Thursday 29th August 2004
Longford Town v FC Vaduz
UEFA Cup Preliminary Round Second Leg
Programme Price: 3 Euros
My review today goes back to the 2004/2005 season and a UEFA Cup Preliminary Round 2nd Leg encounter between Longford Town (Ireland) and FC Vaduz (Liechtenstein). The programme consists of 32 pages from the front to back cover with only a few of those pages consisting of adverts.
With page 1 being the front cover, page 2 is an advert with the following page providing a club directory for 2004. At the time of writing the chairman of Longford Town was Jim Hanley with the first team manager being named as Alan Matthews.
Page 4 sees a welcome from Mr Hanley and is followed on page 5 by a message from Mr Matthews. In his piece, the manager extends a warm welcome to the visitors from Liechtenstein and goes on to take a look back at the first leg of the tie which FC Vaduz won by a goal to nil.
Pages 6 and 7 provide a report from the first leg in Liechtenstein accompanied by photographs with the following two pages looking at Irish football in general, an article written by journalist Stephen Finn.
Pages 10 and 11 show an interesting piece written by Benny O’Brien which details the trip to Liechtenstein with the club arriving on the Tuesday and departing a day after the game on the Friday. The journey started with an early morning flight out of Dublin to their base for the week in Munich. Gameday saw the club making a four-hour bus ride from Munich to Vaduz!
Some recent games against the likes of Finn Harps and Dublin City are looked back upon page 12 and is followed by the next three pages featuring several adverts.
Pages 16 and 17 provide the team line ups with the referee being named as Ghenadie Orlic from Moldova.
Pages 18 and 19 show individual photographs of the players at Longford Town with their sponsors named alongside. The following page provides some information on FC Vaduz. The club was founded in 1933 and won their first Liechtenstein Cup Final in 1949. Earlier in 2004 they won the same competition for a record 33rd time and at the time of writing, were playing their league football in the Swiss Second Division. As well as having several Lichtenstein internationals in their squad, they also had players from Brazil, Ghana, France, Nigeria, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland.
Page 21 sees information provided from the Official Supporters Club at Longford Town and is followed on page 22 by news from the various youth teams at the club. The under 21’s side had recently beaten Dundalk (3-2) and Athlone (3-2) before securing a 1-1 draw at Dublin City.
Page 23 sees several photographs from Longford Town’s recent game against Finn Harps and from their trip to Liechtenstein. This same theme is continued on the following two pages.
Page 26 is an advert with the following page featuring more thoughts and comment on the club’s game at FC Vaduz.
Page 28 provides the latest ground regulations and is followed by the remaining four pages featuring adverts.
For the record, this UEFA Cup Preliminary Round 2nd Leg game finished as a 3-2 win for FC Vaduz which meant they progressed to the next round courtesy of a 4-2 victory on aggregate.
Gareths Football Travels 