It has been a gloriously dank, miserable, grey, Spring  morning in which I have put some vegetable peelings, apple cores and fruit skins in the wormery at the end of the garden, re-filled the bird feeders in the front garden and annoyed my wife Paulene by somehow implying that I didn’t want her in the kitchen watching Aussie Rules footie whilst I was making breakfast.  It is now still gloriously dank, miserable, and grey as I walk to the railway station and my thoughts turn to Ipswich Town versus Leicester City and by association King Richard the third, Joe Orton, the Engineering Faculty building at Leicester university and the popular beat combo Kasabian.

The railway station is busy with wannabe travellers, and a London bound train squeaks to a halt by the opposite platform pretty much as I reach the anointed spot on the Ipswich bound platform where I will wait.  I don’t squeak like the London bound train but instead speak to a fellow Town supporter who I regularly see near this point on the platform and who has made it into this blog before.  The train is three minutes late and when it arrives the carriage I board is populated at one end by loud, lairy youths unable to converse without shouting at each other; they need to discover narcotics.

Gary joins me at the first station stop and is with a man called Chris, who I used to travel to away matches with about twenty-five years ago and who also used to watch Wivenhoe Town.  Chris is a laughing, smiling, happy man and he is keen to look out for polar bears as we near Ipswich.  We see one which is swimming in one of the pools, although we don’t see a towel laid out at the poolside. Arriving in Ipswich, the town is like a black and white postcard of itself, Leicester City fans are singing in the beer garden of the Station Hotel and we head for the Arb up Princes Street, Museum Street and High Street. Seizing hold of the narrative Gary tells me that he is going to be first through the door of the Arb today and indeed he is as I stand back and accede to his wish.  Gary’s progress to the bar is unhindered and he buys a pint Lager 43 for himself and one of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride for me and is about to pay when Mick arrives and so Gary buys him a pint of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride too.  We repair to the beer garden where many of the seats are unpleasantly damp, so fearful of the seats of our trousers becoming moist we stand and drink and talk.

Our conversation today lurches between the ownership of the Estrella brewery, my boycotting of American products, today’s team, what food Mick has ordered (Falafel Scotch egg), the lunacy of Christian nationalists, and religion.  Luckily, the arrival of Mick’s food coincides with a table with dry seating becoming available in the shelter that backs onto High Street and we move there as I fetch another pint of Suffolk Pride and another pint of Lager 43 plus a single Jameson whisky for Mick (£14 something with Camra discount).  We are of course the last to leave when we depart for Portman Road shortly before twenty to three.

At the back of the Sir Alf Ramsey stand the queues to be searched for weaponry and scrap metal vary between short and non-existent today and I am soon through the checkpoint and waiting behind three people at illustrious  turnstile 62, but the person at the head of the queue is either incompetent or trying to use a library card to gain access, and being impatient I switch to turnstile 61, which is almost as illustrious as its neighbour, but not quite.  I am comfortably minus some spent Suffolk Pride by the time I take my seat next to Fiona, next but one to Pat from Clacton, and a couple of rows behind ever-present Phil who never misses a game, and his son Elwood. The man from Stowmarket (Paul) is still convalescing after the operation on his left eye.   I must have arrived early to day because I am here in time to bellow the surnames of players like a Frenchman at the Stade de Francis Le Ble in Brest as the excitable young announcer reads out Town team.

After the usual rendition of a verse of Edward Ebenezer Jeremiah Brown the game begins and Ipswich get first go with the ball, which they generally aim towards the goal nearest me and my fellow ultras.  Town are of course in our signature blue and white whilst Leicester wear somewhat effete away strip of pale pink shirts with black shorts.

After a few all too brief moments of Town possession, Leicester take over rather and after only five minutes have won a corner.  Happily, the Leicester corner is as useless as most corners are, but Town keep giving the ball away in our own half and it’s fortunate that Leicester’s players seem a bit short-sighted and haven’t quite worked out where the goal is. Leicester’s early dominance has Town supporters in an even more introspective, withdrawn mood than usual and only seven minutes are lost to history before the visiting supporters are chanting “Football in a library, du-du-du”.  Meanwhile, I can’t help thinking that the Leicester players names Winks and Skipp sound like they’re made-up or are just nicknames and not real names at all.   “Winks, didn’t he used to play for Tottenham?” asks Pat from Clacton.  Fiona and I don’t know but I add that he can’t be much good if even Tottenham didn’t want him.

As a result of a catalogue of dubious free-kicks our conversation turns to the referee, the diminutive Mr John Busby, who we all agree is awful.  “We’ve had him before, do you remember?” asks Pat from Clacton.  The bloke next to me tells me that Mr Busby was referee for the Preston North End game, which ended in a frustrating one-all draw, although he did award Town a very late penalty.  But then Mr Busby books Leicester’s Luke Thomas and I suggest to Fiona that perhaps Mr Busby isn’t so bad after all – but of course he is.

It has taken until the twenty-first minute for Town to win a corner, and eight minutes later they win another, but not before Leicester win one too.  From the second Town corner Dara O’Shea heads narrowly wide at the far post when it looked as simple to score.  “Come On You Blues” a few of us chanted, and it nearly worked.   The thirty second minute is now here, O’Shea shoots over the Leicester cross bar and I notice that the seat in front of Fiona is occupied today by a man with no hair and the floodlights are reflecting off his shiny bald pate; visually he reminds me of the Catherine Tate character Derek, who would exclaim “How very dare you” whenever anyone inferred from his extreme campness that he was gay.   “Blue Army, Blue Army” chant the Sir Bobby Robson standers as Town begin to dominate.

Perhaps sensing Town’s improvement Mr Busby books Wes Burns before Christian Walton easily gathers a shot aimed straight at him.  On the touchline Kieran McKenna looks a little more tense than usual and his clothes look a bit crumpled too, like he might have slept in his car.  Kieran might dress all in black, but Diego Simeone at Atletico Madrid and Habib Beye at Marseille have the edge on him sartorially.

Back on the pitch Mr Busby just can’t help awarding free kicks whenever anyone falls over and from the latest injustice a deep cross is diverted into the Town goal net courtesy of a bloke from Zambia called Patson Daka.  “Shit referee, shit referee, shit referee” chant the Sir Bobby Robson standers.  “How shit must you be, we’re winning away” chant the Leicester fans and it’s not clear if their chant is directed at Ipswich or Mr Busby.   Their claim to be the EFL’s most confused fans is quickly confirmed as they chant “Who are ya? Who are ya?” when only ten minutes earlier they had been chanting “Small club in Norwich, You’re just a small club in Norwich”.  They need to make their minds up about what they think they know.

The half ends with Mr Busby once again placing himself centre stage as he penalises the Leicester goalkeeper for holding onto the ball for too long, something for which I don’t’ think I’ve seen a free kick awarded this century.  Fiona has to explain to me that the punishment for this is now a corner kick and by the time she’s done this I’ve missed the chance to bawl “Come On You Blues” and as a result of this Town don’t score, again. A minute of added time is taken from all our futures to make up for the inadequacy of the past, but it makes no difference and with half-time Mr Busby is deservedly booed into the tunnel by those who haven’t already made a dash for the khazi.

I spend my half-time as usual in conversation with Dave the steward and Ray, but either time passes quickly, or half-time is briefer than usual as I don’t get time to vent more obsolete Suffolk Pride and I worry slightly that this could make the end of the game more tense than usual, especially if there is much added-on time.  On the way back to my seat, I speak with ever-present Phil who never misses a game. Phil it seems is full of woe and lists several portents of doom such as his not having stood up until the game kicked-off, Elwood having never seen Leicester City lose and Town not yet having won a match this season having gone a goal behind. I tell him it’ll be alright because I’m wearing a new T-shirt today, but he interprets that as a portent of doom too. 

The football resumes at three minutes past four and from the start Town are on top, never again do they allow Leicester to dominate possession or look in any way like the better team, which of course they’re not.  Within two minutes it looks from where I’m sat that Town have missed an open goal and Leicester will from now on live very dangerously until nearly five minutes to five.  Four minutes later and Mr Busby takes the name of Leicester’s number fourteen, which turns out to be Bobby Decordova-Reid.  I notice and remark to Fiona that the little bald bloke who was sat in front of her hasn’t returned for the second half, how very dare he?

Fifty-seven minutes have been spent watching football and Town win another corner. Nunez is yet another player to have his name collected by little Mr Busby.  An hour has passed and although Town are playing well just as they are, Keiran McKenna replaces Dan Neil with Jack Clarke because he cannot not make a substitution with an hour gone.  Best of all however, the excitable young stadium announcer barks out the name “Jack Clarke” in the way that Duff-Man announces his own name in The Simpsons, and merely says Dan Neil like he might say “yes please” if asked if he wants milk in his tea.

The second half has now developed into a litany of Town crosses, Town corners, occasional Town penalty appeals, far post headers from Dara O’Shea, blocked and missed shots and hurried Leicester clearances.  The home crowd are unusually supportive of the team, the inept decision-making of Mr Busby helping us all unite against a common enemy. As the sixty-ninth minute edges closer Pat from Clacton ponders whether to release “Monkey” the lucky charm from her handbag.  She doesn’t and as it turns out she doesn’t need to as in the seventy sixth minutes Eggy lashes the ball into the Leicester net with aplomb at the end of a bout of bagatelle in which Ipswich get the hi-score.    “Oooh, I feel ill now” says Pat from Clacton as the pressure of wanting to win usurps that of obtaining a mere equaliser.

Ten minutes of normal time remain when the excitable young announcer thanks us for our “incredible support” which today amounts to 28,704 of us.  The Leicester fans had been impressively if not incredibly noisy until Ipswich scored, but now they probably feel a bit sick like Pat from Clacton.  The home support has not been as impressive, but has had a better game than usual, mainly thanks to Mr Busby who now has one final trick up his sleeve, a piece of showboating and his equivalent of a couple of stepovers, a scorpion kick or a drag-back. With the game well into five minutes of added on time, a cross from the right sees Cedric Kipre moving towards its trajectory at the far post only to go sprawling in a way that is the very definition of sprawling and looking very much like he had been floored by Leicester’s Hamza Choudhury.

Within a short space of time the game is over amidst much wailing and gnashing of teeth and singing to the tune of the 1934 Rogers and Hart tune Blue Moon, “Short refs, we only get short refs”.  At least I think that’s what people were singing.   Mr Busby is surrounded at the final whistle by Leicester players and coaches wanting to congratulate him on how spectacularly bad he has been.  When Mr Busby eventually leaves the field of play, he is invisible in the middle of a protective shield of stewards, all of whom are inevitably much taller than he is.

An inglorious end to a glorious, dank, miserable, grey Spring day.