Unfortunately Martin will be unable to write the blog for a while. We hope you will enjoy the guest blog that follows
Many football fans find themselves supporting their club through two very traditional methods of selection, fathers team or local team, (more often than not I would imagine both). My route was a little more complicated. Born in Hadleigh, the Essex version with the castle not Suffolk, my local team was Southend United. (There are many pronouncations of Southend but the correct way is Saufen-mate always said with an Eastenders accent.)
My dad though was a season ticket holder at Stamford Bridge, originally coming from Battersea in South London. Back in the late 70’s Chelsea were, of course, a different animal to todays club and you couldn’t really take a 10 year old there.
This was a time when Southend played at home on Friday nights as many fans also followed West Ham on a Saturday, (many of you will remember Colchester United and Tranmere Rovers did the same, with their fans also supporting Ipswich Town and Everton or Liverpool). So my first games were at Roots Hall with my dad in the old Fourth Division. My love affair with football had begun. My two best friends Mark and Phil also watched Southend United, but also followed a big team. Mark was a Leeds United fan, to the best of my knowledge he did this purely as a glory hunter. Phil was and still is a fan of West Ham United and indeed now takes his grown up son Luke to games. I went with both of them to Upton Park to see West Ham beat Leeds in a 4-3 thriller. The crowd and atmosphere was so much larger and noisier than at Roots Hall. It was a baking day and I’m sure I remember Mark nearly passed out on the packed terrace. I enjoyed it but my mum presumed I had become a Hammer and promptly purchased me a pink and turquoise replica shirt. Back then Southend United did not produce such things.
So by the time I reached 14 years of age, I had wanted to go with my dad and watch Chelsea but couldn’t, had started watching Southend United but wore, very reluctantly, a West Ham shirt for a season.
I soon developed a dislike for the Hammers and their disgusting kit and settled down to following Southend United home and away until 1996. I was lucky to be supporting them during the most successful period in their history. I remember them beating Newcastle United 4-0 on New Years Day to go top of what is now the Championship, then later that season beating West Ham United 1-0.
My best memory though was a couple of seasons later when Southend United were away to Fiorentina in the Anglo-Italian Cup. 200 fans flew out on the day and me and my mates were in a bar in Florence drinking in the afternoon. The bar area had scarves from so many of the big teams the Viola has played over the years left by opposing teams supporters. The owner offered to give us a round of drinks in exchange for my scarf. What happened next was surreal. Ipswich Town have Ed Sheeran, Southend United back then had Alison Moyet (she used to stand just behind us). Alison rocked up into our bar and the owner recognised her, ‘if she sings, the food is on the house’. So I ended up being a backing singer for Yazoo in Italy! The game by the way was settled by a twenty minute first half hat trick by none other than Gabriel Batistuta!
During the 1995/96 season I took my girlfriend at the time to a game against Stoke City as I remember. At half time an over zealous steward pushed her and she was covered in scalding hot chocolate. I reacted very badly and was literally thrown out of ground by four thug stewards and my love affair with my home town club was over.
I spent the next three seasons following England, at the same time I had moved up to Colchester through work. I missed club football so much. I’d caused such a stink at the club over how I had been treated that I was told I was no longer welcome there. I found my love of Southend United turn to hatred in the same way it easily can with an ex. I couldn’t follow Colchester United on principal so found myself ground hopping to random matches. Without the passion and caring about the result I soon found games uninteresting.
I needed to find a new love. Just as in human relationships, on occasions you find your perfect partner by accident. Many of my customers followed Ipswich Town and I remembered their great Bobby Robson team well. I was invited to the Fulham game when Martyn Reuser debuted. I enjoyed the game, the passion of those around me. I knew that day Ipswich Town was who I was going to support and fell in love again.
My first away match was Bolton 2-2 in the First leg of the Play Off Semi Final. What a match! I couldn’t get a ticket for the 5-3 but did go to Wembley. From there onwards I’ve had season ticket and been to most away games up until two seasons ago, when I could not cope with the McCarthy brand of the beautiful game anymore. My season ticket has returned this year and I will support the Blues in every game home and away
So that explains how and why drove to Bolton on Saturday August 24th 2019.
ALLEZ LES BLEUS!
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Only the 10th of August
and it’s bloody started already. Summer
is still here although today it has the good grace to pretend its autumn; a
howling gale licks around the corners of my house and my Women’s World Cup
bunting, strung joyfully across my back garden, slumps over the patio and plants
in colourful tatters.
I look out of an upstairs windows
to glimpse a silver Vauxhall Astra slip past; it’s Roly, he’s going to park on
my back drive. Roly is not the name of
the Vauxhall Astra, he’s the driver. We had planned to meet at the railway
station but seconds after he bought his ticket his train was cancelled; the
result of a fallen tree, possibly two. We walk to the railway station, the usual
journey ensues. Roly tells me how his partner Sarah would castigate him for catching
the train and not driving all the way to Ipswich, but he’s not going to tell
her. Roly wants to save the planet, like me, and he also hates having to find
somewhere to park and then sitting in traffic after the game.
Ipswich appears to be in a state
of emergency, a police van sits in the middle of the station plaza but in fact
everything is okay, it’s just ‘Norfolk and Suffolk working together for you’. Football chants in thick far northern accents
are carried up on the wind from the beer garden of the Station Hotel. We cross the road and hurry away; we pass a
lairy looking youth who suddenly bawls something unintelligible.
After a successful relegation season it’s a new dawn for Ipswich Town in division three and entering Portman Road I think I might buy a programme for every match this season to mark the newness, the difference. I am looking forward to seeing the slightly unfamiliar clubs deemed ‘unfashionable’ by dullard journalists. I approach a programme booth; I don’t think I will buy a programme after all, they’ve put the price up to £3.50 a copy, that’s an increase of 16.6%, way above the rate of inflation, not that I know what that is. Why couldn’t they just make the programme less glossy, a bit smaller, add a couple of adverts and take out some of the drivel no one reads? I want to blame Brexit.
At St Jude’s Tavern Roly buys two
pints of the Match Day Special (£2.50) which today is Mr B’s Plan Bee, he gives
one to me. We invade the space of a man
sat at a table on his own, but I ask him first if the seats are free, they
are. Mick arrives and buys a pint of
porter and a packet of crisps, which he opens upon the table for us all to
share, I don’t ask him how much the porter or the crisps costs. It only takes one person with a loud voice in
St Jude’s Tavern to make it difficult to hear what my fellow drinkers are
saying and such a person is here today so I end up nodding and smiling as the conversation drifts in and out of my
comprehension. I buy two more pints of the
Match Day Special, Mick doesn’t want a second, but I get him a bag of dry-roasted
peanuts (90p). It’s barely half past two
but Roly wants to get down to the Portman Road so that he can eat. We hang on
ten minutes or so but soon give in to his gluttonous cravings.
At the corner of Portman Walk I leave our trio andI head for the Sir Alf Ramsey Stand whilst Roly and Mick head west to the East of England Co-op Stand and the posh seats. I tell them I will wave up at them and doff my cap from amongst the groundlings behind the goal. I make my way to the far end of Portman Road, following the pointing finger of Sir Bobby Robson’s statue; the parked up away supporters coaches either side of him displaying the names of County Durham towns he would have been familiar with.
Nearby, a ginger-haired bloke in a yellow hi-vis jacket sells Sunderland
fanzines. There are queues at the turnstiles, possibly because not all
the turnstiles are open. I pause to select the fastest moving queue and
am quickly in the ground. I speak briefly with Dave the steward with
whom I once worked and then use the toilet facilities before proceeding
to my seat. Nothing has changed, Pat from Clacton is here and so of
course is ever-present Phil who never misses a game and his young son
Elwood. On the pitch before us the serious looking steward with the
enormous headphones looks as worried as ever, as if fearing that a
violent supporters’ rebellion might start at any moment. To confuse the
operators of the improved CCTV surveillance system I have moved my seat
slightly, I no longer sit in front of the old dears behind me, but
behind them, a couple of seats to the left of Pat from Clacton.
Otherwise it seems like the first day back at school, “Have you had a
good summer?” asks Pat from Clacton, “It’s not over yet” I tell her,
not really answering the question but subconsciously implying that the
start of the football season doesn’t mean an end to ‘summer fun’.
Ever-present Phil and I shake one another’s hand “Happy New Year” says
Phil, which seems apposite.
It’s busy here today, with plenty of seats occupied that may not be sat upon again all season. The attendance will eventually be announced as 24,051. The Sunderland supporters are present in large numbers (1,847) and mostly seem a humble, self-effacing lot. No unduly boastful or mean spirited songs can be heard from the Cobbold Stand, which is nice. Their continuing, numerically impressive support for a club which was successful in the 1890’s but otherwise is most notable for a level of mediocrity which puts Ipswich Town’s recent averageness in the shade is such that mass sainthood doesn’t seem unreasonable. In nineteen eighty-something Sunderland even lost a League Cup final to Norwich, for heaven’s sake. That careless catastrophe aside, Sunderland have good reason to be forever loved a little by everyone outside West Yorkshire because of the 1973 FA Cup final, which not only saw hated Leeds United beaten by the then Second Division team, but gave us the joyful sight of a man in a trilby hat and pale raincoat running with arms and hands outstretched to embrace his victorious players. Manager Bob Stokoe’s joyfulness is now captured forever at The Stadium of Lights in a statue to him and by association his team of Montgomery, Malone, Guthrie, Horswill, Watson, Pitt, Kerr, Hughes, Halom, Porterfield and Tueart. They might have won the FA Cup before in 1937, but seeing the world through a filter of ‘Ipswichness’ and TV pictures then 1973 was Sunderland’s 1978.
It’s three o’clock, the game
begins; Sunderland in their excellent traditional kit of red and white striped
shirts, black shorts and red socks get first go with the ball. Town parade this
season’s version of whatever Adidas is peddling, a similarly traditionally
plain blue shirt, white shorts and blue socks number. The crowd is noisy but
there’s little co-ordinated chanting or singing. The football is fast and uncontrolled; the
long ball is favoured. After not many minutes the child sitting behind me is
bored; I can understand why, it’s not exactly recognisable as the ‘beautiful’
game, but to the trained eye Town are already looking better than Sunderland. Kayden Jackson is very quickly booked for
trying to con the referee Mr Neil Hair, a man who I wish was German, into
awarding him a penalty. I quite liked
Kayden Jackson last season, I hope he isn’t going to be an arse this season.
A fraction of the match passes that is equal
to the percentage increase in the cost of the match programme since last season
and a long throw is helped into the Sunderland penalty area; the ball is cut
back, Luke Garbutt controls it and surges through a mass of players towards the
touchline before striking a finely angled shot through the legs of Sunderland
goalkeeper Jon McLaughlin and just behind the far post. “Garbutt, 1-0”, as
David Coleman might have said had he not been long dead. How we cheer. This is what we came for. Joy abounds.
I think this is better than I
expected, although even last season we took the lead in a few games. The remaining
half an hour of the first half sees Sunderland fail to do anything to threaten
Town’s lead. It takes them forty minutes to even have a shot at goal. Kayden
Jackson pines for attention and has an ice bag pressed against his head. Garbutt develops a mystery ailment and is
substituted by little Alan Judge. Everyone in a blue shirt is playing well, but
no one scores another goal. This new
system of two players ‘up-front’, isn’t working that well; James Norwood and Kayden Jackson
sometimes get in each other’s way, they’re no Johnson and Whymark or Crawford
and Phillips, not yet anyway.
Half-time arrives and I dash from
my seat to stand before the stainless steel urinals beneath the stand before checking
on the half-time scores, which are singularly unremarkable. I return to the stand to speak with Ray and
his grandson Harrison. Our verdict on the
game is that it’s okay and Ipswich are by far the better team, but the quality
of the football could be better.
Harrison predicts a final score of 3-0.
Ray and I reserve judgement, our capacity for unbridled optimism beaten,
squeezed and drained out of us by decades of bitter experience.
The second half disappoints. The
blue skies over the Sir Bobby Robson Stand are as lovely as ever and I bask in
the warmth of the August sun, but Town have lost their way; all they can do is
pump in inaccurate cross after over-hit cross after inaccurate cross, Alan
Judge buzzes about doing nothing very successfully. An hour has passed and a Sunderland
throw is punted forward. Luke Chambers
has this covered; he is a yard or two ahead of Marc McNulty even though he
cannot run as fast. But Chambers doesn’t
decide what to do and as he waits for an almost static ball to roll into touch McNulty
dispossesses him and then simply has to pass the ball into the path of the incoming
Lynden Gooch who side foots the ball into a gaping wide goal. It’s like last season all over again.
There’s plenty of time for
another goal but Ipswich have no inspiration, no means to prise an
opening. Fortunately Sunderland have even
less idea and their forays forward are both rare and ineffective. “Your support is fucking shit” sing some Sir
Bobby Robson Standers to the Sunderland fans, demonstrating a complete absence
of any concept of irony. Mr Hair annoys the home crowd with a series of
decisions that penalise imaginary infringements and favour Sunderland. Pat from Clacton offers me a sweet from a
plastic bag and shows me her new blue and white watch that she’s only going to wear
on match days. It’s a nice looking watch,
but I’m feeling very self-centred and prefer the crumbly peppermint I took from
Pat’s pick’n mix selection; it’s probably my highlight of the second half. The attendance
is announced and I verify that Pat from Clacton’s brother has won the guess the
crowd competition on the Clacton supporters’ bus; his guess was the highest of
all, 24,001.
After three minutes of added on
time the game ends. I rise from my seat and
quickly leave. It’s been an afternoon of three thirds, Sunderland, Wonderland,
Blunderland……all infused with Peppermint.
Today my favourite name of an
opposing team’s player was Denver Hume.
I also liked the names Dylan McGeouch and George Dobson.
This week I have been reading ”The
man who hated football”, a novel by Will
Buckley (2005)
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The 570 kilometre journey down the A26, A5 and A31 motorways from Calais to the elegant and historic city of Dijon takes a good five hours plus stops, but it’s worth it. The medieval city was the seat of the influential dukes of Burgundy and the modern city is still the regional capital with a population of about 155,000. But that aside, tonight Dijon FCO are playing RC Strasbourg Alsace in Ligue 1 of the French professional football league and I am heading out with my wife Paulene to the Stade Gaston Gerard, to witness it. If I hang out of the window of our hotel room in I can see the stadium and the lights are already on.
It’s been a day of gusty wind, sunshine
and showers, of cafes and bars and the tombs of dead dukes and duchesses. We have pre-purchased our joint ticket for
the tram (5.60 euros for two journeys each) and are at Place Darcy in the
shadow of Dijon’s triumphal arch, the Porte Guillaume, ready to ride out to the
Parc des Sports wherein lies Gaston Gerard’s eponymous football stadium. Gaston Gerard incidentally was mayor of Dijon
from 1919 to 1935 and later a member of the French government. But there is a problem, we want to catch a T1
tram in the direction of Quetigny but it seems they are not running the length
of the line due to a ‘perturbation’. We
could catch the T2 and then walk to Auditorium to catch a T1, but the helpful
man at the tram stop, who works for the transport company Divia, advises us to
cross the road and catch the number five bus to Université, and then catch a T1
tram from there, so that’s what we do.
The bus soon arrives and with our ticket validated we are soon out of
the city centre travelling through anonymous looking early evening streets in a
bright pink, 18m long Heuliez articulated bus.
From the end of the bus route the tram stop is just around the corner on
a windswept, open part of the university campus, but a tram arrives within a
few minutes, almost as if the public transport services were somehow co-ordinated;
we know from living in England however that such a thing is just not possible. From the university it is just three stops to
the Parc des Sports tram stop, which is but a nonnette de Dijon’s throw from the
Parc des Sports itself.
A man in a ‘gilet orange’ checks our tickets and ushers us through the gate and into what seems like a leafy suburban park. We follow a trail down between the trees; there are tennis courts off to our right, we round a couple of bends and then the stadium is before us. Three sides of the Stade Gaston Gerard have been re-built this century, the remaining part of the original stadium has its back to us; it’s a neat, classical looking concrete structure which dates from 1934 and is quite typical of pre-war French municipal buildings; it’s got style; it’s a bit Art Deco. Over a fence there is a glimpse of the blue Strasbourg team bus.
We walk on and pass through the turnstiles which read our bar-coded tickets before we are patted down and wished “bon match”. It amuses me that Paulene seems to be searched more thoroughly than I am, but then the French have a history of female villains; Madame Defarge, Madame Thenardier, Marine Le Pen. At the back of the Tribune Sud (south stand), which is built into the hillside behind the goal, a couple of blokes who look a bit old to be Ultras are unfolding a tifosi banner in the form of a huge Dijon home shirt. I half expect to see them plugging in an especially large iron.
Our tickets (24 euros each) are in the top tier of the east stand at the side of the pitch, so we keep on walking, on past the ‘Le Bon Sucre’ stall selling crepes, gauffres and beignets, and bizarrely decorated with the figure of a busty woman, posed with her mouth slightly open and about to lick a dollop of cream from her finger. France can be oddly schizophrenic with regard to women; seemingly ahead of Britain in the use of female football presenters and commentators and in appreciating women’s football, but still displaying the same casual sexism of the 1930’s when Gaston Gerard’s wife Reine impressed a well-regarded critic and gastronome with a new chicken dish, which thereafter became known as Chicken Gaston Gerard after her husband, not her.
Resisting the temptations of le Bon Sucre we walk on beneath the Tribune Caisse D’Epargne as it is known thanks to sponsorship from the bank of that name, where we cannot resist the lure of the club shop.
Thankfully Dijon FCO do not have their own brand of mustard, and sadly
their T-shirts don’t appeal so we restrict our purchases to a petit
fanion (5 euros) to add to the collection in the upstairs toilet, a bear
in a red and white scarf (10 euros) for Paulene’s cupboard of football
related cuddly toys and a bib (6.50 euros) for the new grandson Jackson,
because he needs more bibs. Leaving the shop we pass by one of the
buvettes, from which people are leaving with the best looking chips I
have ever seen at a football ground, proper big chunky ones. I collect a
couple of the free match day programmes, which are actually more like
12 page newspapers, but they tell us all we need to know, listing the
squads, tonight’s other fixtures and the up to date league table.
Our seats, we learn, are in the top tier of the stand; it’s been a bit of a walk from the tram stop and Paulene’s asthma means she’s not feeling up to climbing two or three flights of stairs so I ask one of the many young women in gilets oranges if there is a lift. I am directed to a man in a blue jacket with the words Besoin d’aide? (Need help?) printed on the back; he asks us to follow him and having led us into a room from which he collects a set of keys he unlocks a white door hidden within the white walls of the concourse beneath the stand. The blue jacketed man leads us down a long white corridor and round a corner, part of a hidden labyrinth within the stand; I think to myself that this is what near death experiences are supposed to be like. The man then unlocks what seems like a secret compartment, but is in fact a lift, which takes us to an open concourse at the back of the top tier of the stand. We thank the man but not before he shows us to our seats; what a helpful bloke. From each seat projects a red flag at 45 degrees which bears the Dijon FCO club crest; it doesn’t do to sit down in a hurry; it could be painful. We are in the second row at the front of the top tier and have a fine view of the pitch, but also, over the top of the stand opposite, a panorama of Dijon stretches out with an array of towers and spires, like a Gallic version of Oxford. Beyond the city, rolling hills and forests.
There is a still a while until kick-off so I return to the open concourse for some drinks, returning with a cup of orange Fanta for Paulene and a small beer for me (7 euros for the two). Both drinks are in re-usable plastic cups which celebrate Dijon FCO’s twentieth anniversary; Dijon had a club dating back to 1913 (Cercle Laique Dijonnais) but it remained resolutely amateur, like my own beloved Ipswich Town did unti 1936, before merging with Dijon FC in 1998 and the new club eventually turned professional in 2004. Looking north-east from the back of the stand the sky is a menacing grey and in the distance it is clearly raining; a strong gusty wind is blowing it towards us, something wicked this way comes, but more probably something wet. Walking back to my seat I begin to regret not having noticed until I had ordered beer and fanta that I could have had a cup of the vin chaud (2.50 euros). The rain arrives in the form of stair rods, it is spectacular and I am thankful I am not in the Tribune Sud into which the wind is blowing, or on the open terrace opposite where an increasing and impressive following of Strasbourg supporters are gathering and getting soaked. The deluge is mercifully brief and heads off into the hills of Burgundy leaving the fading evening sunlight to glisten and reflect off the roof tops of the city.
As kick-off approaches the public address system pumps out loud euro-pop, the teams are announced, their faces looming in technicolour on the scoreboard. That tifosi shirt ripples across the lower tier of the Tribune Sud; the Lingon’s Boys Ultras at the north end hang out their banners. The best display however is from the Racing Club Strasbourg supporters who celebrate making the 330 kilometre journey by waving white flags around a central blue cross with the letter RCS in the centre of that. All around there is noise from the crowd of 13,105 and then the teams enter the pitch through a colonnade of giant Roman candles as the Ligue 1 theme tune plays over the public address system and everyone waves their red Dijon flags, me included; one of the many things they know how to do in France is put on a show and give everyone a free flag.
After handshakes and huddles the
game begins with Dijon all in red and the words “Roger Martin” emblazoned across
their chests, a sentiment I heartily agree with. Strasbourg unnecessarily wear
all- white; their ‘proper’ signature kit of blue shirts with white shorts would
not clash with Dijon’s home strip. Dijon are playing towards the Lingon’s Boys,
with Strasbourg aiming in the direction of the Tribune Sud. It’s the 36th journee of the 38
game season and Dijon are struggling in 19th place in the twenty
team league. Strasbourg are mid-table
(10th) and have every right to feel smug and relaxed having
qualified for the Europa League by winning the Coupe de La Ligue against En
Avant Guingamp, the team bottom in Ligue 1, who by the end of tomorrow
afternoon are destined to be relegated to Ligue 2.
Dijon are more eager because they
have more at stake and they have the first shot on goal, from 39 year old
Florent Balmont, a marvellous if unexciting, mostly defensive midfield player
who simply keeps the team ticking over like a sort of bald-headed human, metronome. Paulene and I reminisce about seeing him play
a much more dynamic game for Lille against Copenhagen in a Champions League
qualifier back in 2012. This game is not
dynamic. Dijon struggle to play
accurately whilst Strasbourg’s season has already finished, and they appear to
lack motivation. Lacking inspiration
from the football I enjoy the architecture of the three re-built sides of the
stadium; three individual stands linked by an arching, curving translucent
roof; architect Michel Rémon has done a fine job and I get to thinking what
self-respecting architect would put his name to the breeze block and tin sheet
constructions that pass for provincial football stadia in England.
With only fourteen minutes played Florent Balmont is cautioned by referee Monsieur Hakim Ben El Hadj for complaining too vociferously when a free-kick is awarded against a team mate. Dijon are ponderous and what shots on goal there are, are blocked or wide and no one looks much like scoring, that is until five minutes before half-time. Tunisian international Naim Sliti pursues another mis-placed pass inside the penalty area, it’s running away from the goal towards the corner flag but somehow the chasing defender manages to clip Sliti’s heels, he goes down and Monsieur Ben El Hadj awards a penalty. Paulene thinks it’s a bit harsh, suggesting that Sliti was moving so slowly towards the ball that the chasing defender, Adrien Thomasson, just caught up with him sooner than expected. Monsieur Ben El Hadj ignores her pleas and Dijon’s Cape Verde international Julio Tavares gets the glory, booting the ball beyond the dive of Strasbourg’s Belgian goal keeper Matz Sels into the bottom left-hand corner of the goal; Stade Gaston-Gerard is rocking all the way to mi-temps (half-time).
I make use of the break to use
the facilities but haven’t got the will to wait at the buvette for another
drink; I return to my seat and zip up my wind-cheater against the evening
chill. Small boys take part in a
shoot-out and I feel very sorry for a particularly ungainly looking one whose
control is so poor that the goalkeeper has claimed the ball before he even
shoots, you just know he gets picked last in the playground.
The second half begins and Strasbourg are re-vitalised by their half-time espresso and now look much more interested, whilst Dijon are no better than before. But time moves on, it gets dark and still Dijon lead but their Icelandic goalkeeper Runar Runarsson is busy, running off his line and making saves. A corner from Strasbourg’s fabulously monikered Kenny Lala is sent goalwards by the Bosnian Stefan Mitrovic, the header is blocked by Dijon’s Roman Amalfitano but rebounds to Ludovic Ajorque who has a simple ‘tap-in’ to equalise. As Strasbourg celebrate a pall of gloom falls over most of Stade Gaston-Gerard. Runarsson is called to make further saves from Thomasson, Da Costa and Goncalves, and Dijon manager Antoine Kombouare seems to be facing the prospect of both the Ligue 1 clubs he has managed this season being relegated; he was given the Dijon job in January having been sacked by Guingamp in November.
I like Antoine Kombouare, he has a kindly face and previously managed Strasbourg, Lens and Paris Saint-Germain, where he was sacked when they were top of the league. He looks on impassively in his grey suit and baseball hat. With 15 minutes left Kombouare acts and replaces Florent Balmont with the Korean Kwon Chang-Hoon. Balmont takes his place on the bench to great applause from the Dijonnais, he doesn’t look happy, not because he’s been substituted but because of how the game is going.
Kombouare’s decision makes a difference however as Kwon seems to have far more energy than the rest of his team put together; he darts about, running at the Strasbourg defence and shooting on sight, he energises the crowd. But despite his efforts nobody scores for Dijon, although Ludovic Ajorque is prompted to even up the scores for yellow cards. The ninetieth minute arrives and leaves; five minutes time added-on will be played and the home crowd urge their team on. Dijon have to win to have a chance of avoiding relegation, their main rivals Caen are beating Reims 3-2. If they lose Dijon will be five points behind with two games left, one of which is away to Paris Saint-Germain. It’s the ninety third minute, Tavares has the ball, it runs on to Kwon in the centre of the penalty area, he takes a step and lashes the ball magnificently into the net past Sels. Kwon is engulfed by blokes in red shirts and in the stands everyone is on their feet cheering. This is the way to win a football match, be ropey for ninety minutes and then get a last minute winner. In the following day’s local paper “Le Bien Public” the game will be marked as a five out of ten, although the national sports paper L’Equipe will give it four stars out of six. The stats will show that Dijon had fewer shots, fewer corners, less possession, won fewer duels and fewer tackles, made fewer passes and interceptions and their passes were less accurate. What the stats cannot show however is that they never stopped believing they could win.
The full-time whistle soon follows and as we applaud the teams a man in a blue jacket appears from nowhere to take us back to the lift. Paulene would be fine going down the stairs, but is mightily impressed that she has been remembered. We are joined by two older men with gammy legs; the man in the blue jacket pushes the button on the lift control panel marked “-1” and leaves us. One of the older men clearly thinks he knows better and pushes the button marked “0”; the lift descends and the doors open onto a darkened cupboard. Fortunately the doors close again and we complete our descent, and having negotiated a long white corridor find ourselves back in the concourse beneath the stand from where we step out into the night and stroll back to the tram stop. Riding back into town on the packed tram I feel like Albert Camus in Algiers. I love going to football matches in France.
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And so, in the words of what was
reputedly Sir Bobby Robson’s favourite song, Ipswich Town face the final
curtain of this singularly unsuccessful season in Football League Division
Two. There have been a few regrets, some
too painful to mention or admit to, but we’ve seen the season through,
we’ve laughed and cried and not really
succeeded in doing what we had to do; there have been a lot of doubts and we’ve
had more than our fair share of losing.
I can’t imagine anyone would own up to it being their way of doing
anything, unless they set out to get relegated.
It is with a sense of blithe resignation therefore that I set off for
Portman Road beneath cloudy grey skies into the teeth of a cold northerly
breeze. It’s not even ten o’clock yet
and I curse Sky Sports and their dictat on reality, which is that if something
doesn’t happen on subscription television, it doesn’t really happen. There are supporters of both Ipswich Town and
Leeds United at the railway station and sadly, Chelsea. The train is three minutes late although the
electronic display claims it is on time; another example of the truth being
what we are told it is. The train is
busy with Bank Holidaying passengers; middle-aged women dressed up to the nines
cackle excitedly, one wears a semi-transparent wide brimmed-hat like a gossamer
sombrero. Legs apart blokes stand by the
sliding doors and drink cheap lager from shiny blue cans. An invisible cloud of acrid body spray
creates a tickling sensation in my nose, it spreads and transforms itself into
a stabbing pain in what feels like the root of a tooth, I reminisce about
hay-fever.
In Ipswich a state of emergency
has been declared and would-be passengers vie for space in the railway station booking
hall with a platoon of police, all hand-cuffs and hi-vis. On the station
‘plaza’ more police; fashionable police in baseball hats with riot-helmets
swinging casually from their utility belts.
Opposite in the garden of the Station Hotel the marauding Yorkshire hordes
enjoy some drinks and a barbecue, the smell of charcoal smoke wafts across the
river. I head for St Jude’s Tavern taking a detour along Constantine Road past
the Corporation bus garage because Portman Road is closed. The Leeds United
team bus sweeps by, it’s blacked out windows hiding its precious cargo from the
gaze of the common people; a BMW waits where parking has been suspended; it’s
always a BMW. At the corner of Portman
Road early diners wrestle with paper napkins of meat-based, bun encased lunches,
jealously guarding their sauce and onions. I buy a programme, a souvenir of the
end of a sixty-two-year-long era.
St Jude’s Tavern has been open
five minutes, but already a bevy of fifty-something drinkers crowd around the
bar. “We’re all going on a League One
tour” chants one before expressing his excitement at the prospect of an away
match against Southend United. I turn to
the barmaid “It doesn’t get much better than a day out it Southend, does it” I
say with a hint of sarcasm. She looks
confused, so I ask for a pint of the Match Day Special which is St Jude’s
Elderflower Bitter (£2.50). It doesn’t
taste too good. “It’s the elderflowers” she tells me and swaps it for a pint of
Nethergate Venture at no extra charge. It
makes me think of the ‘French’ John Cleese in ‘Monty Python and the Holy
Grail’. I talk to one of the regulars about his replacement knee and
elderflower cordial before Mick arrives; he buys me a pint of Elgood’s Plum
Porter (£3.60), which is characteristically kind and generous of him. Mick and I discuss his current affliction
with bursitis (Housemaid’s Knee) and I wince at the size of the bump on his
leg.
Time passes quickly and I am soon
drawn down Portman Road by the beaming blue face of Sir Bobby Robson peering
between the bright green foliage of the trees beyond Handford Road. I enter the ground from Constantine Road past
the array of planet-destroying, over-sized, show-off cars owned by the players
and through the little used turnstile number 60. “It’s a quiet little number
having this turnstile, isn’t it” I say to the young woman enclosed in her brick
and mesh cubicle, she smiles nicely and doesn’t disagree. I stroll to my seat via the WC facilities
beneath the stand where I hear the recorded stadium safety announcement; “If
you hear this sound – wooooh, wooooh…”
says the disembodied female voice with a faintly Irish accent. I imagine a woman from Donegal called Sheila who
is capable of creating the strange whooping sound with her natural voice, like some
sort of gainfully employed banshee.
Emerging up the steps from beneath the stand my eyes are met by a long blue and white banner at the Sir Bobby Robson stand end of the ground. “There is a light that never goes out” it reads. I like the music of The Smiths and Morrissey as much as the next miserabilist, but wonder at the relevance of this random snatched lyric and also if Morrissey will be pursuing a royalty. The lyrics of the Smiths are an odd choice if looking for uplifting words, and I would like to see the banner that announces “Heaven knows I’m miserable now”. Recovering my joie de vivre I see in my mind’s eye a banner at Carrow Road which reads “Ha ya got a loight boy?” and wonder what other lyrics from popular song are suitable to ‘celebrate’ relegation. I decide that “Wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave, no one was saved” sums up my feelings nicely and I imagine makes Morrissey jealous that it isn’t one of his lyrics.
As ever, ever-present Phil who
never misses a game and Pat from Clacton are here today, but far fewer of the
seats about us are vacant and I marvel at the increased level of support the
club has garnered from becoming the plucky underdogs. Town kick-off towards us in their traditional
blue and white shirts, befouled by the hideous logo of a firm of on-line
shysters. Leeds United are also the
lackeys of an on-line betting company, but with a nicer logo and they wear
yellow shirts and socks with blue shorts, looking like Newmarket Town, but with
more expensive and exotic haircuts and tattoos.
Having had first kick, Town
quickly lose the ball to their opponents and struggle to get it back. “Marching on together, We’re gonna see you
win” sing the Leeds support presumptuously from the top tier of the Cobbold
stand. Below them in front of the
executive boxes a couple of rows of Leeds fans sit with flags spread out on the
seats in front of them, they look like they’re all together in a giant bed. If they were Norwich supporters they would
be.
Eleven minutes pass and I’m a
little bored already, Ipswich are sadly
not doing much but chasing Leeds players and the ball. For a few moments Leeds
play the ball around across their penalty area like a French or Brazilian team,
confident in their ability to pass and control the ball, Town captain Luke
Chambers looks on, mouth agape. The
Leeds United goalkeeper Kiko Casilla appears to be somewhat bandy-legged; I
ponder the likelihood of anyone from sunny Spain suffering with rickets.
A smattering of Leeds fans swing
their scarves about their heads like slingshots, recalling the Gelderd Road end
of Leeds’ ground in the 1970’s whilst the Town fans in the Sir Bobby Robson
Stand sing “Que Sera Sera, whatever will be will be, we’re going to Shrewsbury”
which is a worthwhile boast because the Shropshire town is a one of the
Football League’s loveliest, up there with Oxford and our very own
Ipswich. It is the nineteenth minute of
the game and Town win a corner, bucking the trend of Leeds dominance. Andre
Dozzell’s kick fails to travel beyond the Leeds defender at the near post
however. A conversation ensues behind me
the final words of which are “We need a new team, mate”. On the touchline Leeds manager Marcelo Bielsa
adopts his customary squatting pose. The
Argentine is sometimes considered to be an eccentric character and his moving
to Leeds having managed Lazio and Marseille rather proves the point; he was a
legendary figure at Marseille, adored by the Ultras and I am proud to say I saw
him sit on a cup of coffee at the Velodrome, which may be why he is choosing to
squat today.
The game is not living up to
expectations and to pass the time the Sir Bobby Robson Stand goad the Leeds
support by singing “Top of the League and you fucked it up” which is a bit rich
from supporters of a team that has been bottom of the league virtually all
season. Compared with our own team’s
performance this season Leeds United are world beaters. “One Mick McCarthy”
sing the Yorkshiremen in response, which is fair enough, but easy to say given
that he’s only ever bored them until they cried with his attritional, joyless
football as manager of the opposition.
I’ve been watching this game for
almost half an hour and all of a sudden a couple of passes send our angular on-loan
German Collin Quaner through on goal with just Casilla to beat; Casilla comes
out of his penalty area and runs straight at Quaner who pushes the ball beyond
him and hurdles the Spaniard’s lunging frame before crashing to the turf. The lower tier of the Sir Alf Ramsey Stand
bay for blood but referee Mr Gavin Ward proffers only a yellow card in the
direction of Casilla, possibly because he couldn’t conceive of the current
Ipswich Town team of having a goal scoring opportunity, let alone being denied
one. But the resultant free-kick proves
Mr Ward wrong as the ball sails high into the six yard box and no one is able
to send it decisively in any direction, so it drops to the ground and Town’s
Flynn Downes is nearest and able to hook it into the goal net. Ironically, it’s the sort of goal that owes a
lot to the methods of Mick McCarthy.
“We’re winning a game, we’re
winning a game, how shit must you be, we’re winning a game” sing the Town fans,
once more invoking the sound of ‘Sloop John B’.
Surfing on a wave of a single Beach Boys tune the Sir Bobby Robson Stand
ill-advisedly seek to push home their perceived advantage. “Premier League,
you’re having a laugh, Premier League, you’re having a laugh” they chant to the
tune of Tom Hark. If only they’d stopped
to think about the probable response.
“Championship, you’re having a laugh” is the inevitable short-vowelled
response. A battle of wits, it’s not.
Happiness reigns until the final
minute of the half when Myles Kenlock omits to prevent Luke Ayling, who incidentally
sports the day’s daintiest coiffure, from crossing the ball and Pole Mateusz
Klich is allowed a free shot at goal, from which he scores Leeds’ equalising
goal. It’s disappointing of course and a
little ‘out of the blue’ but not really unexpected. What I have come to enjoy most about this
season is how little it now hurts when the opposition score; I have perhaps
achieved some kind of state of grace.
The half-time break allows time
to relieve myself of more surplus liquid, consume a Panda brand liquorice stick
and gawp up at the half-time scores on the TV screen beneath the stand. Once again the statistics shown on the TV
screen are inaccurate, with neither team apparently having had a player
booked. If that stat is wrong, and it
blatantly is, I cannot trust the others.
Thwarted again in my search for truth I climb back up the steps into the
stand and talk with Ray, a reassuringly honest man. I tell him that next Saturday I shall be
watching Dijon FCO v RC Strasbourg at the Stade Gaston-Gerard; Ray tells me
that he’s heard good things of Dijon, “they’re mustard” he says without any
trace of embarrassment. In fact Dijon
face relegation, so even Ray lied, albeit in the name of ‘comedy’.
The second half begins at
thirty-four minutes past one, and before twenty-five to two the Towen are
winning; Collin Quaner passing to Andre Dozzell in the sort of space usually
only seen between Ipswich defenders.
Dozzell scores with aplomb; it’s the first time Towen have scored as
many as two goals at home since New Year’s Day. Leeds are quick and inventive but lack
accuracy, although they still get chances they contrive to waste them. “That’s
a ruddy good save” says the old boy behind me appreciatively, but with an odd
hint of grudging reluctance as Bartosz Bialkowski dives to his left to tip a
shot away for a corner. “One Bobby
Robson, There’s only one Bobby Robson” sing the overly nostalgic and
sentimental supporters in the stand that bears the dead man’s name. The Leeds supporters are not similarly moved
to mention Don Revie OBE, despite the marvellous picture of the man in the
match programme in which he looks a bit like Grouty (Peter Vaughan) in the TV
sit-com ‘Porridge’. It’s easily the best
thing in the programme.
All is going well and I dare to
dream of seeing Town win. But I should know
better by now. Ayling of the hair
crosses the ball; the weirdly named Kemar Roofe hits the cross-bar with a close
range shot and the ball seemingly just bounces off Stuart Dallas and into the
net. There is a suspicion amongst Town
fans that Ayling’s pony tail was offside and that Dallas handled the ball into
the net, and to make the point ever-present Phil is off his seat and waving his
arms in anger and frustration, but referee Mr Ward pays no heed; if he only
knew how many consecutive Town games Phil has seen he might be more sympathetic.
Heartless, ignorant git.
As the Towen kick-off the game once again a long line of riot police string themselves out along the front of the lower tier of the Sir Alf Ramsey Stand and the disabled enclosure, sitting themselves down on the cold concrete floor. To a man, woman and child, the occupants of the stand are bemused. “Do you think they’ll get piles?” asks the old dear behind me, laughing. Ever-present Phil may be disgruntled but he’s never been known to lead a pitch invasion, neither has Pat from Clacton nor Ray, nor the old boy behind me, despite his occasional vitriolic tone. Ray’s grandson Harrison has got a pretty nifty new wheelchair so he’s not likely to throw it onto the pitch in a fit of pique, even if we helped him pick it up. Perhaps Police Intelligence (ha-ha) has identified me; I do have previous after all, having fallen foul of the stewards on separate occasions for banging a tambourine, sitting in the seat behind my allotted one and taking photographs; I might be considered dangerous, I like to think so, but really, as my own Smith’s inspired banner might say “ I’m not the man you think I am”.
With my mind racing Town’s
defence lose concentration too and after a corner to Leeds Kemar Roofe drops to
the ground after contact, of a sort, with Town captain Luke Chambers, who
appears to have tried to tickle him. Mr
Ward is decisive and doesn’t stop to think twice, or perhaps even once as he
awards Leeds a penalty and sends Chambers off, which is a pity because it’s his
name that features on the front of the match programme and he was also voted
the supporters player of the year. Mr
Ward should really do some research before refereeing his next match; today he
is just making social faux pas after social
faux pas. I doubt we’ll ask him back after this.
The ticklish Kemar Roofe dusts
himself off before stepping up to take the penalty. What happens next is probably the funniest
most blissful thing I have seen at a game since Robert Ullathorne’s back pass
at Portman Road in April 1996, as Roofe appears to cross himself and then deftly
kicks his own leg away from under him and sends the ball high and wide,
appropriately towards the roof of the stand; I can’t swear to ever seeing the
ball land, perhaps it hasn’t. If Charlie
Chaplin or Buster Keaton had taken the penalty they couldn’t have bettered Roofe’s
effort for pure slap-stick. I’d like to see it again in flickering black and
white, slightly speeded up. If goals that go in are followed by Tom Hark or
Chelsea Dagger over the public address system, moments like this deserve the Looney
Tunes music and the scoreboard proclaiming “That’s All Folks!”
I feel satiated, enough has gone
on this early afternoon to tide me over until next season. It might be disappointing not to win having
twice had the lead, but this is 2019 in Ipswich, it’s good enough. But no, for the first time this season at
Portman Road fate has something good in store and in the final minute of normal
time Casilla and a Leeds defender both jump for a cross at once and succeed in
knocking it on to Collin Quaner who has time and space to simply kick the ball
into an open goal for another moment of high comedy and delirium.
The game ends and the season ends
and at last Ipswich have a decent win in front of the Portman Road crowd. But I can’t help but feel a little sorry for
Leeds; I grew up hating them like everyone else but they are part of the
landscape of my football following life and I like them to be there looming large. I hope they get promoted if that’s what they
want; although they should be careful what they wish for.
So Town have been relegated and
will be a third division club next season, but it’s been rather fun getting here
and Portman Road is a far nicer place to come now than it was last season. I
just hope it’s as good or better come Christmas. Relegation isn’t so different to promotion
really; we will still just end up playing a load of different teams to the ones
we played this year. As a fan of the
Smiths might print on a large banner
“What difference does it make?” Norwich may have been promoted and we
have been relegated, but let’s see who wins more games next season.
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