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Fortuna Blues Back in Town Thursday, 9th Jan 2014 11:41
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.
Photo: Action Images
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The Fortuna boys (sorry Blues) are a great bunch. At first I felt a bit intimidated at QPR away about 3 years ago when they had commandered me and my buddies seat in the away end... (prob 4 years ago actually) Gentle Giants indeed and the guy who "nicked" my seat made a point of apologising and buying me a drink at half time. Spotted them at a couple of other fixatures since then and was it not the cup game at Villa when they turned up again? One of the WAGs was a Brit married to one of the Fortuna supporters and she was nicknamed "Delia Schmidt" !! Brilliant!!
Bring it on Fortuna Blues . And welcome to FPR.
Couple more points ....
Can we not get a bit more advance info re FB's plans ? (so I can update my social life plans ) and will also hope M/C gives them a mention at half time.
This lot are all legends. Love to see them every season, their enthusiasm for football is a refreshing change from some of the doom & gloom mongers on here. They will be in the SBR Lower, suitably refreshed from their trip to "The Drum" and one things for sure, you wont hear a single Boo from any of them. Shame they cant make it every game!
Had the pleasure of meeting uli and all the rest when we went to see fortuna play nurenberg .We could only muster 18 of us but we had a great time so if there is a return trip this year try and make it they are great hosts and we had a brilliant w/end one of the fortuna/town supporters owns a bar which we were based in stephen who owns it was really great. i will be at the drum at 1000hrs.coyb
Phil/Gav - have you ever considered organising/co-ordinating a return trip? If it was properly organised, it would be popular, I'm sure. Flights (leaving Stanstead on Friday, returning Sunday) are as cheap as £26 on Ryanair for some weekends. Would be an excellent TWTD trip...
One was organised last year, as castlehillblue says. Not sure whether one is planned for this year but I'm sure Dave who organised the last one, see link, will let me know if there is.
Great to see so many coming this year and as I mentioned earlier will be equivalent of 1000 ITFC fans in noise volume. Dont go into the 'Drum'often as usually pay the exorbitant prices in Legends.Would be a nice gesture if the above bars would have a German bier on tap for them. I am sure it wouldn't go to waste,as it far better than our own lager in my opinion,and not sure that the taste of Adnams ale would be to our fellow Europeans liking?!
Fortuna,s last home game had an attendance of over 50,000, that,s for a team mid table in bundeslige 2. Welcome to Ipswich ladies & gentlemen, hopefully the "Town" will put on a good display & 3 big points.
I always enjoy reading about the Fortuna fans. What a great story! I love their enthusiasm and dedication for our team. I hope ITFC can reciprocate in some way. A friendly game has to happen!
Great response Lads - we are really looking forward travelling to Portman Rd tomorrow nite and we will do our very best to help pushing the Team to victory