Slovenia At Home - 17/10/23

After a positive result on Saturday against San Marino we were playing Slovenia with a 7:45 pm kick-off at Windsor Park. We started by going to Queens Pizzeria where they were offering 20% off for any Northern Irelands going to the match and they allowed customers to bring their own booze for no added charge. Owen and I took advantage of this and shared a pizza with a 70CL bottle of Buckfast each and then headed to Lavery’s for a pint. The highlight of the match was speaking to the travelling fans at Half-Time and organising to meet them after the game for drinks at Lavery's. Slovenia ended up winning a tight affair 1-0 scoring early in the fifth minute before Northern Ireland went down to ten men in the fifty-eighth with Shea Charles getting a red card. After the match, we stuck to our promise and headed to Lavery’s to meet the Slovenia fans who were very welcoming of our company and treated us to some free drinks. 


As Lavery’s was closing we decided the night was still young and headed to Thompsons to continue drinking with a couple of the Slovenia fans. Once in there, we were surprised to see that some of the Northern Ireland squad were there having a few drinks after the match, and we got talking to some of them. As the night ended, we parted ways with our new Slovenian friends and exchanged details with them. Much to our surprise they invited us to visit them in Slovenia to watch their local club Olimpija Ljubljana as well as offering us to go to the Euros with them and watch a match. These were two interesting offerings that we may take up especially with Northern Ireland failing to qualify for the Euros in Germany. After this, the next trip is already booked for Helsinki in November to watch Northern Ireland play their last away game in the group against Finland.



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