We were sat right beside the stewards on the left with the Algerian fans. Yayyy!
The tickets I got were for unreserved seats on the South Stand so being late didn't help. We realised that the stewards were still trying to organise the two fans into the assigned sections of the stand but when it came to us two Malaysians, they were a just a bit confused. We were eventually lumped in with the visiting Algerian fans.
After getting ourselves seats (and being shouted at by dudes with thick French/Arabic accents), I was horrified to find out that my camera had ran out of batteries! Imagine that? The first half went by pretty quickly after that. Other than new boy Paul Green's goal, there wasn't much to the game. Fortunately, that got the crowd going and as neutral as I was, I wanted the visitors to score just to put a smile on my new-found North African buddies' faces!
I eventually found myself batteries for the camera at the break but paid the price as I missed the second goal.
Duff gets taken off after the second goal. He didn't seem a 100% anyway.
The stadium at this stage was already a third less than at the start but was certainly louder with Ireland comfortably in the lead. Obviously I'm not an ardent follower of the Algerian national team but at the rate they were playing on Friday night, they'd surely get their collective behinds walloped by England, Slovenia and the US.
Anyway, here's the rest of the pics from the match...
Kevin Doyle - although a foot shorter than the Algerian defence, caused them a world of pain with the long balls that kept being pumped through.
If not for the Algerian No.5's (Rafik Halliche) good work, they could've been down by a lot more. I aim to find out his name at some stage.
Ireland get a late penalty and naturally, Robbie Keane gets a go at it.
Naturally, you'd expect Robbie to score. Seen here celebrating in only the second shirt he's been in longer than 3 minutes!
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