On the Friday lunch-time (23/4) the Cheddars set off for Berlin, full of hope and optimism for a historic weekend! It was an honour to be the first team to play in Berlin, to be the first guests of the fanclubs and to show these guys how to party!

Our main man for the weekend was Karsten, from Berlin Bowlhunters. Karsten picked us up at the airport, let us stay with him in his flat (in the old East Germany) and showed off the great city of Berlin to us. So what meagre offering could we give in return? A cheddarhead of course!

Karsten and his girlfriend Marion.

The party on Friday night was at the Aschinger Brewery, which was up to the usual German standard of excellent food and beer. The "one metre of beer" in the foreground was a highlight! Also pictured above is Gill and Mark, who we ran into at Heathrow, as we were on the same flight. It proved to be good fortune, as they were not aware of the Friday party. They hung out with us most of the weekend and provided great entertainment as always! Us England based Claymores have to stick together!

And the Fun Bunch turned up too! Pictured here are Magnus, Mark and Ian showing our welcome certificates from Fanclub Number One Berlin. Thunder GM Michael Lang flew them out especially for the game to some sideline work, and they had plenty of celebration dances to do on the Saturday as it turned out! Before the night was through we also had another surprise guest - Doug "Blunt Views" Adamson, who had managed to track us down. Turns out he'd be doing a lot of that Saturday too!

How to avoid red-eye photography. The food was damn good by the way.

Saturday (24/4) and Game Day. First port of call was Karstadt Sports, to get some Thunder merchandise! As it turned out that meant a Thunder beanie hat for Preston. While it was mildly amusing at first, the hat rarely came off all weekend! Perhaps it obscrution to Preston's vision, that led the gang to forget that Doug was still in the supermarket as we set off for the Brandenburg gate. 10 minutes later at the station someone uttered the now immortal words, "Where's Doug?"

There's Doug! Shuggie, Preston Beanie and Cheddar Views. Oh and the Brandenburg Gate!

Under the gate with the banner. No idea who the other folk are - I guess they just wanted to get on camera. The shame of it!

The start of what turned out to be a beautiful relationship with SAT1 that weekend! They were filming down by the gate, and of course we were roped in. And yes, there is a bloke inside that football. Apparently Thunder head coach Wes Chandler used this disguise to sneak out of Jahnstadion unnoticed later that night!

The Berlin Bear - Cheddared!

Game Day was now closing in and we headed for the stadium, getting sneaked inside to get an early start on the beer tasting that we were carrying out. Once inside, we ran into many old faces. An excited Michael Lang told us that his team was going to "open a can of whoop ass" on the Claymores! (Looks like you opened it upside down Michael!). Preston ran into Stefanie, a really cool local Sports journalist that he met in Orlando, and wasn't fawning over her (honest!) Oliver Luck couldn't get away from us either, and gave us some free badges in return for our Season Preview.

Shuggie takes his weekly cheerleader picture.

The power party was really great! Lots of space, lots of twist and turns with tons of stuff going on. Plenty of beer stands for a start! There was also a Scottish Pipe band playing - which seem to happen everywhere but in Scotland! And a mechanical rodeo bull that Shuggie lasted all of 6 seconds on when the operator turned it up to full blast!

And the Scottish Tourist Board was there too!

Preston gets it explained to him that they don't sell beer - only Strawberries and Champagne! Which was pretty damn good!

All the fans we met were great. It was just like Frankfurt or Dusseldorf - Berlin is a bona fide NFL Europe party town!

Kickoff nears and the face paint is donned! Shuggie, Karsten and Preston.

What can you say about the game? It started well (Jesse Haynes takes a Craig pass 86 yards to paydirt on our 2nd play), got better (Haynes scores on a short TD run on our 2nd drive) and just kept getting better! On our first 6 possessions in the 1st half we racked up 5 TD's! The franchise record for points had gone with 2 minutes left in the half! (The Thunder's game plan of keeping our best player P Chris Dolan off the field had sadly backfired!) With a 35-7 half-time lead - the 2nd half was pure party-time!

QB Dameyune Craig breaks loose to convert a 3rd down. Not that we had many 3rd downs to convert!

WR Yo Murphy goes in for our 4th touchdown!

Claymores in the end zone. They spent a lot time there on Saturday!

CHEDDAR WEEK 2 AWARDS

MVP - Dameyune Craig. Obvious but true. The man has style and can play too! 4TD's set a franchise record (all in the first half) and he would have had a 5th, except for phantom PI call on WR Donald Sellers

"Learn To Catch in 6 Days" - TE Shon Bell with 2 nice TD grabs. The drops of last week were a fluke.

"See you Joey" - CB Joey Eloms spent in the 2nd half of the game in his Seahawks sweats and a See You Jimmy Hat! God knows what Mike Holmgren would think!

"Big Thanks To" - Thunder Head Coach Wes Chandler who took a sharp QB Andre Ware out of the game and blew any chance for Berlin to keep up in the points feast.

"Tired Leg" - First time in ages it goes to the kicker and not the punter! K Rob Hart went 6 for 6 on XP's and 2 for 2 on FG's. Not bad!

"Spot The Jap" - Back-up QB Haruhito gets in for the last play of the game - a handoff. A perfect way to end the 48-14 mauling!

The 2nd half proved to be a riot. We moved to be behind the Claymores bench, and found many Berlin fans who were ready to party on despite the embarrassing score from the hometeam. These guys are probably keeping one eye on Preston, who by this stage, was getting way too friendly with one of their girlfriends. (The poor guy had had surgery on his arm that day). Andrea (below) or Buffy the Cheddar Slayer as Doug termed her, insisted on having poor Preston place badges on her person in certain places. The placing of the badges was captured by SAT1 and shown later that night with the commentary "Perfect place for a sticker!" The women of Germany be forewarned - Preston still has about 800 NFL Europe stickers left! Despite Andrea's pleading for us to go party at "The Plumtree", we were already committed to Pickers sportsbar. Goddam! Preston gave her his "Lion Rampant" before we all split and no doubt the Cheddars will find "The Plumtree" next year!

Could these 2 people be anymore drunk?

Cheer up Dameyune! We know you got stiffed on that 5th TD pass. You'll get another chance!

After seeing the Claymores lose 5 times on the road last year - it was so refreshing to be able to cheer them off the field as victors for a change. 2-0 baby!

On the day after the fantastic 48-14 win, Karsten took the Cheddars, Mark and Gill round the sights, and where else could you go but the Berlin Wall! (or what was left of it anyway)

What are pointing at? See below!

Cheddar Graffiti! That's 2-0 baby! And by the way the date was actually the 25th not the 24th!

Fans United! No more walls!

Karsten and Preston, with the Cathedral in the distance. Note the nice sunny weather. 30 minutes later inside the great building, Preston mouths off to Shuggie that maybe The Great Man Upstairs is a Cheddarhead. Bad move! As soon as we get outside the Cathedral the heavens open and some of the hardest rain we've seen since San Francisco falls! And this is complete with a few cracks of Thunder of course!

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