And so to the final part in our Scandinavian trilogy from 1982 and things start to get far worse for Southampton Football Club.
Norrkoping's ground which I belive was rebuilt for the 1992 European Championships a decade later was back in 1982 barely Conference standards, it did have one decent stand but the rest of it was pretty dire although it did cram in 10,269 according to the official attendance figure including around 50 from Southampton housed in a small side stand.
Norrkoping had a game plan and they implemented it to perfection and although Saints had a few chances late on to break the deadlock it was not to be and the game ended 0-0 with Norrkoping going through on away goals counting double.
Leaving the ground was not uneventful with a few Swedish wannabe hooligans popping round to have a go, but they werent much trouble and we soon got back to the hotel and were wondering what we could do on a Wednesday night in Norrkoping.
The answer was soon found and it was not much, we did find some sort of rock club and were entertained by a heavy rock band the sort you only find in Scandinavia and occasionally in Holland or Germany, beer was about 4-5 times the price it was in England back then, so in the main we sipped our pints before going back to the hotel to finish off the duty free's.
But unbeknown to us there was a lot going on at the team hotel across town and Southampton Football Club would soon be front page news.
The team had drowned their sorrows as football teams did back then and a couple of the players had got "friendly" with a local girl who allegedly accompanied them back to their room, afterwards she claimed she had been sexually assaulted and the crux of the matter was the team returned home without two of its best players in Mark Wright & Steve Moran who were detained pending further inquiries.
Saints were front page news and they faced Notts County at home on the Saturday without the pair both still locked up in Sweden, ironically it provoked a fighting spirit, it was to be the smallest crowd of the season but everyone rallied round including two fans who ran n the pitch with a banner proclaiming the innocence of the two still in Sweden, Saints won one nil with a Justin Fashanu goal and Wright & Moran would be released without charge after Swedish police decided that the story dd not quite ring true.
Meanwhile we were heading home luckily without incident and we would arrive home in the early hours of Saturday morning, just in time to get some sleep before heading to the Dell for the aforementioned Notts County game.
This meant that it had been a few hours short of five solid days since we let Southampton and all of those 116 hours apart from about 28 hours in Norrkoping had been spent in transit, to save you the maths would say we spent about 20 hours on the four ferry journeys and the other 68 hours on the coach.
As mentioned in part 2 the coach had no facilities, it was akin to living on a Royal Navy submarine, we all wore shorts and t shirts rather than our normal clothes to keep them fresh, Clive Foley had provided some things to make life more comfortable, he had put a large 5 gallon plastic container on the back seat for those who needed to go to the toilet other than the service station stops, this was much needed as there was little to do on the coach apart from sit around drinking the duty free beer.
You daren't fall asleep because something unspeakable might happen by your so called friends.
Food and drink were provided, around two dozen boxes of Monster Munch, Scampi Fries (remember them) and cans of coke were loaded on board and were included in the trip, all seemed to be just past their sell by date and you can tell a veteran of that trip as o one has been able to eat those snacks since.
Happy days apart from the result, although I certainly would not travel that distance on a coach like that ever again, some of the best away trips I have been on have been the Saints European aways, sadly they have been far too few and like Norrkoping and this years trip o Denmark often so obscure only the really fanatical or insane will go .
That's why its crucial we win in Denmark this week, not just for the profile it gives the club, but the memories and trips it gives to the fans, give me a trip to Arnhem or the like once a year than endless trips to Stoke & Sunderland, this is now the modern world and travel is chap and easy a good Europa League run will not only allow us to see Europe but have great times doing so.