What was even the point of that?

By: Abby | February 2nd, 2010

Another 0-0 draw at home. And while if we’d started this season with a win and two draws I would have been reasonably pleased, we didn’t. A win and two draws is an extreme improvement on the start that Hertha had, and not terrible, but I can’t help but feel underwhelmed and a little frightened for the future.

Maybe it’s because this most recent 0-0 draw as against Bochum, and this particular game against Bochum seemed like the best shot we had at really pulling out of this. A not particularly impressive team, at home. This was one of the best chances for a much-needed win we had, but we didn’t take it. With Nürnberg taking all the points from a free-falling Hanover, keeping up with both those teams would have been well served by a win of our own.

11 points is better than the 6 we started the second half of the season with. And we’ve still had no one score on us. But I can’t help but feel the early optimism ebb away.

The real story of the game, though, wasn’t even on the field. Rather, it was in the stands, where about 200 fans of Union Berlin unfurled a banner that said “LOSER” and taunted the Hertha fans.

Outstandingly classless, and more than slightly confusing to me no matter how I try and look into it. My memory of the relationship between Union and Hertha is one that is cordial, almost friendly, or at least as friendly as two teams in the same city can be. Just last season, Hertha was congratulating Union on their promotion to the 2. Liga via the stadium television and helping to open their Alte Forestei. Twenty years ago, almost to the day of the Bochum game, the two teams celebrated the reunification of the city with a friendly. Now, for whatever reason, things are different.

I’m not sure why, and I’d like to know. The Union president has disavowed the events at the Olympiastadion (and the fighting between Union fans and BFC Dynamo fans at an indoor tournament that same day), and most Union fans, as far as I can tell, seem to be rather embarrassed. The blame is placed, as always, on young people with too much beer and not enough to do. (Snow cancelled the Union game scheduled for the day, at Rostock.) But that some members of the younger generation, who don’t remember the friendliness between the two clubs, see fit to do this is interesting to me, and I’d like to know a little more about why that is.

Especially since, the way things are going, we’re going to have to deal with this issue more than we have before.