In spite of age and experience, I still can’t quite get to grips with AFC Bournemouth being in the First Division. Forty-five years ago, in October of 1981 when Ipswich Town were the current UEFA Cup holders, I saw Bournemouth play out a one-all draw with Northampton Town at Dean Court in a fourth division fixture, although I’m not entirely sure how I came to be there. But despite subsequently seeing Bournemouth play Ipswich in the second division and then two years ago in the top division, I somehow can only ever think of Bournemouth as belonging in the lower leagues along with the likes of Colchester United, Walsall and Exeter City. Perhaps it’s because as an Ipswich Town supporter things have never again lived up to that UEFA Cup winning season, and a bit like Oskar Matzerath in Gunther Grass’s novel The Tin Drum I have decided never to grow any older and therefore remain forever stuck in 1981.
Today however, I am confronted with the unpleasantness of reality as Ipswich meet Bournemouth in what to me is still the First Division but to nearly everyone else is something called the Premier League. It began as a bright morning but has quickly clouded over and after a breakfast of bacon, tomato and scrambled egg on toast, a couple of Welsh cakes, tea and an espresso coffee I find myself talking to Gareth on the railway station platform as we await the 12:04 to Ipswich. Gary joins us at the next station stop and we talk of our hopes and expectations for the day but not very optimistically. To make matters worse we’re sat on the wrong side of the train for a decent view of any polar bears, although Gary makes a spectacle of himself by standing up to get a better look as we sail through Wherstead. Gareth looks a bit bewildered and perhaps doesn’t appreciate the wonder of having polar bears as part of the pre-match ritual; but it’s not like we support Svarlbard Swifts is it?
Ipswich is looking gloriously grey as we alight from the train, as it should in November, and we head for the ‘Arb’, first enjoying the absence of traffic on the Princes Street bridge, which is temporarily closed to vehicles whilst a pedestrian ramp down to the riverbank is built. The Arb is busy, but Gary joins the queue for the bar whilst I make for the beer garden, where I encounter Mick who goes inside to tell Gary what he’s drinking as I nab a table in the shelter that backs onto High Street. Mick returns and soon Gary is with us carrying a tray of two pints of Mauldon’s Silver Adder and one of Estrella Galicia. We talk of Russell Brand, American mid-term elections and the much hoped-for demise of Donald J Trump and his acolytes, the attitudes and nature of ‘Generation Z’, and our dystopian future of cyber-attacks, power outages, owning a torch and the stockpiling of dried and tinned food and bottles of water. We decide that tinned peas are okay, but tinned potatoes probably aren’t. At some point I buy another round of drinks (Estrella Galicia, Earl Soham Brewery Sir Roger’s Porter and a Jameson’s whisky – £15 something with Camra discount) before we realise that as usual everyone else has already left for Portman Road. When we decide it’s decent to do so, we do too.
Portman Road is oddly clear of queues today, although these seem to have been replaced with metal barriers and would-be lollipop ladies whose lollipops announce the numbers of seating blocks and turnstiles in the Cobbold Stand. There are still queues for the Sir Alf Ramsey, but I carefully select the fastest moving one and being found innocent of concealing explosives, scrap metal and weapons I’m on my way through turnstile 61 because the queue was moving faster than the queue for turnstile 62. Relieved of spent Silver Adder I find myself observing the now customary pre-match minute’s silence for nearly being Remembrance Day stood on the steps up into the stand. With the silence over, I suffer an impatient member of Gen Z tugging at me to get up the steps. I tell her as patronisingly and as nicely as I can to “Just hold on and calm down”.
The game begins and Bournemouth get first go with the ball, which they are mostly kicking in the direction of the Sir Bobby Robson stand and Broomhill Park far beyond, just along from Brook’s Hall where Ipswich Town played back in the 1880’s. Sartorially, Bournemouth are looking like West Germany (it’s still 1981 remember), clad in white shirts and black shorts, which is another pointless change of kit given that their signature colours are red and black. More happily, Town quickly win the ball and are immediately surging forward as Daizen Maeda pushes and runs past some Bournemouth bod but has his cross cleared. Up in the Cobbold Stand the Bournemouth followers chant indecipherably but Julio Enciso is in hectares of space in the middle of the pitch and a low cross from Maeda somehow evades the attempted back heel of Emmerson and passes all the way across the face of the Bournemouth goal, and we’ve barely had four minutes yet.
Then the roof falls in, and Christian Walton seemingly thinking we can see out the match with only him ever touching the ball, fails to evade the on-rushing Francisco Evanilson de Lima Barbosa who nicks the ball off his boot and rolls it into an empty goal. You might have thought Walton would have spotted a bloke with a name that long coming at him, but no. Town’s lively beginning and hopes of a storming home win have lasted less than five minutes, and another bright start has turned suddenly grey and cloudy. On the bright side however, Walton atones as much as he can two minutes later after the usual dodgy defending down the left allows a low cross and what looks like a certain goal. Also, weak sunlight is now dancing softly across the Cobbold Stand, which as a thing of beauty is apparently a joy forever.
Eleven minutes have departed and Jaden Philogene has a low shot easily saved and the Bournemouth fans are singing “Is this a library?” to which the pithy reply from the bloke behind me, who is clearly familiar with the toy-sized collection of stands AFC Bournemouth call home is “No it’s a Subbuteo stadium”. “No noise from the Tractor Boys” continue the gloating Bournemouth fans causing me to reflect on there having been a crowd of just 5,241 at Dean Court when I visited in October 1981 and given that a fair number of those are probably dead by now, where the heck have this gobby lot sprung from?
Eighteen minutes are up and Bournemouth claim the game’s first corner kick. Ripples of blue sky appear in the cloud above the Sir Bobby Robson Stand but chants of “Come on Ipswich, Come on Ipswich” betray a sense of growing frustration that Town are not getting anywhere very quickly against unspectacular but quietly capable opponents. Half-time is less than ten minutes away, Bournemouth have a second corner and Pat from Clacton has time to tell me she’s remembered to wear both her blue and white earrings and her blue pants today. Not to be outdone, I reveal that I am wearing ITFC socks, one pair from a pack of three my work colleagues gave me when I retired. Meanwhile Fiona’s young niece Maisie is attending her first match today and she is brandishing what I at first thought might be an Ipswich Town branded ferret, but it turns out it is a meerkat. Faced with this cornucopia of Ipswich favours I am finding it hard to believe we’re still losing.
Only five minutes to half time now and there are more pleading chants of “Come On Ipswich, Come On Ipswich”. Bournemouth however earn another corner before an out break of silliness in the middle of the pitch end with the short, bald referee Mr Simon Hooper showing off his yellow card to both Town’s Julio Enciso and the eighteenth-century economist and philosopher Adam Smith, who had overzealously expounded his theory of rational self-interest and kicked Julio, who didn’t like it. The free-kick is to Ipswich but as ever comes to nothing and neither does one in the final minute of the half after Emmerson is given a bang on the head by some clumsy Bournemouthian defender or other. A minute of added on time does nothing to improve matters either.
Half-time is an opportunity to share thoughts on the game so far with the man from Stowmarket (Paul), reflect on how the bloke on the AFC Bournemouth club badge looks oddly like Brian Eno did in the 1970’s, and drain off more spent Silver Adder and Sir Roger’s Porter. The football resumes at two minutes past three after the excitable young stadium announcer has announced with almost a note of surprise, “It’s I-i-i-pswi-i-ch T-o-o-w-w-n!” as if he had been half-expecting a different team to emerge from the tunnel for the second half. By three minutes past three we wish there had been as Town are trailing 2-0 with Leif Davis inexplicably backing towards goal in mid-air and deflecting a cross-cum-shot into the net. All around there is a palpable feeling that we have been transported back in time to Town’s last brief, miserable visit to the Premier League. The ripples of blue sky are gone, replaced by grey mist and gloom.
Bournemouth soon claim another corner kick, and it sounds as if their supporters are chanting “Cloudy, cloudy, what’s the score?” before Emmerson is replaced by Zian Flemming and Jaden Philogene makes way for the man the excitable young stadium announcer calls “Jack! Clarke!”. Bournemouth have another corner and with about a half an hour left to play Pat from Clacton reveals that she has already started to think about the baked potato she is going to eat when she gets home. The sixty-third minute brings muted joy as Town at last win their first corner of the match, for what it’s worth, and ever-present Phil who never misses a game turns around to tell me I’ve been very quiet today. I tell him it’s a hangover from the minute’s silence, but also Town haven’t had enough corners.
Sixty-four minutes are up and one short, stocky winger, Maeda, is replaced by a slightly stockier one, Fatawu. Meanwhile, continuing to test out their latest comedy material the Bournemouth supporters carry on asking “Is this a library?” and everyone very quietly ignores them. But then, with a bit less than twenty minutes of normal time remaining Abdoul Outtara gets kicked in the penalty area (Ooer missus) and after the usual delaying tactics from the opposition, Town have a penalty kick. Jack! Clarke! is as reliable as ever and kicks the ball to the right as the goalkeeper helpfully dives to the left and the deficit is reduced to a single goal. Everyone who had been concentrating on reading now clears their throat and shouts whilst carefully inserting their bookmarks so as not to lose their place.
The remaining fifteen minutes of original allotted time are joined by another nine that are added on and Town spend most of them in the Bournemouth half, with ‘The Cherries’ as they are known colloquially, adding only one more to their tally of corner kicks and mostly employing the dubious defensive tactic of bumping into Ipswich players and then lying down on the ground. Julio Enciso takes a couple of the resulting free kicks, the first of which is athletically tipped over the cross bar by the goalkeeper, whilst the second bends around the defensive wall but the wrong side of the goalpost. Almost finally, the excitable young stadium announcer very soberly tells us that today we number 29,396; thanking us “so much” for our support but sensibly today not using the word “incredible”.
Sadly, the final whistle comes all too soon and the score remains unaltered. Defeats are of course inevitable, but this one is galling because the goals were of our own making, not so much goals as hapless blunders, like spilling your beer down your front or walking into a lamp post. But then, perhaps it was the only way a fourth division team was going to beat the UEFA Cup holders.
