Entirely forgot that 5 years ago today, we kicked off our Europa League Debut against Astra Giurgiu, in which Owain Fôn Williams made his debut by nearly keeping out a free kick comparable to Greg Tansey's own from one Constantin Budescu, leaving us trailing an away goal heading into the second leg near the border with Bulgaria. Shame really that we might not ever see the sights of European Competition again for quite some time...

Thanks for highlighting. That was the only time I have seen home fans in the away end due to the support we had. None of us knew who the goalie wearing 25 was as we all expected Esson to be in goal  

Oh for support like that again.

Sadly j suspect we can only dream!

I was sadly hundreds of miles away on a holiday pre booked long before for both the first and second legs and could not persuade, cajole or bribe Mrs Kingsmills to change our plans.

Should the opportunity arises again before I am too old and feeble, I will be there come hell or high water.

Likewise.  We were on a family holiday in Cornwall. I did look into how I could get to and from Bucharest from there but it got pretty complicated. And unpopular.

Interesting thing I do note about it, is how the clubs went about it, completely minor, but Astra had proper Europa League design tickets, but had programmes which were a sheet of glossy A4 folded in half, whereas we had the usual design of the prior seasons kit, and had a normal fully paged programme. It's a completely minor thing that would normally be glossed over, but it's intriguing.

Also want to mention, I was unable to go to Romania, no matter how much I begged to my dad, I ended up watching it through the Bet365 website on the living room floor, at least the full match is up somewhere on Youtube. But hopefully, I'll go out to Romania at some stage

Ye of little faith. Away back in February, flights to Iceland booked for May 31, the day after the Cup Final. Back in plenty of time for the UEFA fixtures 😎

 

Edited July 18, 20205 yr by TheMantis

On 7/16/2020 at 10:07 PM, Jack Waddington said:

Entirely forgot that 5 years ago today, we kicked off our Europa League Debut against Astra Giurgiu, in which Owain Fôn Williams made his debut by nearly keeping out a free kick comparable to Greg Tansey's own from one Constantin Budescu, leaving us trailing an away goal heading into the second leg near the border with Bulgaria. Shame really that we might not ever see the sights of European Competition again for quite some time...

There’s more chance of us wearing bright pink football gear than ever getting back into Europe !🐽

I thought OFW should have saved the free kick it seemed to go through him, TBF he turned out to be a very good keeper. Despite the 0-1 scoreline I thought it was one of our best home performances against an experienced European team and that was without Shinnie and Watkins, thought Christie was outstanding that night, the lack of a penalty box striker was I felt the main reason for not getting through the tie.

On 7/17/2020 at 5:23 PM, Kingsmills said:

I was sadly hundreds of miles away on a holiday pre booked long before for both the first and second legs and could not persuade, cajole or bribe Mrs Kingsmills to change our plans.

Should the opportunity arises again before I am too old and feeble, I will be there come hell or high water.

^^^^
Grannies heilan hame in Embo

Oh to oh to be a jaggie 

Dougal

My good lady and I held back from booking holidays that summer until we found out the opposition. We would have been very happy with a trip to Greece, Malta, Cyprus, Turkey, Croatia, etc and would have happily gone for a week or 10 days. When we found out it was Romania we thought okay that sounds awkward and hoped for a better place in the next round. It was once we started checking out flights by our favourite airline, KLM, the trip all fell into place. Aberdeen-Amsterdam-Bucharest was a doddle and only 3 hrs 40 mins in the air in total. The hotel in the Bucharest Old Town and the airport transfers by private hire car were also booked through KLM, and combined with the flights worked out at £375 each. With the well organised buses, the match itself, the camaraderie with other ICT fans and locals we met, the cheap food and drink, all the sights and fabulous weather, we had one of the best holidays ever over the course of our 5 days and 4 nights trip. It was so memorable and we look back fondly on it, even although my other half doesn't care too much for football.

On 7/18/2020 at 5:17 PM, wynthank15 said:

I thought OFW should have saved the free kick it seemed to go through him, TBF he turned out to be a very good keeper. Despite the 0-1 scoreline I thought it was one of our best home performances against an experienced European team and that was without Shinnie and Watkins, thought Christie was outstanding that night, the lack of a penalty box striker was I felt the main reason for not getting through the tie.

We played really well over both games dominated possession at home but lacked a cutting edge Astra put out West Ham by a bigger margin in the nxt round remember

We had some decent chances in the second leg. The best one fell to Ryan who blasted it, too near the goalie. You’d expect the experienced player he is now, to place it.

That was some team always expected us to win no matter the opposition we played imo the best possession football in Scotland at that time just lacked a goalscorer! 

On 7/19/2020 at 11:51 PM, Row S said:

My good lady and I held back from booking holidays that summer until we found out the opposition. We would have been very happy with a trip to Greece, Malta, Cyprus, Turkey, Croatia, etc and would have happily gone for a week or 10 days. When we found out it was Romania we thought okay that sounds awkward and hoped for a better place in the next round. It was once we started checking out flights by our favourite airline, KLM, the trip all fell into place. Aberdeen-Amsterdam-Bucharest was a doddle and only 3 hrs 40 mins in the air in total. The hotel in the Bucharest Old Town and the airport transfers by private hire car were also booked through KLM, and combined with the flights worked out at £375 each. With the well organised buses, the match itself, the camaraderie with other ICT fans and locals we met, the cheap food and drink, all the sights and fabulous weather, we had one of the best holidays ever over the course of our 5 days and 4 nights trip. It was so memorable and we look back fondly on it, even although my other half doesn't care too much for football.

Having missed the Final due to ill health, it was a no-brainer to go to Romania and a wonderful experience.  Such great memories, I feel privileged to have been there to experience the atmosphere of these days, the heat, the camaraderie, the food and drink, the fans, the actual game, everything.    I will never forget those few days in 2015.   Definitely wow!

 

I, like many others I think, took this trip as a potential once and once only experience and therefore relished every every moment. Still have a warm, fuzzy feeling when I think back. 

Thought the fans represented the club very well