Bolton Wanderers vs Charleston Battery

So the game was a lot of fun, despite the day being so hot it was like being in a sauna in your clothes all day, we were sweating so much. The only advantage to this sticky situation is that everyone else you are with has also been sweating all day and so they don't mind the smell as much. Needless to say, I never want to experience that again. I was way too uncomfortably hot. We went to the game early and got to tailgate with The Regiment, the fan club for the Battery. We met a nice guy named Mikey who my hubby had been talking to on the Club's forums. This was the first time an English Premier League team had played in South Carolina, so we were psyched to be amongst the 5000+ fans there to watch it (luckily we had a seat, but they had so many people there, it ended up being standing room only behind the goals). We are hoping that this will encourage other EPL teams to come to South Carolina, so maybe we can see some really good clubs like Man City, Tottenham, or even Liverpool (*fingers crossed*). We watched the teams warming up before the game and I was surprised how close we were to the pitch. There were a decent amount of British fans, including those that live in the area and Bolton fans that were traveling with the team. The other big surprise was how quiet it was during the game. I guess I'm just used to watching English Premier League games which are always so noisy.That being said, it was however, a really fun game to watch. The Wanderers won 2-0, though the Battery at least were putting up a fight despite losing.

My hubby was psyched because he got to take a picture and get an autograph from Owen Coyle, the manager of Bolton (who is an ex-footballer for Republic of Ireland and Bolton). We tried to get more autographs after the game, but there were too many people and the good players left early. For me, at least, there were quite a few good looking players on the field, including a cute balding ref. This is not a prerequisite but useful when you get a boring game, at least you have someone cute to look at. One of the things we noticed was how small the Charleston players were in comparison to Bolton, who had one guy that was at least 6' 6". It literally looked like Bolton was playing against a bunch of high-schoolers with the height difference. The only really annoying thing about the game were the vuvuzelas, those horns from World Cup fame. Our friend who went with us got one and spent the rest of the game blowing it at other people and generally annoying us and everyone around us. There were a couple of times I thought people were going to beat the crap out of him and possibly us for sitting with him. Those things should seriously be banned from games.