Ahead of this weekend's annual visit to Portman Road by supporters of Fortuna Dusseldorf, Ulli, Friedie and Christoph have written TWTD a few words on behalf of the Fortuna Blues Ltd committee.
Ipswich Town v Queens Park Rangers at Portman Road will be our 10th anniversary trip to East Anglia and our first trip under our new name Fortuna Blues Ltd - Intercity Tractor Boys estd 2006 - the Dusseldorf Branch of the Official Ipswich Town Supporters Club.
There was a brilliant response for this trip all around Dusseldorf as we got nearly 200 lads interested in joining us on our trip to Ipswich for this match. In the end, nearly 120 will be making the trip to Portman Road and we have rented two coaches for the long journey from the Rhine to Ipswich.
A lot of things have been organised by our English friends, including a meeting with some of Ipswich Town’s legendary players and we are very proud to announce that we have Egon Köhnen on board with us as well.
Egon is one of our Fortuna legends, playing for Fortuna between 1965 and 1981, making 376 appearances for the club, including the 1979 European Cup Winners’ Cup final at Basel, which we lost to Barcelona 3-4 after extra time.
We will present our new banner with our name and both of our club logos on Saturday and we have produced new scarves for this occasion with a certain amount of them to be shared with our friends at the pre-game party in the Drum and Monkey.
We would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to club officials from both clubs for assisting us and for giving permission to use official club logos on banner and scarves.
We will be sailing from Calais to Dover at about five o’clock continental time and will be approaching Portman Road shortly before 10am. All the lads are very excited about this trip which will be very special for us all, as it is our 10th trip - and it raises the number of Fortuna fans taking part on this annual pilgrimage to Portman Road from 2006 onwards to more than 700 boys and girls.
The old record was when 95 lads travelled with us to Portman Road in 2006 for the FA Cup match between Ipswich and Portsmouth. The most touching game for us in the past was the match v Leeds United in December 2006, remembering the tragic circumstances regarding the young women who used to work on the streets of Ipswich - they are still remembered by us all.
Finally, we will do our very best to support Ipswich Town as loud as we can from the North Stand all the way during the game. We are bound by tradition to Ipswich Town and all their loyal supporters.
Ulli, Friedie, Christoph and Egon will be in the Life’s a Pitch studio on Saturday, along with all the regulars, Fabian Wilnis and darts legend Keith Deller.