Chuba Akpom

Ipswich Town 1 Watford 1

/ martinpbrooks / 1 Comment

 Leaving off work on a November evening is one of life’s many pleasures, as indeed is leaving off work at any time of day or year but the fading light and swirling russet leaves, like in the opening scene of The Exorcist, somehow add a layer of gloomy beauty that enchants.  Add the prospect of an evening kick-off at Portman Road, and the streets of Ipswich are alive with worried expectation.  Opposite the bus depot I ‘bump into’ Richard, a long-since disillusioned but long-time Town supporter, who now occasionally catches a game when he can but mostly watches local non-league football.  He’s on his way to meet a friend for a pre-match drink but has arrived early, so we have time to stand in the glow of a streetlight and talk of Brightlingsea Regent, Wivenhoe Town, Hackney Wick, SOUL Tower Hamlets and Kings Park Rangers, who sound from Richard’s account of a recent match like hired hitmen.  Richard is concerned that the team that starts tonight’s match will not be the same one that started the match on Saturday.

Leaving Richard to go his own way, I have time to visit the recently installed ‘portal’ on Cornhill, and because I’m not sure what else to do, wave to people in Dublin and New York, some of whom wave back.  Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought ahead and prepared a rude comment about Donald Trump to hold up on a piece of cardboard.  I had wondered what the point of the portal is and still do but think I like it.  It’s good to know I can momentarily make meaningless, mute contact with someone in Lithuania, Poland or Brazil.

At ‘the Arb,’ there are people crowding around the bar umming and ahhing over what they want to eat. Over their heads I order a pint of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride, and they seem surprised when I am being served, and they are not.  When did people stop understanding the etiquette of pubs and bars?  I add an order of chilli, chips and cheese (£13) and retire to the beer garden with my beer to wait for Gary, Mick and the chilli, chips and cheese.  Gary is first to arrive in his orange puffa jacket and with a pint of Spanish lager.  The chilli, chips and cheese are next, followed by some cutlery, and then Mick who arrives before I finish eating.  Mick has a pint of Suffolk Pride, Gary then has chilli, chips and cheese and Mick has chips and Emmental and he also buys another round of two pints of Suffolk Pride and Spanish lager as we talk of how busy the funeral business is currently, inter-sex sports people, Gary’s favourite places in India, Gary’s quiz team, the sale of Mick’s deceased neighbour’s house, a woman Gary and I knew who reached the final of tv’s Mastermind, whether Quorn comes from Quorn in Leicestershire, re-using Haig Fund poppies, the presence of gender in the Romance languages and  other things that I’ve probably forgotten.  There’s finally still time for me to buy another half of Suffolk Pride for myself and a whisky for Mick, but Gary is too full of chilli, chips, cheese and gassy Spanish lager to consume another drop.

As ever, we are the last to leave for Portman Road; it is twenty-three minutes past seven.  At Portman Road there is no queue into the stand formerly known as Churchman’s and seeing the security staff brandishing their magic wands for detecting weapons, I stick my arms out wide as I approach. The security man smiles broadly, “You’re flying already” he says in a jolly Afro-Caribbean-cum-London accent.  “High as a kite” I tell him, pretending to be, in the words of Marge Simpson ‘whacked out of my gourd’. After venting the spent drug of my choice, Suffolk Pride, I emerge into the stand in time for a minute’s silence for Armistice Day and the last post, something I still find odd in the context of attending a football match. Inevitably, Fiona, the man from Stowmarket (Paul) and ever-present Phil who never misses a game are already here, but Phil’s son Elwood is absent and so is Pat from Clacton, although on the end of the row sits a woman in dark glasses who looks a bit like her.  Of course, in reality, the woman on the end of the row is Pat from Clacton and she’s not in disguise, only shielding her eyes from the glare of the floodlights having recently had cataracts removed.

I seem to have missed the announcing of tonight’s team, the ritual of remembrance having taken precedence over the usual pre-match ritual, and with players’ huddles out of the way it’s Ipswich who proceed to get first go with the ball, which they predominantly aim in the direction of the goal in front of me and my fellow ultras.  As usual, Town sport their signature blue and white kit, whilst visiting Watford sport lurid, garish yellow shirts with red stripes and red shorts, colours which remind me of centrifuged blood and the French second division team Le Mans FC.

Ipswich quickly win a corner, so quickly in fact that I forget to chant “Come on You Blues” and the attacking opportunity is hopelessly wasted before I even realise.  I’m still getting to grips with the diminutive height of the referee and the poppies on the players’ shirts as Town win a free-kick and Jaden Philogene places the ball very inexpertly and disappointingly over the Watford crossbar.   A short while later Jens Cajuste shimmies wonderfully between a couple of Watford players on the edge of their penalty area, and the home crowd sing supportively for their team. Watford look tidy, but Ipswich are tidier.

Almost inevitably, despite not being as tidy as Ipswich, it is Watford who score.  The sixteenth minute is Town’s undoing along with a general melting away of any defence on the right-hand side of the pitch, resulting in a low cross and a simple close-range goal from the misleadingly named Louza.  “We’re winning away, we’re winning away, how shit must you be?  We’re winning away” chant the Watford supporters to the tune of the Beach Boys’ Sloop John B in what passes for humour amongst most football crowds.  Meanwhile I snigger because Watford’s number six is called Matthew Pollock, I just can’t help myself when people are named after certain fish.

Happily, Watford won’t be winning for long and after George Hirst heads over the crossbar, central defender Cedric Kipre provides a through ball worthy of any midfield maestro and Jaden Philogene scoops and curls the ball over the prone body of Watford’s Norwegian goalkeeper, and the score is one all.  “We’re no longer winning away, we’re no longer winning away, you’re better than we thought you were, we’re no longer winning away” chant the Watford fans, except of course they don’t.  Instead, the excitable young stadium announcer tells us excitedly and loudly that the goalscorer is “Our” Jaden Philogene, and he then proceeds to bawl “Jaden” and wonderfully allows the crowd to chant “Philogene”, which happens three times, as if we were in the Stade Roudourou or somewhere equally French.  Ever-present Phil who never misses a game turns around wide-eyed, with a look of surprised recognition on his face to celebrate the moment with me. “All hail the excitable young stadium announcer” I think to myself.

There are still the best part of seventy minutes left to record a famous victory, although the tiny referee seems to want to make things as difficult as he can as he takes his time allowing Chuba Akpom back on the pitch after receiving treatment.   The expected goals don’t happen. Watford win a couple of corners. “Event cleaning” say the electronic advertising boards on the Sir Bobby Robson stand before promoting the name of RJ Dean Plasterers, and probably because this is advertising, I think of Pearl & Dean at the cinema; Baba, baba, baba, baba, bababa. There are three minutes of added on time, which is long enough for Watford’s Kwadwo Baah to claim the first booking of the evening. BahBah, BahBah, BahBah, BahBah, BahBahBah.    The Watford supporters complain, perhaps because given the number of fouls that had previously gone unpunished they thought their team had diplomatic immunity, and the Town supporters claim to have forgotten the Watford supporters were here.  “Plus ca change” I think to myself, briefly returning to the Stade Roudourou.

With the half-time whistle I speak to Ray his son Michael and grandson Harrison at the front of the stand.  Strangely, we don’t mention the match, perhaps because we can’t hear ourselves think, let alone speak above the deafening public address system.

The second half brings a booking for George Hirst after ten minutes after he is fouled and no free-kick is given and so he not unreasonably assumes it’s open season; if it is it ends just before he gets to the other bloke.  “Watford, Watford, Watford, Watford” sing the Watford fans to the tune of “Amazing Grace”, which is itself amazing and also rather funny.  Nearly an hour has gone the way of history, and we get to cheer another booking for Watford’s Mark Bola, who is momentarily as popular as Ebola.  The second half has ebbed and flowed a bit but whilst Watford create no chances whatsoever, they still pass the ball very nicely and I think they look quite good, which might help explain an unusual interlude in which Jaden Philogene and Azor Matusiwa almost come to blows and probably would do if Cajuste doesn’t step into keep them apart.

It’s always time for change with about a half an hour left to play and tonight is no exception as Clarke, Azon and Taylor usurp Jaden Philogene, George Hirst and Jens Cajuste.  Pat from Clacton clearly thinks in the same way as Keiran McKenna, but with no substitutes of her own to bring on she just delves into her handbag to pull out the masturbating monkey charm, who reportedly has changed many a game in the past, although I’ve never witnessed it myself. The monkey passes from Pat to Fiona to me and I ask what I’m supposed to do with him. “Rub his head” says Fiona. Relieved, I hand him back to Fiona who hands him back to Pat who puts him back in her handbag.  Victory is now assured.

Time takes us into the last twenty minutes of ‘normal’ time and Watford make a copycat triple substitution as the bloke beside me complains that “There’s no end product” and then says it again.  Moments later there is an ‘end product’ from Ivan Arzon, but what should be a decisive net-rustling header is one that goes unpleasantly wide.  Akpom and Johnson are replaced by Nunez and Greaves.

Eighty-two minutes have joined the persistence of memory and Arzon misses again, this time shooting over the cross bar, and we are told that there are 27,184 of us here tonight, the lowest attendance for a home fixture in over two and half years; since we played Shrewsbury Town and the Shrews brought just 343 supporters with them.  As time begins to run away from us, Watford win a corner and then Ivan Arzom has a header saved by the Watford goalkeeper. Two minutes remain of the original ninety and it’s Town’s turn to have a corner from which the ball lands at the feet of Nunez, clear at the far post and perhaps six yards from it.  Nunez proceeds to display how he may always be tainted by having played for Norwich City and boots the ball hopelessly high and wide of the gaping target.

Seven minutes of added on time are added on and whilst it seems like renewed hope, of course it isn’t , and we even have to defend another couple of Watford corner kicks, although I remain confident that there will be no injury time defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, mainly because we’ve never been winning.  With the final whistle I rise from my seat and promptly depart because I have only eight or nine minutes in which to get the ‘early’ train home.   I console myself with the thought that although we should have won, at least we didn’t lose, although at the railway station I will meet Richard again, who will  describe himself as ‘underwhelmed’, but may be he doesn’t enjoy leaving off work on a November evening as much as I do.

Ipswich Town 1 West Bromwich Albion 0

/ martinpbrooks / 2 Comments

Another Saturday, another kick-off time, this time 12:30 when most civilized people are at least beginning to think about a pre-lunch drink or perhaps even lunch itself.  But it’s not lunchtime yet and I’m struggling to make breakfast as the seven-month-old induction hob in my kitchen refuses to turn on, simply announcing ‘error’ every time I press the on button, and refusing to give me any of the error numbers listed in the instruction manual.  Frustrated but not beaten I resort to an earlier technology using the grill to cook the bacon and microwave for the scrambled eggs.

Barely ten minutes after finishing breakfast I’m off down the road to the railway station as rooks circle above as if about to re-enact a scene from ‘The Birds’.   Arriving at the railway station I am conscious that for the first time this season my hands feel cold, and putting on my woolly gloves I  witness a man who had been standing about 50m away from all the other passengers on the London bound platform having to walk back down the platform when the train pulls in because it is half the length he evidently expected to be.  I am still feeling sympathy for him when the Ipswich train arrives, probably because there’s been nothing else to make me forget him and probably because it’s the sort of thing I can envisage happening to me.

Not much more than five minutes later Gary is sitting opposite me and we’re talking about how there will be forty-eight teams at the next World Cup finals and how games will take place thousands of miles apart in America, Canada and Mexico, which won’t help save the planet so there can be future World Cup finals with even more teams. 

Arriving in Ipswich,  Gary remarks on how well located the Station Hotel is for away fans and I add that Ipswich Town generally has one of the best locations of any football ground anywhere, being close to both the town centre and the main railway station. Why everywhere is not like Ipswich I cannot imagine, all we’re missing are some trams. It’s still about two hours until kick-off, so the streets are relatively quiet, but there are still eager, expectant people seemingly with nowhere better to go, hanging round the turnstiles of Portman Road.  At the Arb,’ our path to the bar is unhindered by other drinkers and although I order a pint of Estrella Galicia for Gary and a pint of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride for myself Gary offers to pay for them, and I let him.  We repair to the beer garden to sit in the cold because that’s what we’ll be doing at Portman Road.  We’re talking of someone Gary knew who died in tragic circumstances when Mick arrives and when Mick returns from the bar our grim conversation continues with talk of wills and probate and then the worryingly large number of despotic political figures around the world and how it can only end in war; it must be our age. Mick buys another round of drinks and with the clock ticking past noon I ponder whether there is time for another pint, or perhaps a half before we leave.  I almost reluctantly decide against it and Mick says, “You could have an orange juice”.  “Why on earth would I want to do that?” I ask as incredulously as I possibly can.

As ever, we revel in being the last to leave for Portman Road, scoffing at the ‘lightweights’ who have gone before us.  We part near Sir Alf Ramsey’s statue and bid each other ‘adieu’ until Tuesday week when we will meet again for the match versus Watford. I march onto Chancery Road to make my approach to the Sir Alf Ramsey stand where there no queues at all for the turnstiles, my way being only interrupted by a pretty, Muslim lady with a magic wand looking for weapons. She asks me what I have in pockets and I show her my pair of woolly gloves.  I enter the stadium through the hallowed turnstile 62 and with no one else about it feels like Portman Road belongs to me.

After siphoning off excess Suffolk Pride I arrive at my seat as flames erupt into the air in front of Cobbold Stand and pigeons take evasive action.  Fiona, the man from Stowmarket (Paul), ever-present Phil who never misses a game, and his son Elwood are all here of course, but Pat from Clacton has failed a late fitness test, and she remains in Clacton with the remains of her Covid infection.  On the pitch-side, the excitable young stadium announcer and his sidekick are sporting shiny new sports coats over their shiny suits and look like two grey, striped sausage rolls on legs.  Oddly, my mind is elsewhere as the Town team is announced and I forget to bellow out the players’ names in the style of a Frenchman at the Stade Marcel-Picot or Stade Oceane, only emerging from my reverie in time to shout “O’Shea!”.  I think I must have been thinking of Pat from Clacton.

Before kick-off this lunchtime there is a minute’s applause for recently deceased Town player Mick McNeil, although he deservedly gets a cite more than a minute’s applause because the crowd begins to clap as soon as his picture appears on the big screen in the corner or the referee blows his whistle. It might seem a bit shambolic but it’s also fitting that the fans do their own thing on these occasions because spontaneity is what football crowds are all about. With the applause finally over, it is Town’s opponents West Brom’ that get first go with the ball, which they attempt to launch at the goal at the end of the ground closest to the chip shop on the corner of London Road and Handford Road and the old waterworks on Whitton Church Lane, which is much further away and I don’t know why I thought of it. West Brom’ are ill-advisedly wearing yellow and green striped shirts and green shorts.  Ipswich of course wear classic blue and white and kick towards me and my fellow ultras.  Within a couple of minutes, the game surprisingly develops into an extended bout of head tennis, possibly the longest bout of head tennis I’ve ever seen in a football match. Inevitably however, like everything including life itself the head tennis ends eventually, although I’d hoped it might continue for longer, and I’m struck by the thought that West Brom and Ipswich are quite alike in being failed Premier League teams desperate to return.

After five minutes, Jaden Philogene runs and shoots for the far corner of the goal and the West Brom’ goalkeeper Griffiths dives athletically to push the ball away for a corner.  It’s all very dramatic and spectacular and has me thinking “Wow!”, which is not something I do often.  Like most Ipswich corners and probably every other team’s corners the resultant corner comes to nothing, and I’m left to notice how swirly the wind is as it ruffles the players shirts and makes the three flags on the Cobbold stand flutter wildly.

The ninth minute is here and so is Jaden Philogene again, crossing the ball low for Sam Szmodics to not quite reach and divert into the West Brom’ goal.  Szmodics has stretched himself a bit too much and receives treatment from the physio as a result, revealing a flash of tattooed torso in the process, making me think of Rod Steiger in the film The Illustrated Man.  Five minutes later and Jack Taylor breaks forward through the centre of the West Brom’ defence, which parts like the Red Sea before he unfortunately shoots wide of Griffiths’ right-hand post.  I think to myself that I hope this game doesn’t turn out like the one last Tuesday as the electronic advertisement hoardings seemingly incite revolution, reading “Change the way the world works”.

Meanwhile, from up in the Cobbold Stand it sounds like the visiting fans are singing “We’re the Albion we’ll sit on our own”, although I’ll later work out that they’re not feeling anti-social, but want to “…sing on their own”, which is a jibe at the home fans not singing.  But the fact is, Suffolk is probably just less musical than Warwickshire and the West Midlands, and the tally of Nik Kershaw, The Darkness, Brian Eno and Ed Sheeran versus Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Roy Wood, Slade, Nick Drake and The Specials rather proves it. 

Time has progressed to a point almost half-way through the first half and Sam Szmodics slopes off to be replaced by Chuba Akpom who soon wins Town another corner  with a deflected shot, and I’m struck by the uncanny similarity, particularly of haircuts, between George Hirst and a pair of twins I recall from primary school who were called Nigel and Neville.  Twenty-nine minutes have left us, and Town win another corner. “Come On You Blues” I shout repeatedly, but no one much seems to get that they’re meant to join in and produce a crescendo of noise which will frighten the ball into the West Brom’ net.

Town have been dominant again, but with about ten minutes to go until half-time they seem to be generously letting West Brom’ have a go with the ball, and ‘the visitors’ as radio commentators like to call them bag a couple of corners of their own, but naturally do nothing of interest with them.  Indeed, West Brom’s spell of possession, is just that and nothing more, although for a short while the lack of action causes Portman Road to fall completely silent.  “I thought I’d gone deaf for a moment” says the bloke behind me.  Two minutes of added time are added on to give us our money’s worth, but the first half ends without a goal being scored.

Having cheered the referee off the pitch, I vent more spent Suffolk Pride and then visit Ray, his son Michael and grandson Harrison at the front of the stand.  Pessimistically, Ray and I air concerns about the match so far being like Tuesday night’s, and Ray delivers his well-rehearsed joke that “It feels like deja vu all over again” before we talk about travelling around Europe and Ray reminisces about a trip to the Netherlands in his youth, before he met the woman he refers to as “the present Mrs Kemp.”

The football resumes at thirty-three minutes past one and the man from Stowmarket (Paul) gives me his assessment that the game doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, and unfortunately the absence of decent goal attempts continues.  “We’re the Albion” chant the West Brom’ fans seemingly trying to stave off some sort of identity crisis and then Chuba Akpom starts to limp, takes off his left boot and with sixty minutes played is substituted with Nunez.  The match however has become dull, “Football in a library” chant the West Brom’ fans consulting the well-thumbed pages of the English football supporters’ book of quick wit and ready repartee for something appropriate. On the touchline, Keiran McKenna acknowledges the chill in the air today having donned a short, dark grey puffa jacket, although he probably needs something more like the sports coats that stadium announcer Yogi and his sidekick Boo-Boo are wearing, but more colourful.

Twenty-five minutes of normal time remain and Town’s Sindre Egeli shoots wide to momentarily excite the home crowd and inspire the “witty” West Bromwichians to chant “We forgot, we forgot, we forgot that you were here” to the Welsh hymn tune Cwm Rhondda.  Two minutes later and Egeli is at it again but shooting embarrassingly high and wide, which people find less exciting.   With only seventeen ‘normal’ minutes remaining West Brom’ win another corner to keep the Town goal safe, and two minutes later George Hirst shows how he really is the new Rory Delap by becoming the first player to be booked.  Hirst keeps in the limelight by being substituted a minute later along with Philogene and Jack Taylor, who are replaced by Ivan Arzon, Jack Clarke and Jens Cajuste before today’s attendance is announced as 28,447.  In a busy couple of minutes, which almost pass for entertainment referee Mr Smith then books West Brom’ number two Chris Mepham, who coincidentally has the same surname as a girl I liked at primary school, although in truth I liked her friend Elaine a lot more.

With the end of the match in sight, either the substitutions are tactically astute or the players realise that they’d better do something quickly if they’re going to bank a win bonus this week and there is a noticeable increase in attacking intent with Nunez and Jack Clarke looking unexpectedly capable of penetrating the West Brom’ defence.   The decisive play however comes from West Brom’ themselves who, keen to emulate Paris St Germain and Real Madrid by religiously “playing out from the back” conspire to lose the ball to Jens Cajuste no more than 15 metres from goal. Cajuste passes to Nunez or may be Azon ( i couldnt really tell from over 100 metres away) whose shot is parried by goalkeeper Griffiths but Jack Clarke strides forward to sweep the ball high into the goal net with the kind of stylish aplomb only accessible to a player wearing an alice band.

The remaining minutes, of which five are ones that have been dangerously ‘added on’ pass with a degree of anxiety but surprisingly without much fuss or any sharp intakes of breath.    Fiona and the man from Stowmarket (Paul) make a swift exit at the final whistle, but  today I am pleased to have the time before my train home to wait behind and applaud the team for forgoing lunch to deliver this unusually welcome victory.  Now, I wonder what time our next match kicks off at?