San Francisco, November 10

well, Misfitkid; sure thing. If you're bringing something for Meggrs, I'll chime in to. Long as it ain't got no sugar in it and the milk isn't soy. I'll get you a beer in the following round. Sound fair?

They won't object to you bringing a coffee into a pub?

 

that's okay. You still get the beer. Meggrs and I will find our own caffeine.

 

Meggrs told me to do this, and I've lived to a ripe old age by doing what women tell me to do. So, here's the word from the Kezar Pub contingent, hard by the wilds of Golden Gate Park.

After some adventures with San Francisco public transport, HatterMom and I arrived at the pub at 0845 -- god, I LOVE SF!. We made our way through the area where I spotted someone in a DABS.com shirt and finally met my first FulhAmerican face-to-face when I introduced myself to Ken [aka MisfitKid]. We had been chatting for a couple of minutes when we saw a young guy in a Pipex #3 jersey and both of us figured, this MUST be Nevzter. So I hailed him, he came over, I shook his hand and said, "you got to be Nevzter." He said, "No, my name is Dave." I said "Nice to meet you; what do you post under?" He said, "Huh?" I said "FulhamUSA.com." He said. "huh? I'm just here with a buddy who supports Liverpool." It took me a full minute to realize that there could actually be Fulham fans in the US who DIDN'T post on this site. Amazing.

Anyhow, Meggrs came in soon after and, to my surprise, she ISN'T British. I'd never heard that nickname anywhere else, but, like the others, she's a Bay Area person with a strange Fulham addiction. Just when we were about to give up on Nevzter, he did show up. HatterMom was able to hang out with us until about 5 minutes were left in the first half, so she got some pix. Don't know if she brought her uploading gizmo with her, or whether there's compatible parts on this machine, but once we get some pictures, I'll send them to somebody more in tune with this century to get them on the site.

After making nice and having a cup of coffee, I realized that I was in a pub, had been for a half hour, and hadn't had any beer. I really wanted a Bass/Guiness, but the lass serving us had a wonderful Irish lilt to her voice, and I learned long ago NOT to order a Black n' Tan from anyone who's Irish. I figure I'd already alienated her by moaning that Murphy was still in the lineup, so I ordered an Anchor Steam Bitter -- hey; when in Rome.

Aside from we 6 [5 once HatterMom's "I Gotta" intervened], there were about a dozen Liverpool supporters -- spread out over the pub. There were actually other people watching Big 10 pointy football and it was weird hearing cheers when nothing was happening on our pitch. I soon discovered that, like me, all of us were as fatalistic as medieval monks. We were, however, a lot more fun. Whereas the Liverpool fans around us were mentally renting their garments asunder with each Stefanovich intervention or launching of our Superhero the Flying Finn, we just chuckled to ourselves as each minute passed with the score sheet displaying the fiction that we were obviously just as talented and adept as the Scoucers.

yeah, right.

We agreed that the biggest difference in the two sides was that when we went to the bench for attacking help, we found Haummer Bouazza, while Liverpool found Fernando Torres, who they bought for roughly the same amount of money as Lawrie spent to import half of the Northern Ireland squad to SW6.

Eventually, order was restored to the universe and Torres scored, followed by the mandatory dubious penalty call against us. And then the game was over. As the odd couple of guys [one Fulham; one Liverpool] trotted out, Dave said, "hard luck." and I replied, "Well played, Liverpool." That fair assessment resulted in some mumbles of appreaciation from tables that surrounded us. The truth was, despite the fact that our beloved lads had their asses handed to them, the people in the pub who had the MOST fun was we happy few, we band of brothers -- and Meggrs!

We decided among the four of us that we were doing just fine when the match looked like a Fulham match, but once it began to look like a Liverpool match, we were sunk. You can love your side, but you have to admit that in terms of depth and talent, we're not in the same universe as the Scoucers. One point would have been great, but we had no complaints. We thought that Hughes and Stefanovich continued to look good. We thought Baird didn't put a foot wrong. We wondered why none of those gents thought to play the ball through to a midfielder and, on those rare occasions when Davies, Davis, or Murphy got the ball, why they'd invariable forget we were wearing White and pass it to a guy in red. The only bitch we had with the 18 year old ref and his 12 year old linesman was why he carded Dempsey for kicking the ball after the whistle, but didn't do the same when the Mad Stork put it in the net under the same circumstances a scant 10 minutes later. Even the "was it in or was it out" penalty just resulted in a group shrug and a laugh when Niemi's dive took him as far from Gerrard's shot as possible while still actually being within the city limits of Liverpool. At the final whistle, the one upbeat thing we could agree on was that we weren't going to lose NEXT weekend, no matter what.

As we parted in a fine mid-November drizzle [how England is that!] we exchanged handshakes and hugs. I hope that these three get together some more, because they were wonderful companions and this morning, despite the result, is the highlight of my trip to one of the world's great cities.

Those of you who have the chance of doing this who haven't, break out. It's really cool to meet the folks who inhabit this site.

COYW!

 

Thanks, 'fog. Full disclosure requires that we admit that there were some adult beverages involved on the morning in question -- as should be deduced from the "match report."