Longford FC vs. Linfield FC from the Viewing Lounge at Windsor Park.
As I couldn’t go down south to Longford to watch this important Setanta Cup match I decided that I would go down to the viewing lounge in Windsor Park to watch it on satellite TV. To be honest, not having gone into the social club before and being on my own I was slightly hesitant, but was pleasantly surprised by what I found. Basically if you’ve been to Windsor Park you will have noticed the glass fronted first floor viewing lounge linking the Railway Stand to the South Stand.

To be honest the lounge has a dated and worn look about it. The carpet resembles the wallpaper in my bedroom during the eighties and there was some broken furniture lying about the place but the atmosphere was very homely in fact, great. Now, by that I don’t mean hyper, or energetic but warm, friendly and inviting. There were about 100 people in the room although I’m always awful at estimating numbers and the make up of that was very broad. There were a number of couples evident, young and old punters of both genders and even some families complete with kids. No one was getting drunk and there wasn’t anything inappropriate about the whole night.

As for the match, it was a hard fought battle which we lost 2-1. Some of David Jeffrey’s tactics baffled me a bit but hey nothing unusual there then. This is a very exciting competition with £100,000 at stake for the winner, (the highest prize money in any football competition in Ireland). Let’s hope the Blues dig in and do better.

Next match - Linfield v Glentoran.19-4-05.