Fulham vs Manchester United

It was my third football match in as many weeks but I certainly wasn't sick of it as we sat in a packed out Craven Cottage to watch Fulham take on all the stars of Manchester United. And take them on they certainly did. Fulhum went up 1 - nil early in the first half and dominated most of the game. Manchester scored later in the first half to level the scores and their goalie made some brilliant saves in the second half to keep them in the game. Manchester were leading the Premiership and were desperate to win to stay above Chelsea so despite Fulhm's best efforts, Manchester were able to keep them at bay.





Manchester scored a great goal in the 87th minute to snatch a win, courtesy of a brilliant solo effort from Christiano Ronaldo (the player on the foreground below). He received the ball on half way, beat two tackles straight away and then dribbled round the last line of defence and coolly slotted the winner. Ronaldo was definitely in a league of his own and was the deserved winner of man of the match.





Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson stated in an interview that it was the toughest game they had played in the Premiership and that they were extremely lucky to come away with the win. We felt pretty lucky to see such a good game and once again the atmosphere had been amazing.

London

Just a few random photos of London and surrounds. I'll keep this updated as I collect a few over my time here.

Westminster



Covent Garden



Ice rink at the Natural History museum



Greyhound racing pre Christmas at Wathamslow Stadium



Nelson's Column at Trafalger Square



Piccadilly Circus



Statue at Piccadilly Circus



From Waterloo Bridge at night, London eye on the left, Big Ben and Westminster on the right and the filthy muddy Thames in between.



Oxford vs Cambridge rowing race, Easter 2007 on the Thames. Taken at Hammersmith. Oxford are leading here but Cambridge went on to win



Tower Bridge



Looking towards the city and the Gherkin from Tower Bridge



Butler's Wharf from Tower Bridge



Greenwich, looking towards Canary Wharf



Traffic lights at Canary Wharf roundabout, pretty easy to understand.....



The massive old Battersea power station, currently abandoned.



Richmond, taken from a boat on the Thames.



No, this building is not badly painted, it is badly sown. Yes, believe it or not those walls are grass and as for the statue on top, who knows. Part of some exhibition apparently.



St Pauls

England vs Spain

A group of 5 of us took a day off mid week and made the long journey to Manchester to watch England play Spain in a friendly. James and Hamish (who kindly organised everything) were prepared to pay up to £200 to go to the game - imagine their delight when they got 5 tickets for half that price!

We hired a car and Hamish drove all the way there and back. He is getting well used to driving long journeys late at night. It took ages to get out of London and by the time we made it to Rugby we were starving. We called in for lunch, a quick wander round the town which included losing our tennis ball in the headmaster's garden and a couple of snaps of William Webb Ellis.



After a quick look around Manchester, which seemed like quite a student orientated city, we were off out to Old Trafford to find a park, have some dinner and find our seats. Gus and I sat high in the stands, just off half way but as you will see from the photos, we almost had a bird's eye view of the game.









Spain won the game 1 - nil and I was pretty happy to see a goal so clapped and cheered when it went in but realised very quickly that I should not be doing that as everyone else sat in silence. The English fans are a pretty negative lot and do a lot of booing, and to be fair they had a right to be upset after England controlled most of the possession.

The next day we woke up to snow on the ground back in London which started falling just after we got back at 2:30am. Needless to say, it was a pretty unproductive day at work.