Game Day 4
FC Cincinnati vs Louisville City FC
Where do I begin? Saturday was an absolutely HUGE football day with a plethora of great matches that spanned continents and kept fans happy for over 14 hours. I love days where I can wake up to a great game and one just rolls into the next. Days like this are what the real football fans in Scouse’s House live for!
We kicked things off at 7:30am for breakfast at Molly Malone’s in the Highlands with “The Merseyside Derby”, Liverpool v. Everton. Molly’s always has the welcome mat out for the Soccer lover in you, even before the sun comes up. A giant “Thank You” goes out to Wayne Brunton and Tudgh O’Callaghan for their usual hospitality. Many fans stuck it out for a mid-morning Tottenham v Stoke City match, and rounded out the early slate by watching “The Manchester Derby” between United and City.
So I hear many of you asking what on earth is a “Derby”? A Derby match was named after the Earl of Derby. Since the 1840’s his name has been used to designate a sporting contest between two local rivals such as Liverpool v Everton, Man United v Man City, or Arsenal v Tottenham.
There were some fantastic Derbies this weekend, but my favorite and the most relevant to Louisville fans is “The Dirty River Derby” between FC Cincinnati (FCC) and Louisville City FC (LCFC).
When the schedules were released, many fanatics circled this match first. Saturday saw the 1st installment of this year’s rivalry play out and if you were lucky enough to be at Nippert Stadium, you were witness to a fabulous atmosphere and a really good competitive match.
After the Manchester Derby finished, many supporters left Molly’s together to caravan up to Cinci. The pleasant surprise for me was seeing so many Louisville City supporters on the road creating a steady stream of enthusiastic support headed to the Queen City.
Upon arrival at ANOTHER Molly Malone’s (this time in Covington KY) we were thrilled that our welcome couldn’t have been any warmer. During the corresponding fixture last season we had made friends with a couple of FCC supporters (Mark Mechley & Burt Hehman) and our friendship continued yesterday. When we walked into the bar I was welcomed by a lovely sight, Amy Fish wearing her Liverpool shirt proudly. Thank you Amy it was truly a pleasure to meet a fellow RED!
Between the pre-game festivities, the march into the stadium, and during the game itself, our welcome as travelling fans, couldn’t have been any warmer and we were treated with class and respect by most of the FCC fans. During the match we did experience some good humored banter from the FCC contingent, and I like to feel that we responded in true LouCity style with our very own brand of mockery. This is the way it should be. FCC are rightly proud of their team and their supporter’s groups… but LCFC reigned supreme both on and off the pitch.
It made me laugh out loud before the match when FCC supporters unveiled a Tifo poking fun at LouCity because of the streamer incident that occurred at Slugger field. It was a good effort, but it didn’t quite pan out the way they hoped. Firstly, the Tifo was so big it kept collapsing in on itself so we really couldn’t see what it said. Secondly, those same supporters deployed lots of streamers, some of them making it onto the pitch. Their goalkeeper, Evan Newton, had to pick up the trash before the match could kick off. Their poor goalkeeper was so tired after doing his clean up, he was unable to keep a clean sheet and allowed our Cameron Lancaster to score! A word of advice to the FCC support; Don’t have your own team clean up the mess you made, it is so disrespectful in so many ways. Another friendly suggestion: Practice deploying your Tifo’s to make sure they work before you make fools of yourselves.
The game itself was very entertaining. Our boys in purple got first blood with my fellow Englishman Lancaster’s goal in the 13th minute, and the defense made that goal hold up for victory against a sustained 2nd half FCC attack. Outstanding defending and great goalkeeping has been a wonderful trend for our lads, as we remain unbeaten AND un-scored upon through three matches.
I was so glad and proud of the Scouse’s House turn out in particular and the of the entire LouCity community as a whole. I believe we all represented our team in the best way possible. I’d like to extend a personal thank you from me to Matt Dalton & Simone Prewitt for taking care of the Scouse’s House drum and to Ken Luther and Rebecca Tames for banging away on it the entire game.
I would also like to offer a special thank you to all of the Scouse’s House team who made the trip. Kevin Boissinot handled the tickets to get us all in together. Evan & Katie Floyd, along with David O’Connell made sure we had space for everyone to ride up to the ‘Nati.
But mostly I want to thank the Earl of Derby for blessing us with such a great day of football. Whether your teams won, lost, or drew… it was a great day for the sport we love. I hope to see you all at Slugger on Saturday the 14th for another chance to support our lads.
-Scouse-
4/8/2018