Northern Ireland v Bosnia

FANS’ EMBASSY PROVIDES INFORMATION, GUIDANCE AND SUPPORT Anyone who has ever travelled for a Northern Ireland away game will know the excitement and anticipation that comes with it.

accommodation costs when travelling to away games. We also developed the Northern Ireland Fans’ Guide To France in partnership with the FSF and FCO and distributed 6,000 of these across Northern Ireland at no cost. We’ve helped with all manner of problems, such as lost passports, missing persons, access to medical assistance, lost match tickets and we help to organise things like access to the stadium for our drummers or the popular fan walks. Since then we’ve managed to secure a small amount of funding from Government to cover site visits, enabling us to travel to the host city for most away games a few months before the match is played. We find our way around, visit the stadium and meet with officials from the host football association to gather as much useful information as we can. We then produce a blog and share this information through our social media platforms. We don’t claim to speak for everyone, but we’ll always do our best to help those who ask for it. Gary McAllister Amalgamation of Official Northern Ireland Supporters’ Clubs

Getting away from it all for a few days, visiting somewhere different (or revisiting a previous destination), a chance to socialise with friends and family and, most importantly, getting to another game to support our wee team. Away trips usually involve a multitude of questions: How do we get to the stadium? Where will everyone meet up on match day? How many of our fans are travelling for this match? As someone who has been travelling away for matches for more than 20 years I well recall a time when many of those questions were almost impossible to answer. Obviously the advent of the internet and social media has helped us all greatly when it comes to finding out and sharing information with each other. One of the main areas of the Amalgamation of Official Northern Ireland Supporters’ Clubs’ (AONISC) work today is our Northern Ireland Fans’ Embassy. The embassy is a service providing information, guidance and support for fans by fans at international matches and big tournaments. This is something we’ve been developing for more than 10 years and are one of more than 20 European fans’ groups who provide this service. Following qualification for Euro 2016 we built on our existing relationships with the IFA, the PSNI, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and other supporters’ groups to put in place and deliver our first official Fans’ Embassy. For Euro 2016 we recruited a team of 50 ambassadors from throughout Northern Ireland who helped out. All our volunteers give of their time freely and cover their own travel and

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