Aue 1 Brentford 1

Bees rolled into the sleepy town of Reichenbach for their 2nd game of their German pre season tour against Bundersleague 2 side Aue. With their season just under two weeks away, Aue put out a strong side. And over the 90 minutes, you could see that fitness-wise they've had at least a couple of weeks of extra time on the treadmill than the Bees.

The Bees fielded what could be described as a 'strong' side with Donaldson up front and a lively Harry Forrester taking every opportunity to prove his fitness by getting stuck in the attack. Farid Al Alagui, who received a groin injury against Hayes, did not feature again but is on the mend and is expected to make an appearance against RB Leipzig on Friday. Jonathan Douglas, who was playing through the pain barrier with a toe injury, was trying to dictate much of the Bees' play.

Unfortunately, we were unable to see the handball incident which led to Brentford's penalty on 16 mins as we were still queuing up outside the ground, along with 200 or so other (mainly Aue) fans. And that was even before the Brentford BBQ bus rolled in with another 40 or so away fans after a rather longer than expected trip from Leipzig. Our rather restricted view from over the fence still saw Myles Weston slot the ball in from 12 yards to put the Bees one up

Aue equalised with a disputed goal - Richard Lee pulling off a tremendous save which was judged to have gone over the line. Bring in the goal line technology!!

The 2nd half saw a load of substitutions including Jake Reeves coming on for Forshaw and Simon Moore replacing Richard Lee. Leon Legge and Kev O'Connor also shuffled the defence later on seeing, interestingly, Harlee Dean move over to the right back position. Aue were the better team in the 2nd half and were only stopped from not winning by three outstanding saves by Moore. With those chances begging, Brentford should have wrapped it up with five minutes to go but German was unable to convert what was pretty much our only real chance of the half.

The Brentford support on a lovely sunny Saxony evening was once again tremendous. The Bees fans cheering the first corner up the away end (which didn't come till well into the 2nd half) more than they did the first goal as it gave them the chance to despatch the numerous toilet rolls they had hoarded pre-match onto the pitch - old skool 'Royal Oak' stylee (we were just waiting for the newspaper confetti to make an appearance).

The Aue fans were impressed with the 150 Brentford turn out in the 1,000 or so crowd with lots of picture snapping. The Aue goalkeeper even took time out mid-match after his substitution to take a photo with Brentford fans and sup their beer before running off to the changing room to cries of 'You're getting sacked in the morning'. Fair play. It's good to finally know that the 'And Leicester' has finally been replaced by our own personalised version 'And Leipzig' for the 'We all follow the Brentford over land and sea' song ... Hopefully that will carry on for seasons to come.

Finally it was interesting to hook up with a dozen or so members of an Aue crew after the match for a beer outside a local supermarket (it sounds dodgy .. But you have to go to Reichenbach to realise that this place .. Quite literally ... The Specials wrote a song about it. We have never been to any town so dead on a Tuesday evening .. Bars are a rarity). They were incredibly impressed with the Brentford support and are hoping that we organise a return match at Griffin Park next season.

These guys travel home and away to every game and wouldn't blink twice about going to England. They asked about Brentford's rivals (QPR, Foolham and Birmingham we told them) and they told us of theirs - basically every East German team ... and the German Football Federation. They, like us, respect traditional football values (like standing, drinking locally to the ground, affordable tickets), and said it is a shame that the match wasn't actually played in Aue .. Up in the mountains in an olde skool stadium, much like Griffin Park. They believed that their president, who they told us lives near Reichenbach, would have made the switch. The crowd would have been three or four times the size if played in Aue.

These guys live and die football and get pretty lively at home and away games. Interestingly when we mentioned the World Cup they zoned out saying 'not many Aue fans have respect for the national team. We couldn't care less how Germany does'. They then went on to explain a disconnect with the national football association and many German football fans. They feel the German FA is trying to sanitise the game and alienate traditional football fans (sound familiar?). Their battle against these changes is to carry on doing what they do. What this all meant we can only make assumptions but the word 'riot' did come up quite a few times in the conversation.

All in all, another great day in Saxony. If we have to be critical, we'd say Brentford are still not firing on all cylinders in front of goal. And from the comments around us, everybody thought the same. The Aue fans we met described their team as 'shit' which we thought was a bit harsh. Ok they missed three golden opportunities to wrap the game up but we didn't think they were that bad. Hard yes. Bad? We've seen worse. But to be fair, pre-season is time to get all of this right. On the plus side, we still have over three weeks to get all the players fully fit, get Al Farid up and running and sign those last few players to finalise our 2012/13 jigsaw. Paddy Power. We'll be coming for our winnings in 9 months time .. Be warned!

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