Sponsorship on Steroids

Switzerland 0 v England 2

Monday 8 September 2014

Twitter @ball_sup

Fairly straightforward beerhunting today. One objective. Ueli beer in Fischerstube on Rheingasse. Which is a place I've already done on a previous trip.

We had a good good bad experience. The initial welcome & help from the staff was good. The barmaid explained what was on & offered a few tastings.

The beer range was good (if a little uninspiring).

But, our waitress eventually disappeared & despite us being the only customers inside (more customers outside) we struggled to get served. I gave as good as I got. But the staff were a bit stroppy.

I can take or leave all that crap. So it didn't spoil a nice session.

The brewing kit is behind glass at the end of a long narrow room. The place had an unmistakable malty brewing atmosphere. The pong hung in the air. I like that.

The keg range was;

Lager Hell at 4.8%
Reverenz Spezial Hell at 5.2%
Weizen at 5.4%
Robur Dunkel at 4.8%
Mac Ale at 5%

The Mac Ale was a special brewed for the Basel Tattoo.

The Weizen was the stand out. Got it all going on. Bananas custard vanilla cinnamon. Lovely colour. Perfect head.

Lots of anti FA feeling & chanting in the England section. Tickets for away games are correctly distributed on a loyalty system (called Caps). For oversubscribed away games, the more caps you've got, the better your chances. For years 2 caps have been added for an away game, 1 for a home game. Thus rewarding travelling fans.

However, and somewhat cynically, that's reversed now. 2 for a home game. 1 for an away game. That's being seen by many of the travelling cash cow support as a way of boosting ticket sales for unattractive games at Wembley.

Really the FA should have just stuck in ain't broke don't fix territory. I'm not sure whether the vitriolic stuff will have been heard on the tele. But, the FA bring this sort of nonsense on themselves.

The Football Eating Itself event today was when the big screen in the ground displayed that VW had sponsored the in ground announcement of the crowd (35,500). I could explain. But just read that again. It is as mad as it sounds.