As has become common practice, "the Cat" was typically unprepared and late, however some swift taxi work from Bonnie ensured that he made it to the pub with seconds to spare.
Another incident of note before even leaving the pub was that Dino turned up having not slept since Thursday night (a theme that was to be common place in the next 7 days.)

Oatlands turned up a Gatwick with hours to spare before the flight was due to leave and treated the time like it was any other Saturday night with a good old fashioned piss up in the airport sports bar.

Finally after 1hr 50mins OFC touched down in Ibiza, about 4am local time. While the majority of the boys got to the hotel and commenced drinking until 7am, Beater and the boys spent 2 hours driving around looking for their villa.

A decision was made that the venue for the night's activities would be a place called Space, a vast nightclub that reputedly holds 10.000 people and is open from 10am till 8am the following day. After a trip to Café Mambo (a bar that many considered to be the best in San Antonio) Oatlands headed off to Space to "cut some shapes". Only trouble was that Paul Watson had to pay twice after trying to blag a discount and Paul Robjohn forgot his ticket. After a couple of hours of dancing the majority of the lads headed back to the West End to try their luck with ladies.

Following a successful football campaign in which Oatlands cruised into the champions league stage by default the lads hit the West End of San Antonio on a mission.

The following are some of the highlights of a truly chaotic night.
After spending the latter stages of the previous night and morning on the roof of his villa, drinking guru Beater found his calling in the Star Club where Pat "woo woo" Sharp was playing minus the legendary mullet. After mashing it up for a few hours and hitting the double vodka and red bulls, Beater was later found in the infamous Koppa's club face down on the bar. The responsibility was then passed to Squaddie to get the big man home.

T-Bone managed to scale the Star Club sound system and danced on the speakers only for the DJ to turn the music off and say "would the fat man please get off the speakers" to the delight of the other clubbers.

Jimbo and 2gun found their way to the bungee machine and filmed themselves being catapulted into the sky. An absolute must see video that we desperately want on the website.

Dino and Tim C managed to find San Antonio's most pissed female who had only been on the island for 3 hours but was absolutely leathered. After letting this classy lady fall over and throw drinks over herself they promptly did a runner instead of taking her back to her hotel.

The rest of the team spent the evening trying increasingly desperate measures to get in with the ladies, but with little or no success. We were all beginning to come to the conclusion that the women on the island were a little out of our league, keeper Dan Sheridan also commented that he wasn't in his physical peak of 1997 which might have been a factor affecting many other members of the squad.

Pod rounded off the night with a truly legendary performance in the bathroom of room 225 in which he persisted in having a 45 minute wank in which he had a break for a cigarette, managed to give himself a nasty blister and never came.

Oatlands went into the evening's football a bit short of players as it appeared that the previous evenings social activities were taking their toll. It was also speculated that the majority of the squad may have faced substantial bans had any drug testing been imposed prior to the games. The football didn't quite go to plan and the team seemed unable to find champagne while on the pitch, it did seem that the other teams did not forget their champagne and promptly dug it out while playing Oatlands. There were some highlights especially when keeper Daniel "Keith" Sheridan (Keith is his middle name) hurt a nail and therefore couldn't save the next 6 shots in the last game.

Post football activities were relatively subdued and there were a distinct lack of good stories from the evening. However I seem to remember Pod Sweeting bursting into the hotel room at about 9am raising his hands in the air and announcing "that was fucking superb!" with reference to his night at Es Paradis, he passed out about 5 minutes later.

For the evening Oatlands planned to go to Pacha in Ibiza Town, prior to this the lads all went down to Café Mambo to soak up the atmosphere and listen to the tunes for pre club party. Once in Ibiza Town T-Bone, Sam, Jim and Pod went to a bar in which Pod managed to shit his pants and then discover that there was no toilet roll. Once in the club all the lads were horrified to discover the price of drinks. (About £7 for a water and £15 for a vodka and red bull) Not even remotely put off by this Beater ordered a double Vodka and Redbull costing about £23 and then went on to order another 10 of these highly pricy drinks. It is alleged that Beater spent more money in 6 hours than Paul Watson managed in the whole week.

By 1am those staying at the villa had run out of alcohol so it was up to Dino to get a taxi armed with about £150 and go to San Antonio to get "lots of beer" and then come back. After Dino return plenty of vin rouge was consumed as well as a hefty amount of vodka. At this point Beater decidedly worse for wear, described the lady he had been cutting shapes with the previous evening and then informed the group that given the opportunity he intended to "mash her shit up." A phrase that was to be used frequently throughout the rest of the week.

As for the lads in San Antonio, 2gun decided that taunting the local police squad would be a good idea; I am told that he flicked an officer's cap. The response was a good old fashioned continental style beating. The officers first blow was to the head, but 2gun being a man of pride would not go down so the officer was obliged to finish him off with further blows to 2guns already damaged arse and then the back of the legs.
At about sunrise Keith Sheridan arrived back with some good news, despite not being at his 1997 physical peak he managed to stick his fingers up a fat birds lady's bits. He put his success down to not buying drinks and telling his life story.

I think it's fair to say that for all of those that went a superb time was had and given the chance, I think everyone would go again and I think we might get a few additions after the stories that have been told.
I think that just leaves us to thank the man who made it all possible and showed us the way to cut those shapes and mash up that shit, Mr Steve Gilliver AKA Beater.