Pre Match drinks - London and Paris

Pre Match drinks - London and Paris

Pre Cup drinks have been organised for 10 June. (England are playing Slovakia in a Euro 2004 qualifier on 11 June).

The venue is the Walkabout Shoe Lane EC4. Tuesday 10 June 6.30pm onwards. We'll be showing some or all of the following footage:

- Road to Spain '82

- The All Whites in the last Confederations Cup

- Possibly some highlights of the Scotland game if we can get hold of a tape of the game to do some editing...

Milts will be there to get some footage for TV back home...

To get there from Blackfriars Station: Exit into New Bridge Street. Cross over Ludgate Circus roundabout into Farringdon Street. First on left is Bridge Street which goes into Shoe Lane (10 minutes).

To get there from Chancery Lane tube exit at Holborn (the road, not the tube station) and turn left. At Holborn Circus roundabout take the 4th exit into Andrew Street which goes straight into Shoe Lane (10 minutes). Venue is next to the Library.

Bill Davies has let me know that the designated rendezvous for NZ based All Whites supporters is Corcoran's, 28 rue Saint André des Arts in the 6th. It is located near the Seine, and 2 minutes walk to the RER
station Saint Michel that will take us directly to the Stade de France

They are gathering there from 3.00 p.m. on Wednesday, 18 June prior to the Japan game. UK based All Whites supporters have been invited along.

Map to get to Corcoran's

Sorry about the quality but if you right click on it and save it you should then be able to open it.

Just a quick wrap-up of what happened at the NZ Connections London function on 30 May.

This is how SoccerNZ described it - "Mick Waitt and a selection of players have flown to London to attend an official reception and function tonight (England time) to build awareness and drum up support for the All Whites when they reach the Confederations Cup in France."

My take on the events?

I felt a bit sorry for Mick and the boys. The NZ Connections crowd appeared to be a bunch on middle aged Kiwi networkers who knew bugger all about football. Nothing wrong about that - they did well to invite them to come and someone from the High Commission welcomed them too. But I don't think Mick was used to answering questions such as "Does New Zealand have a National League" or questions about Charlie Demspey!! A late start meant we missed most of the first half of the Champions League final too (we were assured that would not happen)! It did seem a bit of a shame to see a trip to France, an All Whites top and 3 signed balls being given away to people who wouldn't have known how to blow them up, but good on Mick and the boys for making the effort. I should have invited them to a www.allwhites.co.uk reception - it probably would have done a lot more in the way of drumming up support!! But I didn't so congrats to the NZ Connections people for putting the event on.