TRINIDAD & TOBAGO v Sweden

Thanks to some excellent tube station short-cuts, we made it to our chosen venue, a West Indian pub in Cricklewood, 20 minutes before kick-off. But we were disconcerted to find it empty, with the honourable exception of an elderly white couple sitting under the big screen.

The barman admitted he didn’t know how many people would be coming, so we crossed our fingers, ordered two pints of Red Stripe and some delicious fish and jerk pork, and took our pick from the many empty seats.

I couldn’t imagine that no Trinibago fans would come to this pub for their first ever World Cup game and I was hoping that they were just leaving it until the last minute. But as the game kicked off with only a couple of people milling around, we realised we desperately needed a Plan B. The only problem was I didn’t have one.

I didn’t know any better venues nearby, but then I had a rare blast of inspiration: I remembered reading about T&T fans watching their play-off victory over Bahrain in a big West Kensington boozer. It wasn’t a Caribbean venue, but it was where we were going.

So we jumped in a minicab with a very chatty Dutch driver, who was looking forward to the next day’s game against Serbia & Montenegro (he told us where he was watching it, but there was a bit of a Dutch/Scottish communication breakdown); and raced south with the game on the radio.

We made it to the venue with a few minutes to go before half-time, only to find it full of Swedes, which didn’t exactly suit my long-term plan. After waiting too long to get served and circulating amongst the worried-looking (it was still 0-0) Swedes for a few minutes, I had a look in the back bar, and was delighted to find it a riot of red, white and black.

There were ladies swathed in the T&T flag, and a couple of sporting gentlemen in red, white and black Indian headdresses, which somehow seemed to make perfect sense. And a slightly scary-looking, man-bothering middle aged Scottish lady in full T&T regalia.

And when the MC(!?) announced the half-time score – “Listen to this folks, Trinidad and Tobago nil, Sweden nil!” – the Trinibago cheers were cacophonic, and the impromptu half-time carnival kicked in, with some sort of misguided ABBA reggae mix, plenty of dancing and envious glances from Swedes who weren’t too pleased with the scoreline.

But things tilted Sweden’s way in the first minute of the second half with a harsh red card for T&T defender Avery John, which didn’t go down too well in the back bar. T&T were facing a mammoth task now if they were to get anything from the game, which was starting to look like it might have last-minute heartbreak written all over it.

The MC was doing his best to keep Trinibago spirits up as the game became a nervous affair, and his efforts were bettered by the T&T players, who were out to prove they weren’t there to make up the numbers. And when Cornell Glen nearly snapped the crossbar with a fierce drive the unthinkable started to become thinkable.

Shaka Hislop pulled off a couple of excellent saves as Larsson, Ibrahimovic, Ljungberg & co piled on the pressure and the tense atmosphere reached fever pitch in the bar as the minutes counted down.

But ten-man T&T held on for their first ever World Cup point, sparking the wildest celebrations I’d ever seen for a nil-nil draw. I would have loved to have stayed, but I had an appointment with some Argentineans.