were desperately rushing to get to the 10.15pm ferry. So we chucked all (or not quite all as it turned out) the stuff on the bus and joined the drunkards at the back of the bus with their Guinness in tow.

After settling in a bit I asked where Mike he had put the pillows. Having experienced a couple of these journeys I have learnt the value of pillows but this was the first time we had actually bothered to bring any real ones. The time before we relied on Josh, our nick-name for those blow-up travel pillows which came about after a sleep-deprived visit to Perpignan last year - No Worries put the said pillow on his head and asked who he was imitating, obviously (?) it was JK - something to do with his preference for headgear no doubt. Anyway back to the real pillows, one of them was thrown at us but the other had gone missing somewhere between the car and the bus, we looked and looked but it wasn't on the bus. So it was only Friday evening and we had already potentially lost a family pet and a pillow, what else were we going to lose - surely not the game ;) ?

Saturday:

We got to the port on time but unfortunately the ferry didn't so we had to wait over an hour due to the high winds. The wait meant that the coach drivers would have to go some to get to Beziers before their driving time ran out which meant fewer and shorter stops. The coach journey was not too bad, I actually managed to get some sleep but it was quite weird waking up at 8am and it still being pitch black. The weather for most of the coach journey down was pretty miserable generally foggy and freezing cold. Around the centre of France it got a lot prettier, it had been snowing and the landscape was straight off a Christmas card. Near the end of the journey the terrain got a lot more hilly and when we came out of a tunnel through a hill we were met with bright sunshine and so it continued for the duration of our stay in Beziers.

We arrived at our hotel Premier Classe - the owner must have a sense of humour. We carried all the stuff up and attempted to get in the door but as with so many of the people we passed the keycard didn't work so it had to be taken down to the foyer and reprogrammed. The view wasn't up to much, a building site with a crane reaching over the hotel, but you could see the stadium. Luckily the window was so small the view wasn't really a problem, the room was straight out of Prisoner Cell Block H, but it was clean and the bed was comfortable which is the important thing.

After washing up in the tiny dual purpose toilet/shower plastic box in the corner of the room we went in search of Beziers. There was a congregation downstairs by the front door of the hotel (we must have had the only hotel without a bar), everyone was waiting for taxis and had been for quite a while. Everyone was amazed to hear that Calvisano had put one over on Neath. We asked whether anyone knew which direction Beziers was, we were pointed in a general direction (the wrong one) and were told it was about a 4km walk. We started to amble around the corner and the road was pretty dark so we decided against it and went and booked a taxi.

We shared a taxi with another couple and went into the town centre, it was quite pretty with all the Christmas lights on but very quiet. We wandered around what was the main town looking for a bar or restaurant and after five-to-ten minutes we eventually found one. It was pretty expensive in there and after one we decided to hunt for a restaurant. It took some doing, in the end we had to ask the locals as there was nothing but shops around. We came across a nice Pizzeria that looked fairly busy which we took to be a good sign. The four of us were sat on a table next to a fish-tank that contained an enormous ugly sea-bass type of fish and nothing else. I made a great friend in that fish, it lingered in the corner of the fish-tank nearest to me a couple of inches from my head most of the time we were in there.

We used our limited French to communicate with the waitress (and the fish) and tried to decipher the menu, wondering whether the Chevre mentioned over and over on the menu was a bit of a horse - none of us really fancied a horse pizza, but we got the phrase book out and it was only goat (goats cheese we presume). The waitress was very friendly and appreciated our attempt at speaking the lingo and I think she and the owner were amazed at my fascination with that fish. The pizza was very nice and after paying we received a shot of some unidentified alcoholic drink, which I eventually figured out smelt like Apple shampoo. I was sorry to leave the fish behind, it really did like me. We asked whether they knew whether it was a boy or a girl but they didn't seem to know. Shame.

We then went in search of another bar, we walked up the road and met up with a group of people that were staying in our hotel so we all decided to go in. I was getting a bit drunker by now, the conversation varied between the lovely fish, Harry Ellis and the Tigers plight. We must have met the Tigers supporters with the broadest Bristol accent. After a couple in there we decided to call it a night as we were all pretty knackered after the journey and the town seemed fairly quiet, we had to wait a while for a taxi and got back to the hotel about 12.45am.

Sunday:

The day of the game, the weather was beautiful - bright sunshine although a little on the cold side. Unfortunately I had woken to find that my voice was the third thing I had managed to lose. The scramble for breakfast in the tiny seating area was fun. As soon as you got in there the woman in charge was trying to speed you along to try to make room for the next lot, there wasn't a great deal of choice and the "cornflakes" bewildered most people.

After breakfast a lot of us congregated outside the hotel and soon decided to venture off to the ground for a "festival of rugby". The clubhouse was to be open all day serving food and drink. The ground wasn't far away but it was very much a back entrance we used to get there. The stadium was visible from quite a way and was an impressive structure.

There was a rugby team training on one of the many training pitches and we took the chance to have a nose around the ground whilst in search of the clubhouse. We stood at one end of the ground and the Beziers team (we presume) was training, although it was only 10am. We then went walking around the outside of the stadium and some stands and food stalls were being set up but no sign of the clubhouse.

We had walked practically the whole way round when we eventually got bounced and told to get out. Actually the bouncer pointed us in the direction of the clubhouse, it was quite worrying when we saw the security guard with a muzzled Rottweiler on the other side of the road having never been to a game with security dogs before. There was a small crowd of Tigers supporters at the main gate along with about 2 Beziers supporters.

Before we could go in the clubhouse we were greeted with signs telling us to buy tickets for drinks and paella. This had most of us highly confused, exchanging money for tickets and tickets for drinks why can't you just exchange money for drinks? So we stood there for a while trying to decide how much we were likely to drink throughout the day and then started to fill the beer terrace outside the clubhouse.

There were hundreds of Tigers supporters around and not many Beziers. The beer flowed the paella was eaten (by some), tales of other groups of supporters experiences of the previous night were shared and the band played. All very pleasant. As kick-off got nearer the gossip started spreading with tales of who had been dropped and all the whys and wherefores. Hearing that Stimmo had been dropped made me feel the most pessimistic I have ever been before a game. I was sure we were going to be worse than we were the last few weeks and was absolutely gutted that Stimmo wouldn't be playing.

We wandered around to our seats fairly early on. We were seated in a pocket of Leicester supporters in the middle of one of the side stands but quite high up, and it was certainly cold up there out of the sun. There was another pocket of Tigers on the opposite stand in the corner. My heart sunk when I saw the team, I really was depressed, no voice, no Stimmo, same old back line..."there is no hope we're gonna get whooped", I thought. To be honest the general impression I got from the Tigers supporters I spoke to was that most were expecting to lose, which is a fairly uncommon occurrence.

The ground was very empty although it is quite big with a capacity of about 22K so the 8000 who had turned up had their work cut out trying to generate an atmosphere. After the first couple of minutes I had given up not shouting and regardless of the fact I sounded like I was 80 years old and kept losing my voice I was going to give it a go anyway. The first half display from Tigers wasn't much to write home about, they looked a bit better than they had but they kept getting penalised and Beziers made them suffer.

Freddie had got sent off early on after punching someone and the Beziers supporters were up in arms. All too frequently the French players seemed to dive to the ground in "excruciating agony" for minutes at a time and then leapt to their feet. Alan Lewis soon tired of the playacting and generally ignored it. However some of our players appeared to use it to great effect later in the game ;).

The Beziers supporters had a chant that involved three claps, which we adopted and shouted Tigers over whatever they said. The clap clap clappy clap chant was a bit hard to sustain because the noise from the clapping seemed to get lost too easily. During their own kicks the Beziers supporters did a slow handclap and during Tigers kicks they used some form of instrument to make a really horrible disjointed noise. In the first half we couldn't help but think that if Stimmo had been playing we could have got a lot more points, as we were getting the penalties but too far out for Geordan. So Tigers went in at halftime trailing, we hadn't seen much to give us hope that we would go on to win it.

All through the game the band had been playing some very cheerful songs and frequently burst into the Champions tune, which the Tigers supporters in our section seemed to adopt as their main chant. We had a nice verse of Swing Low and later in the second half an unprecedented appearance of the Hokey Cokey occurred when Alan Lewis kept changing his mind about who had knocked on - you couldn't tell we had been drinking all morning. It always amazes me just how noisy the supporters on foreign away trips are, the number and frequency of chanting is much greater than normal.

The Beziers supporters looked taken aback by our singing and although it was pretty bad it did the job and when they all got up to leave 10 minutes before the end of the game many of the supporters applauded our efforts. Which is more than can be said of the team who didn't give us so much as a wave after they had won, they did wave the other pocket though. After the whistle had blown Tigers went off quickly and didn't come back even though there were chants of Tigers Tigers ringing through the stadium.

So we all traipsed back to the clubhouse in fine voice (well not me obviously but I was trying). Loads of supporters had their eye on the H-Cup bunting and Heineken paper table coverings and were negotiating with the bar staff for it.

It was getting a bit chilly by this time and after drinking outside for quite a while we went in the actual clubhouse. It was absolutely packed with Tigers supporters again, but there were more Beziers supporters than before the game, the band was still around and everyone sang along to the ones they knew and began singing the traditional rugby tunes. After a coupe of hours the place started to empty out and the players still hadn't made an appearance.

Anyway we had had enough Heineken and went off in search of food. On the way out not content with the mementoes already claimed a bit more bunting was retrieved and we started to walk out of the ground just as the Tigers players were walking into the clubhouse. Fortunately I still hadn't got my voice back so had to restrict what I said to them, I lost control when I saw Cozza and shouted his name and got a picture of him with Josh. Geordan Murphy was as always lingering around with a mobile phone attached to his ear so we got a picture of him and then went on our way...well sort of.

On the trek back to the hotel we had to cross a big ditch which I had great difficulty overcoming, as I kept sliding back into it. I eventually got out of it with a bit of help. It was pretty dark around the back of the stadium but the light from a local tramp's fire guided us back the right way. We dumped the mementoes off at the hotel and went for dinner at the restaurant over the road, as did many over groups. After dinner it was back to No Worries for an underground tea party. Everyone was dying for a decent cuppa, I provided the biscuits. And that was pretty much it, off we went to bed for an early start in the morning. The coach journey had its hilarious moments but I'm sure you are all asleep by now…toodlepip.