MK Dons 1 Ipswich Town 1

October 4, 2020 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

Leaden clouds, gusting wind, rain. I spend my Saturday morning mesmerised by the steady drip of water from the leaves of the fig tree outside my living room window, and the drip, drip, drip from the underside of the gutter onto the window sill and the Begonia in the adjacent window box. It’s all so beautiful but so sad, like the thought of Ipswich Town playing MK Dons. Football is allegedly the beautiful game, but the presence of MK Dons in the Football League is a source of sadness and not a little anger to me. It was to be expected that the gutless, ineffective Football League, an administrative body that doesn’t understand the sport it administers, would allow the original Wimbledon football club to be hollowed out and the empty husk replanted in a new town over sixty miles away to the north, and although seventeen years have passed since then, it remains as something that was and still is fundamentally wrong, like mullets, racism, the ‘quartic’ steering wheel of the original Austin Allegro, Chris Sutton and slavery.

My usual enthusiasm for Town’s game today is therefore tempered and I’m not ‘quite myself’. Unsure of exactly who I am I have allowed the morning to drift away in aimless reverie, although I did have a lucid half an hour in which I experienced brief happiness in finding a wing nut that fitted the bottom of a metal bird feeder on which the original nut had rusted away. My back garden now is mobbed with a feeding frenzy of sparrows and starlings but such is my listlessness it is two-thirty and I am only just sitting down with my wife Paulene to eat lunch; a salad featuring the unusual combination of tuna and sliced sausage; the joy of leftovers. Worst of all I have not had, and have little desire to have a pre-match ‘pint’, despite a well-stocked beer cupboard which contains five cases of Fuller’s Bengal Lancer in addition to bottles of Westmalle Dubbel, Orval, Dark Star Revelation, Titanic Plum Porter, Chimay and Chimay Brun. My heart is not in this.

It is gone ten to three as I find myself retiring to one of two spare bedrooms in my boring late 1970’s semi-detached house, getting comfortable in an Ikea Poang chair and switching on the wireless. Shockingly my ears are assaulted by the faintly estuarine tones of a young woman talking authoritatively about today’s Braintree Town line-up, quickly I move the dial the necessary couple of degrees to reach the safety of Radio Suffolk where an intense sounding young man is being interviewed and makes reference to ‘affleets’ and being ‘affletic’; apparently he played for Lowestoft Town but is now at Wycombe Wanderers. His name it transpires is Malachi Lynton and if he is as serious about his football career as he sounds he should do well, although I hope he gets to laugh a bit as well.

Three o’clock approaches and I am joined by Brenner Woolley against a background of loud rock music which bleeds into ‘Hey Jude’ as he introduces the legendary Alex Mathie, a man who earns that ‘legendary’ epithet courtesy of his hat-trick in the most recent of our three 5-0 thrashings of the yellow-feathered peril from up the A140. Brenner tells me that the team is the same as last week and Alex adds how he is looking forward to seeing Town ‘live’ for the first time this season.

The game begins; I don’t catch which team kicks off, which direction they are kicking relative to Brenner and Alex’s seats or what the two teams are wearing. I am pleased to quickly learn from Brenner however that Paul Lambert has on his black overcoat. “Fabulous stuff from the home team” says Brenner. “That should’ve been 1-0” says Alex. Oh crikey.

MK Dons have won none of their opening four matches this season but as is often the case they seem to be one of those teams who have been saving themselves for the game against Ipswich. But little good it does them as in the seventh minute Brenner tells me “Nolan shoots….he scores”. It doesn’t sound like it was goal of the season however, and Brenner advises that it was against the run of play, although I’m not altogether sure how valid the expression ‘against the run of play’ is when the game is only seven minutes old.

Relaxing a little now that Town are in what has become their customary winning position, I pick up my mobile phone to catch up on my Twitter feed where I enjoy some pictures of the fabulous Stade Bolleart in Lens tweeted by AS St Etienne, who play there at four o’clock today and are blissfully unaware that they are destined to lose 2-0. St Etienne were of course probably the best of the six teams that Town beat on our way to winning the UEFA Cup in 1981 (well, they had the best players) and Racing Club de Lens are geographically the nearest ‘top-team’ to Ipswich’s twin-town of Arras. Town really should try and have closer links to these two French clubs as much as to Fortuna Dusseldorf with whom Town have nothing in common. My dreams of matches in France are interrupted by an injury to Stephen Ward and the ‘will he/won’t he be substituted’ drama that ensues. Ward stays on. “Great recovery from the Irishman” says Brenner, as if the player’s nationality had a bearing on his being able to continue. Relieved, I return to Twitter where at Maes Tegid it is 0-0 between Bala Town and Haverfordwest in the Welsh Premier League, but getting more up to date I learn that Chris Venables has put Bala ahead with a penalty. At least Town are still winning and it sounds as if a Franz Beckenbauer-like surging run from James Wilson will make it 2-0, but Brenner pushes me back from the edge of my seat with the words “Sears shoots wide”.

I don’t know if the game is not that good, or Town aren’t playing very well, but Brenner goes off on an irrelevant tangent relaying every imaginable fact about Town’s previous runs of consecutive clean-sheets. I seek solace in Twitter again where Haverfordwest have equalised and I find confirmation of Nolan’s goal. With twenty minutes having passed Brenner succeeds in recapturing my attention with one of his moments of surrealist commentary as he refers to “Lewington with is captain’s armband on his left instep”. To protect my mental well-being I don’t think about it beyond briefly imagining team photos by Picasso.

Surrealism is replaced by tragedy as Stephen Ward leaves the pitch to be replaced by Miles Kenlock, Ward’s Irishness only being sufficient to beat the injury for no more than ten minutes. Meanwhile I have caught up with the Twitter feed to the extent that I have just seen Jon Nolan’s goal which someone has recorded off the ifollow on the telly. The goal was a mess but at least I have learnt that Town are playing in all blue and their opponents in all white, like a knock-off Leeds United. Twitter continues to be a source of joy as I discover that it is full time at match in Carrow Road and the away team have won, although more importantly the home team have lost.

A third of the match has passed and Brenner evidently thinks it is time to use some of his own brand of football-ese as the ball is crossed by one of the Dons and “…is plucked out of the sky by Holy”. It cannot be denied that Tomas Holy is very, or even very very tall, but it is open to debate whether he is capable of plucking something from the sky or indeed whether the cross was so high that the ball was ‘in the sky’ as opposed to just being ‘in the air’. Perhaps Brenner is very short, it’s hard to tell on the radio.

As half-time beckons I finally catch up to the very latest Tweets and Brenner and Alex provide a brief resume of the half, admitting that it’s “ all gone a bit flat”. MK Dons apparently look a “decent side” according to Brenner but he can’t help tempting fate by saying that they haven’t really looked “like troubling Holy” before again messing with the English language as he tells us that “Harvie plants one over the top”. In the final minute of the half Alex Mathie treats us to the sound of a stifled sneeze, for which he apologises, but I enjoyed it and was pleased that it revealed that despite having scored a hat-trick against Norwich, Alex is a mere mortal susceptible to the common cold or nasal irritation like me or Brenner.

Forty-five minutes are almost gone and Brenner sounds a trifle miffed that there will be five minutes of added time, as if he has to be off sharpish after the match, but he is more enthusiastic as he tells us that “…may be there is a chance for MK Dons to equalise before half-time”. They don’t equalise but it seems that the chance came courtesy of the Ipswich defence. “Bad defending” says Alex channelling Alan Hansen as only a fellow Scot could. The half-time whistle is blown and Alex concludes that Town “…just shaded it”, but he doesn’t sound convinced by his own words. Alex and Brenner both go on to list the Town players who have done okay, these are Freddie Sears, Toto Nsiala, Tomas Holy and Jon Nolan; I head downstairs to put the kettle on and avail myself of a Nature Valley Peanut and Chocolate protein bar by way of a half time snack.

The second half has already started by the time I return to the comfort of my Ikea Poang chair and I am thankful to my wife Paulene for telling me that Pompey had already scored at Burton which gave me the clue that play had probably resumed in Milton Keynes too. I am not reassured to hear Alex say that “We haven’t started the second half yet” and it becomes clear that the game has started but Ipswich Town haven’t. With nine minutes of the half gone Brenner repeats his description of the Town goal, substituting Nolan for Harvie. MK Dons have equalised. Unable to put my mobile phone down I switch from Twitter to Facebook where I see that ever-present Phil who never misses a game has issued a post, “Bugger” it says, and for a moment I think how wonderful it would be if that had been the radio commentary from Brenner or Alex.

Paul Lambert responds quickly to the goal for some reason, replacing Freddie Sears and Teddy Bishop with little Alan Judge and Flynn Downes, which seems a bit hasty given that we have already had to make one enforced substitution due to Ward’s injury. Paul Lambert moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform however, and so too it seems does Miles Kenlock. “Kenlock’s gone to sleep” claims Brenner as Town’s opponents threaten to score again. Whether Kenlock suddenly woke up Brenner doesn’t say, but he does reveal that it was Town captain Luke Chambers who ultimately saved the day. There is a half hour left and it is made clear by Brenner that the Dons are definitely the best side at the moment.

As comfortable as I am in my Ikea Poang chair in a physical sense, my listening is not such a comfortable experience and things go from not ideal to worse as a Flynn Downes tackle injures Flynn himself instead of the opposition player and he has to leave the field of play; there is of course no remaining substitute to replace him. “It’s not particularly pleasant watching at the moment” says Brenner, and he prepares his listeners back in Suffolk for the worst by adding that “It looks like a matter of time before MK Dons score”.

Outside, the clouds have lifted slightly and a watery sunshine is leaking through the blinds of the spare bedroom. On Twitter, Racing Club de Lens have started to beat St Etienne courtesy of Gael Kakuta, who incidentally is Congolese like our very own Toto Nsiala. Barely able to listen to the tale of shattered hopes unfolding in Buckinghamshire I catch up with more latest scores on Twitter and take another look at Facebook, where it is apparent that on one of the Ipswich Town supporters’ groups someone has been streaming the game from the ifollow. This has ended in verbal abuse if not tears, as most things on social media do, and the stream has stopped, for which the streamer has somewhat predictably received a fresh dose of abuse. It pains me that Ipswich Town supporters can’t all be nice to one another, but sadly intolerance seems to be quite the fashion nowadays.

It’s almost ten to five and despite Alex’s wishful commentating with “Wouldn’t it be lovely if Town could nick one” in fact it sounds like Town are mostly struggling to hold on to the draw. “An awful moment of comedy there” says Brenner as if reviewing an episode of ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’, but actually telling us about Town’s defence. Happily however, Town survive and whilst Alex’s hopes are not realised Brenner’s prediction of MK Dons goals is not either, and at four minutes to five full- time is called. We may have missed the start of Crackerjack but at least we haven’t lost.

Not feeling as relieved as I should that we didn’t lose I remain slumped in my Ikea Poang chair. Brenner and Alex each provide their brief summary of the match. “It was 1-0 to Town in the first half, and 1-0 to MK Dons in the second half” says Brenner. “Ipswich won the first half and MK Dons won the second” says Alex. Feeling enlightened beyond my wildest dreams I head for my beer cupboard, where I intend to stay until the next proper game on Saturday week.

Ipswich Town 3 Bristol Rovers 0

September 7, 2020 / martinpbrooks / 2 Comments

It’s the first Saturday in September and the weather has broken, although to be truthful it’s been looking a bit cracked for a while now. Autumn approaches. It rained overnight and whilst there are glimpses of sunshine it is straining to penetrate through the clouds and worst of all it feels cold. But on the bright side, today sees the start of the football season and mighty Ipswich Town, the vessel in which the hopes and dreams of a good many of the people of Suffolk are invested will be playing Bristol Rovers in what I refer to as the League Cup, but the football club, media and those who don’t know any better call the Carabao Cup. I didn’t used to know what Carabao was, I erroneously thought it was a wrongly spelt American name for a reindeer, but because of the League Cup, and thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that it is a domestic water buffalo from the Philippines and also a drink; not a proper drink mind, like Adnams Broadside, tea, Noilly Prat, milk, red wine, Fuller’s 1845, espresso coffee, Crémant, pineapple juice, Champagne, lime cordial, Belgian Trappist beer , hot chocolate or malt whisky but something called an ‘energy drink’. The sponsorship of football competitions is a curious thing and only adds to the feelings I have that I live as an outsider on the fringes of society, with the Milk Marketing Board being the only sponsor whose product I can honestly admit to ever having set out to purchase.

Kick-off is at three o’clock, but of course due to the Covid-19 pandemic it is not safe for a large crowd to gather and therefore no one is going to Portman Road today. Sadly, I shall be denied the joys of travelling on the trains of Greater Anglia, the pre-match pints, the quickening anticipation-filled walk down Portman Road and the click of the turnstile. Today I will not hear the moans of the home supporters nor the witless abuse of the away supporters; I will not receive the suspicious glances of luminous stewards nor feel the soft artificial fur of Bluey and Crazee as they brush past me with their out-sized heads and weird hoof-hands; I will not become engrossed in conversation nor share see-sawing emotions with Mick, ever-present Phil who never misses a game, the old dears, Ray and his grandson Harrison, or Pat from Clacton with her bag of sweets and lucky charm, the masturbating monkey.

Not thinking of what I am missing, I enjoy a light lunch of home-made spicy carrot soup with my wife Paulene whilst resisting the temptation of a beer, despite a choice of Adnams Ghostship, Adnams Ease Up IPA, Fuller’s Bengal Lancer, Chimay, Chimay Brun, Orval, Westmalle and Faro Foudroyante from my ‘beer cupboard’. We watch the Tour de France on the television, losing ourselves in the French countryside as an escape from the memory of lockdown. We talk and reminisce about holidays and trips to France. It’s a quarter past three. Flippin’ eck! The game has started and I hadn’t realised, this is what life is like without the discipline of the railway timetable to get me to the match. I leave Paulene somewhere in the Haute Garonne and find my radio, which is already tuned to BBC Radio Suffolk, because I like a laugh. I decided long ago that watching Town on the ifollow is not worth £10, particularly when I’ve already spent over £300 on a season ticket, so I settle down in an Ikea Poang chair in the back bedroom with Brenner Woolley and Mick Mills. Elvis Costello was right ” Radio is a sound salvation”.

Very quickly I learn that Aaron Drinan is pronounced Dry-nen and doesn’t rhyme with ‘linen’ as I previously thought it did, which I think is a useful start and then Mick Mills tells me that a half-chance for Bristol Rovers is the first time they have threatened Town’s goal so at least I can now be confident that we’re not losing. Brenner and Mick witter on and Brenner tells me that Tomas Holy “puts his foot through the ball”; I wait for the referee to stop the game to extricate Holy’s foot, but rather confusingly the commentary carries on with Brenner describing the ball as being passed “along the deck “and I now wonder if the game has been moved from Portman Road to an oil tanker; it’s common after all for the size of such ships to be measured in terms of football pitches. I’m still not sure of the up to date score but Brenner is hoping for a result in normal time, which implies the scores are still level and that he’s got better things to do after five o’clock than commentate on this. The absence of any crowd noise then strikes me for the first time and I am conscious of the shouts of the players echoing through the stands left cavernous and empty. Fittingly in all this blankness, Brenner at last reprises the score, it’s still nil-nil; I haven’t missed anything then. Phew.

Mick Mills is not a man to ever sound at all excited, but he feels moved to say that our left hand side has ‘come to life’ and produced two or three ‘moments’. That’s what the game is all about I think to myself and am heartened to hear Mick provide balance by wishing that the right hand side of the team could do the same. Brenner takes back control of the commentary and I learn that today Paul Lambert is wearing a big over coat, which is most unusual; I don’t think I’ve ever seen him not in a black v-neck sweater; perhaps the added security of his five year contract has led him to invest in a more extensive wardrobe, but I do worry that it’s a bit early in the year for an overcoat and surely this can only provoke more abuse from his critics on social media.

As I drift off into reverie about what is an appropriate coat for a football manager on a cool early September Saturday, Brenner announces that “Sears was not going to miss” and Town are 1-0 up. It’s twenty-eight minutes past three, I clench my left fist and softly whisper a sibilant ‘Yes’ to myself. “It was easy to get the ball down the corridor to Sears” says Mick Mills and once again I’m a bit lost trying to imagine where I’d seen any corridors at Portman Road, except beneath the stands, and worrying that if the ball was in a corridor surely it should have been a throw-in. I thank our lucky stars that our level of football is not subject to VAR.

With Town a goal up the game soon sounds like it has become a tad dull, or it could just be the commentary. Mick Mills increasingly seems like a comfortably retired man in his seventies, but the I remember that he is. Brenner meanwhile goes off piste and begins to talk about Town’s next game at home to the Arsenal Under-23 team in the now despicably compromised, credibility-lacking EFL Trophy, expressing his interest in seeing “…how good the latest crop of kids at the Emirates are”. If he’s so interested in bleedin’ Arsenal perhaps he should clear off to BBC London. Hopefully as annoyed as I am by Brenner’s concern about a club that isn’t Ipswich Town, Mick tries to break the mould by injecting a hint of excitement into the commentary and announces “That was a super pass from Dozzell” but he spoils it rather by pausing and then adding “so that was good”, as if his use of the adjective “super” was in retrospect going a bit far.

I look at my watch and find that it’s approaching half time and I think I discern from the commentary that Town have a corner. They do, and now it’s 2-0 courtesy of what Mick Mills dubs a ‘fabulous goal’ from Luke Chambers. “Luke Chambers is pretty deadly in the opposition box” says Mick leaving me to fill in the blanks that he can, on occasions, be quite deadly in his own box too. Half-time arrives and unlike at Portman Road I don’t make an undignified dash to the khasi but stay in my seat. This is no doubt in part due to not having a bladder full of the remnants of two or more pints of beer and partly because at Portman Road I am not pleasantly paralysed through sitting on a comfortable chair. For remaining seated I am rewarded by hearing Mick Mills refer to Aaron Drinan as Aaron Dry-nan although he instantly corrects himself to make Aaron’s surname rhyme with linen a la Brenner Woolley. Mick goes on to tempt fate horribly by saying that he “…cannot see Bristol Rovers coming back in to this”. I admire Mick’s forthrightness, but recent experience nevertheless leads me to offer a small prayer for him, and his opinion, despite my probable atheism. I take a brief trip downstairs to France to bring the gospel to my Christian wife that Town are winning 2-0. She asks if I am sure I have tuned into the right radio station.

The second half begins at the ridiculously late time of 4:06pm, and it’s not long before Mick Mills is telling me that the game has become a “…little but drab, a little bit boring”; if anyone should know about that it’s monotone Mick. Personally, I am finding the experience of sitting in my back bedroom listening to the wireless quite exciting and probably more interesting than if I had had to fork out a tenner or so for a match ticket plus as much again for the train fare, beer and perhaps a pie, all requirements if I was to attend in person. I am further enthralled when Brenner advises me as the ball is booted off the pitch that “…the ball is dipped in some sort of sterilizing solution when it goes in the seats over there”. I can’t help wondering why this is necessary; who normally sits in that part of the ground? What sort of unpleasant residue have they left? Why hasn’t that corner of the ground be cleaned since last March?

Moving on, Mick Mills is providing the most enjoyable moments of the commentary and, as he did in the first half, he gives praise but then tempers it. “That was a wonderful corner by Judge” he says before qualifying his statement by explaining “It was…………good”, once again suggesting that given time to think about it perhaps his initial assessment was a little too enthusiastic. It’s either that or he just doesn’t know that many adjectives. But there is no doubt that lurking beneath Mick’s inherent reticence and quietude there is a passion and he soon lets it out with the statement “There’s a lot of football in the team”. As for Brenner he can’t help but betray a certain cynicism, no doubt borne of over fifteen years commentating on the mighty Blues; “Good play from the Blues” says Brenner, before adding with perfect timing “At the moment”.

The second half is clearly not totally thrilling, but the impression received is thankfully that Town are playing within themselves and have the measure of these “Pirates”. The game plays on and I am guilty of paying more attention to Twitter than to Brenner and Mick as I seek to discover how the likes of Whitton United, Long Melford, Ipswich Wanderers, Stowmarket Town and Framlingham Town are getting on. I admit I haven’t really been paying close attention to the commentary but am nevertheless surprised at four thirty-three to hear Brenner say that Town are now 3-0 up, and although I will admit to reading Twitter I wonder how I could have missed hearing the goal go in. I am left to suppose Mick’s less than excited general delivery and Brenner’s overriding interest in the Arsenal’s “kids” could explain why neither commentator had succeeded in grabbing my attention. Fortunately, Twitter can also tell me that it was Freddie Sears who scored the third goal, in the 68^th minute as well as actually showing me the first two goals and then the third as well.

Time moves on inexorably and it’s now four forty-nine, and Brenner confirms that it’s been “all over really” since Freddie Sears scored Town’s third goal, as he stifles a yawn. Fittingly the commentary peters out a little with periods of silence punctuated with commentator clichés letting the eager listeners know that Bristol Rovers don’t have “enough left in the tank” to change the result and that Town have been “good value” for their lead. “Three-nil, Ipswich Town” says Brenner, saving up his allocation of useful verbs and adjectives for another day, perhaps when Arsenal’s “kids” might be playing. “Town, winding the clock down” says Mick. “According to my watch we’re just about there” are Brenner’s final words, as if prompting the referee to blow his whistle, which miraculously he then does.

Pleased that Town have won and pleased that I can leave Brenner and Mick alone together and return downstairs to my wife, I turn off my radio. I haven’t really had a clue what’s been going on all afternoon but I do know that Town have won a cup tie, scoring three times in the process and not conceding, even if I only noticed two of the goals and it feels as if it all happened in a far off universe, but being divorced from the proceedings the result is all that matters. Back to reality, if not normality; a glass of beer and fish and chips for tea. As Ray Davies of the Kinks told us in Autumn Almanac, “I like my football on a Saturday”.

Weather /Covid – 19 1 US Boulogne/ Lyon Duchere 0

March 23, 2020October 2, 2021 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

In April 2019 in a moment of brilliant optimism my wife and I bought ten crossings on Le Shuttle; they had to be used within twelve months but it was worth ‘buying in bulk’ for the discount ,and why wouldn’t we want to commit ourselves to getting away to continental Europe at least five times in the next year? We say “Bugger Brexit”. In April 2019 we went to Dijon, in July ,in the midst of the heatwave, we drove to Paris to spend a week looking after some friends’ dog and in September we were due to spend three weeks looking after a cat in Strasbourg. Disappointingly, we never made it to Strasbourg; in a personalised prototype of the current global shut-down, my life was put on hold as I spent five weeks in hospital and the best part of six months recuperating. But now I am at last repaired, and there’s a rush to use up our six remaining crossings. At the end of January we spent a few days in Belgium, foolishly departing early on the Saturday morning to catch Ipswich Town v Oxford United instead of staying to join the 4,423 who enjoyed KV Oostende v Sint-Truiden, and then a couple of weeks ago we arranged a long weekend in Boulogne and Calais, planned to coincide with US Boulogne’s Friday night fixture in Ligue National (the French third division) against Lyon Duchere.

Life is sweet we thought and with US Boulogne in third place it promised to be a lot of fun; but on the morning of our departure the game at the Stade de la Liberation in Boulogne is called off, supposedly because of windy weather; but all twenty games in the Ligue 1 and 2 programmes are already postponed because of Coronavirus and within a few hours the whole of the Ligue National programme is cancelled too. To add to our disappointment we had thought we were blessed by having succeeded in booking into a hotel with free parking opposite, which is a mere 300m walk from the stadium, and this had had us fantasising about being able to comfortably stagger back from the match hi on frites and Kronenburg, fine wine and third division football.

Friday is a beautiful sunny day with Boulogne-sur-Mer looking at its best, aided perhaps by no one much being about as schools and colleges begin to close and people stay at home due to Covid-19. We enjoy the street art on the gable ends of the town houses and telecom equipment boxes, I drink Chimay trappist ale at a street café whilst my wife drinks pastis, we walk the town ramparts and visit the cathedral crypt, I buy a postcard and we sit in the sun. Our day ends with a pleasant meal in a small restaurant in the centre of the fortified old town. I forget about the football but for a brief glimpse of a single floodlight pylon at the end of the road as we step from the hotel and cross into the old town. I sleep well and dream sweet dreams.

On Saturday morning the puddle of standing water on the flat roof outside our hotel room window ripples with falling rain drops. After breakfast we will depart for Calais, but first I must give my regards to the Stade de la Liberation and head out into the fine drizzle that is coming directly off the English Channel and dropping on Boulogne-sur Mer. Not wishing to provoke her asthma, my wife remains in our room watching the drama of the Corona virus unfold on French TV, when not looking for Les Lapins Cretins on the cartoon channel. But I have to get a measure of what I missed last night and imagine what I might have witnessed under the beams of those four floodlights.

The floodlights of the Stade de la Liberation peak over the roof tops around the ground, appearing between high gables and block of flats or hiding behind the spreading canopies of leafless grey trees. A sign with an arrow says “Ribery” and points the way to a stand at the side of the pitch named after Boulogne’s famous son Franck, one of those players not greatly celebrated in England because like Zidane, Trezeguet and Thuram he was always just a bit too classy for the Premier League.

The main entrance to Stade de la Liberation is on Boulevard Eurvin where I peer through the railings across the pitch past the statue of a naked woman clutching a shell and standing on a fish. How many clubs I wonder can boast such erotic statuary combined with references to seafood, not many I’ll wager. Smiling to myself about what they’d make of such things in Grimsby and Fleetwood I turn into Rue de Dringhen and then Rue Leo Lagrange, which run behind ‘Ribery’ whilst tantalisingly offering no views of it at all. Another right turn takes me in to Rue du Vieil-Atre and more sitings of the floodlights and the entrances to both the ‘Kop’ and the away supporters enclosure. Stickers adorn the signage outside indicating that at least one supporter from Creteil, a south eastern suburb or banlieu of Paris, has been here and that he, or she, was well supplied with Creteil related stickers. If the ultras from other clubs have stickers it would seem that Creteil are the only visiting supporters to have ventured this far north and they either went nowhere else or had stickers to spare.

An uncovered mass of seating above a scaffolding frame looms above me as I approach the turn into Rue Hector Berlioz , another residential street that backs onto the stadium. I like that every French town has streets named after the same great French composers and writers and wonder why England is so different and why we choose not to remember Britten or Williams or Holst but to honour local councillors and dignitaries who no one has ever heard of and even less gives a toss about. Between the buildings there are glimpses of the cream painted render of the art deco style Tribune ‘Honneur’ where the posh people sit; but in truth the ground is now largely hidden but for the occasional lamp of a floodlight poking over or between the rooftops. A few more steps up the slope between parked cars and my tour of the Stade de la Liberation is over and I find myself back on the Boulevard Eurvin.

To be honest, in my ten minute walk I’ve not seen a lot of the Stade de la Liberation ,but what I have seen has been a series of snatched, tantalising half views of bits of stands and floodlights and signs and traces of those who’ve been here before, added to which my coat, my trousers and my shoes are all a little wet. I will now be sure to remember for posterity my visit to US Boulogne during the great pandemic of 2020, and I will be able to tell my grandchildren that I got wet watching a game that never happened, having not even got into the stadium. But it’s of such tales of pointless folly that football legend is made and such suffering and stupidity is what following football is all about.

Ipswich Town 1 Wigan Athletic 0

December 16, 2018December 17, 2018 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

In 1978 when Ipswich Town were winning the FA Cup, Wigan Athletic finished second in the Northern Premier League behind Boston United and were elected to the Football League in place of Southport. Today, as ever-present Phil who never misses a game will later joke, Wigan are Town’s peers and today we meet. That’s a good joke Phil, you are wasted teaching IT to the youth of Northampton. Wigan bobbed about in the ‘lower divisions’ for several years, I remember seeing them lose frequently at Layer Road in the 1990’s, but eventually the club had the good fortune to be adopted by millionaire Dave Whelan who built them a stadium and paid their way in to the Premier League (spit). I met Dave Whelan once in a professional capacity; he flew down to Ipswich by helicopter just to meet me, and my colleague (boss). As we talked informally to break the ice my colleague, let’s call him Steve because that is his name, offered him a million pounds for Titus Bramble (then a Wigan Athletic player) and he accepted. I’m still not sure what we would have done with Titus Bramble in our office.

Today is a gloriously grey mid-December day. The sky is dull, the wind is gusty and the cold is very cold; so cold it cuts against my skin like a knife as I walk to the railway station. There are plenty of people waiting for the 12:57 train; Christmas shoppers mostly, heading for the bright, twinkling lights of Colchester. The train is late. A freight train seems to be to blame; it crawls through the station belching thick, dark diesel fumes. “Bloody hell” says a youth out to his impress his mates before he breaks into a bout of ostentatious coughing. More mature people cover their noses with their scarves or hold their breath. I wander down the platform and wait near a man who has hair like a young Sid James. The train is nine minutes late, but arrives in due course. As it draws into the platform two men in their late sixties manoeuvre themselves towards the sliding doors. “Ooh, it’s one of the refurbished ones, have you been on one of these?” says one of the men who has an unfortunate squint to one eye. The other man doesn’t answer. I imagine he’s thinking “Twat”.

The Christmas shoppers and Sid James desert the train at Colchester and I am left to contemplate a sign inviting me to recharge my lap-top, tablet or phone, but only my lap-top, tablet or phone, from a sealed up power point. It’s as if Greater Anglia railways had considered being generous, but then thought better of it.

Ipswich is as grey and cloudy as the station where I began my journey and the streets are cold and quiet. I stride over the Princes Street bridge purposefully in my overcoat and blue and white scarf, probably smiling slightly to myself because I’m looking forward to the match; surely we can win today, I’m thinking. A woman in a car waiting at the traffic lights catches my eye and gives me the thumbs up. Yes, we will surely win today. I see the banners on the lamp posts advertising the Rodin exhibition at the gallery in Christchurch Park and am further inspired; I really must go and see ‘The Kiss’. We’ve got it all in Ipswich. Seriously.

Portman Road is quiet for a match day but perhaps that is because the turnstiles are already open and the people usually here at 1.30 are all inside doing whatever people who arrive an hour and a half before kick-off do. I head for the Fanzone to deliver a bag of groceries to the FIND foodbank charity; I’m not going into the Fanzone but a steward tries to stop me nevertheless because I haven’t shown that I have a match ticket, I tell them not to fret, I’m only going ‘over here’. Hopefully FIND will have had a successful day and will make further collections on future match days.

I head on to St Jude’s Tavern past a steward walking a car along Sir Alf Ramsey Way, I call to him that he needs a red flag. St Jude’s is very busy but I quickly avail myself of a pint of the Match Day Special (£2.50) which today is St Jude’s Thaddeus. I perch on a bar stool in a dark corner; it’s the only vacant seat left. I’m not quite half way through my pint when Mick appears at the door, the large fur-trimmed hood of his coat casts a deep shadow over his face and beard making him look a little like a slightly sinister polar explorer. Mick quickly acquires a pint of the Thaddeus too and we talk of car insurance, my recent weekend in Amiens, of Trappist beers (Orval and Chimay), Jules Verne, ethical candles, gilets jaunes and Emmanuel Macron. Finishing my first pint, I buy a pint of Mr Bee’s Black Bee (£3.40) and Mick has a half of the Match Day Special. Time flies by and it’s almost ten to three, I have to dash.

I seem to be the last person to be making his way down Portman Road towards the glowing floodlights, in the nearing distance supporters scurry across from the car park and hurry through the turnstiles like people getting in, out of the rain. At the Sir Alf Ramsey Stand I greet the turnstile operator with cheery smile and proceed to the seats where as ever I will find ever-present Phil who never misses a game, and Pat from Clacton.

Phil hands me a Christmas card, which is nice and after the referee Mr Scott Duncan poses for photos with the team captains and mascots the match is soon underway. Town get first go with the ball and are trying to send it in the direction of me, Phil and Pat. Town as ever wear blue and white shirts despoiled by the ugly advert for on-line betting whilst Wigan are obviously the away team because they are all in yellow.

The game is a bit of a mess. Town start slightly better than Wigan and mill around their goal for a bit, but without threatening to score. Not really making the best of the Latin rhythms of Guantanamera, the 310 Wigan supporters in the Cobbold Stand sing “Down with the Wanderers, You’re going down with the Wanderers”. Presumably they are addressing their song to Ipswich and not to their own team, but you never know. At the North Stand end of the ground the ambience is less Cuban and South American and more Spanish, although the chants of “Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole” are swept away on the icy wind above the muffled sound of drums. Wigan begin to have more of the ball, but are as ineffective close to Ipswich’s goal as we are to theirs.
The game settles down into scruffy mediocrity but the hope that everyone is drawing from the realisation that Wigan are as bad as we are is palpable; at times that hope congeals into belief and the vestiges of long lost vocal support ripple through the stands. “We’re going to see Tina Turner the musical on Friday, in London” I hear Pat say. “I’m not” says Phil.

There are several free-kicks and the Wigan players seem keen to hold proceedings up whenever they can by feigning mortal injury and clutching various limbs before skipping off to kick or shove someone in blue and white. Frustrated by another delay the old dear behind shouts “Keep it goin’, we gotta get home tonight. It’s obviously not cold enough for ‘em.”

With a half an hour gone a tuneless, droning chant of “Wigan, Wigan, Wigan, Wigan, Wigan” makes a succinct commentary on the type of game it is and makes me think of the Buzzcocks’ “Boredom” and I mourn the death of Pete Shelley quietly to myself whilst waiting for something good to happen. A page from a copy of the East Anglian Daily Times dances its way across the pitch, blown and buffeted by the wind. Then another page floats by and another. “ It’s coming across a page at a time” says the elderly voice behind me and she chuckles ,enjoying the sight of paper blowing about more than the match it seems. A serious looking steward with a head wrapped in earphones steps forward to grab a piece of the newspaper and dispose of it. “Underground, overground, Wombling free” I sing. It’s twenty-five to four and Freddie Sears breaks free of the Wigan defence, he bears down on goal, he shoots over the cross bar. Five minutes later Wigan’s, or more accurately Everton’s Callum Connolly misses the goal too after a corner, “Crikey, you’re worse than us” is the verdict from behind me.
Half-time is a blessed opportunity to thaw my hands beneath the warm air blowers in the gents’ toilet; it’s a cold day and I’ve drunk two pints of beer so I take the chance to use the other facilities too. Outside on the concourse I eat a Panda brand liquorice stick and then, back in the stand chat with Ray, who also hands me a Christmas card. It is starting to rain and it’s getting dark.
The second half of the match begins and the break has made me more conscious of the cold easterly wind; even Paul Lambert has a coat on this afternoon, even if he has left it not done up. For now, despite slowly numbing fingers due to fingerless gloves, I feel warm. My woolly socks, cosily fitting boxer shorts bought in an Amiens supermarket (Auchan), a T-shirt bearing the words “Allez-les bleus”, long-sleeve cotton 1950’s Ipswich football shirt, chunky woolly jumper, beneath a heavy overcoat, and a woolly ITFC badged hat and scarf seem to be doing the trick. I was worried about the boxer shorts because they have the word ‘Athletic’ all around the waist band, but have decided that like sticking pins in a wax effigy having a part of the name of our opponents printed on my pants will put a hex on them.

The standard of football doesn’t improve. “It’s probably better on the radio” says the old girl behind me. The cold intensifies with the rain and my feet start to feel like blocks of ice. Dean Gerken the Ipswich goalkeeper draws disapproving moans and groans from the crowd as he hurries a clearance, which screws away into touch. He glowers back at the crowd. Perhaps he senses and even resents the loyalty in the crowd to Bartosz Bialkowski. The wind and rain are making it difficult for players who like to hoof the ball, but I think we are right to expect better on this occasion. I begin to wonder if this game might not become the win we are waiting for, but despite that minor ‘altercation’ with “Gerks” there is still a prevailing atmosphere of hope and support. We know we aren’t here to be entertained, we are here to see a win and people are sensing that they have some part in making that happen because perhaps the team might not be able to do it alone. Every now and then a string of on-field events will cause an eruption of supportive sounds from the stands and belief is restored. Even when a shot from Wigan’s Reece James strikes the Ipswich cross bar it seems to galvanise the support, not make them depressed and scornful as would have happened last season. It’s gone twenty past four and an Ipswich ‘attack’ takes ‘shape’ in a random manner on the right. The ball is hit hither and thither and into the box where there is more bagatelle until Freddie Sears half volleys the ball into the ground and towards the goal, it strikes Everton’s Callum Connolly and, as Wigan goalkeeper Christian Walton looks over his shoulder, the back of the goal net. Ipswich Town are winning.
The remaining twenty four minutes are both awful and utterly enjoyable. The referee Mr Scott Duncan, despite having the name of a former Town manager whom the supporters respect, unlike the last four managers, makes a catalogue of dubious decisions many involving granting Wigan free-kicks around the edge of the penalty area. But this only draws everyone together, if we have to beat both Wigan Athletic and the referee so be it. Town manager Paul Lambert is equally gung-ho and has now discarded his coat like some sort of footballing King Lear challenging the wind and freezing rain to do its worst. Wigan’s last chance is the ludicrous addition of seven minutes of time added on, it’s as if Wigan have benefitted from their own time wasting earlier in the match. But thankfully Wigan are not good enough to make anything of it. If it was a Friday in the 1960’s it would be time for Crackerjack by now, but at last Mr Duncan’s whistle draws its last and Town have won at home for the first time in just over six months and for just the third time this year.
This has been the worst brilliant match I have ever seen and certainly the best terrible one too. The foul, freezing weather has just made it more marvellous, more memorable. This is what being a football supporter is all about, days like this. I have learned again the joy of a single win. The wait has been worth it. I feel sorry for those supporters of clubs who have never been bottom of the league in mid-December without a home win, they don’t know what they’ve missed. Today our souls have been enriched.
Tonight my wife and I shall drink champagne.