clacton

Ipswich Town 3 Blackburn Rovers 0

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Woke up, fell out of bed.  It was damp and dreary outside when I drew back the bedroom curtains.  Feeling inspired, I thought I’d check to see when I had last seen Ipswich Town play Blackburn Rovers, and I was surprised to learn that it was in August of 2018; it was the first game at Portman Road under the pitiful and thankfully brief leadership of the diminutive Paul Hurst.  In case you’re wondering, I missed Blackburn’s last visit to Ipswich in September 2023 because I was in Brest, where I witnessed Stade Brestois beat Olympique Lyonnais one-nil to go top of Ligue1.

Times change, but Ipswich Town are playing Blackburn Rovers again today (Brest are away to Lyon tomorrow) and today’s match kicks-off at the silly time of 12:30pm, when civilised people should be eating lunch, in the pub, or still in bed.   I catch the train to Ipswich, looking up I notice it isn’t late, and I have a carriage to myself until Gary joins me at the first station stop in his brightly coloured anorak. The train speeds on through a damp and dismal winter wonderland of bare trees and decaying vegetation, brightened only by the sighting of two very off-white polar bears that live by a lake in Wherstead.  Arriving in Ipswich, pale sunshine is straining its way through the cloud because the sun always shines in Ipswich or tries to.  As we cross Princes Street bridge there are just two people sat in the beer garden of the Station Hotel and they look very young; they’re probably drinking Vimto.

In Portman Road, a crowd of people loiter, waiting for the turnstiles to open.  Gary and I speculate as to the attractions that Portman Road holds ninety minutes before kick-off but can’t think of any.  I am first through the door at the Arb and with no other punters at the bar I am soon paying for a pint of Estrella Galicia for Gary and a pint each of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride for Mick and myself (£14.90 with Camra discount).  We repair to the beer garden to sit in the shelter that backs on to High Street, joining a solitary man with glasses and tied back hair at the end table having first asked if we may; we may. Mick is late, but it’s not long before he arrives.  We talk of the African Cup of Nations, how Mick will miss Tuesday’s match because he must go to Scotland for a funeral, of the Tory councillor from Lymington in Hampshire sent to prison for twenty weeks for stalking former Tory MP Penny Mordaunt, and jury service.  Gary buys more drinks and we leave for Portman Road at about ten past twelve once we’re happy that we are the last to leave.

We part ways near Sir Alf Ramsey’s statue; Mick and Gary heading for the west stand whilst I make for turnstile sixty-two and the cheap seats of the Sir Alf Ramsey stand, where a smiling man first scans me for concealed weapons and scrap metal.  From outside, I have already heard the excitable young stadium announcer reading out the names of the teams and I didn’t join in.   After disposing of spent Suffolk Pride in the proper manner, I make for the stand, pausing only to allow the minute’s applause for all deceased Ipswich Town fans to end. I’m not a fan of the mawkish, public sentimentality of the ‘Memorial Day’.  Grief is private, life is for the living and we’re all going to die.

Kick-off is moments away as I shuffle past Pat from Clacton and Fiona to my seat a row or two behind ever-present Phil who never misses a game and his son Elwood, and two along from the man from Stowmarket (Paul), who today is making his return to Portman Road after missing several matches. When the game begins, it’s Blackburn who get first go with the ball, which they launch in the general direction of the Vets for Pets premises on Handford Road and the Co-op next door. Blackburn are wearing an unpleasant looking yellow kit, which from where I am sitting looks as if it is covered in brown smudges, ‘skid marks’ perhaps.  According to the Lancashire Telegraph however, the shirt is gold in colour and is a ‘love letter to Blackburn’ featuring several of the town’s landmarks throughout the design.  I squint and think I might just be able to make out the four thousand holes, give or take three thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine.  Aside from the shirts, the first two minutes of the game are ‘all Blackburn’ and in the third minute their number 20, Erain Cashin scores a spectacular goal, albeit in his own net.   Nunez and Philogene exchange passes before Nunez delivers a low, hard cross, which Cashin belts into the top corner of the goal from a seated position, thereby promoting himself as the possible answer to Town’s perceived need for a ‘top striker’.  Town lead one-nil.

The goal results in Ipswich gaining the confidence for Eggy to have a volley tipped over the crossbar by Blackburn goalkeeper and ancient Egyptian deity Toth.  The Blackburn number 10 is jeered by home supporters. “That’s Cantwell” says the fella in front of me. “Whoever he is” I respond, genuinely not knowing who he is although I’d seen his face before.  “He used to play for Norwich” says the fella.  “Like Nunez” says Fiona.  Ipswich have a corner “Come on You Blues” chant at least five of us. A far post header sends the ball into the six-yard box, Toth smothers the ball but then doesn’t and Jack Taylor belts it into the roof of the goal net from less than a metre out. It’s a goal ugly enough to have travelled through time from the days of Mick McCarthy.   Town lead 2-0, although I had expected the goal to be disallowed, but that was before I remembered we’re not in the Premier League anymore.

“All games should start like this” I think to myself and then tell Fiona.  Seventeen minutes have left us, Town still lead two-nil, Blackburn win a corner. Eight further minutes pass into history and Blackburn’s Atcheson claims the day’s first booking after fouling Jaden Philogene. I had been wondering how many goals we might score but things have quietened down.  A long throw from Darnell Furling momentarily excites. “A helluva throw” says the bloke beside me, “Like a bullet”, and it was.  Then Blackburn win another corner. “Wanker, wanker, wanker” chant the Sir Bobby Robson standers, and “He’s only a poor little budgie” to the tune of ’The Sparrow’, a Christmas 1979 hit for The Ramblers, a choir from the Abbey Hey Junior School, Manchester, and along with Brian and Michael and St Winifred’s School Choir, a rarely celebrated part of the ‘Madchester scene’.  I assume the target for the abuse is Cantwell, a man who sports a mullet, which makes him resemble a cross between Jerry Seinfeld and Mickey from the Job Centre in the BBC tv series  ‘The League of Gentlemen’.

There are twelve minutes remaining until half-time and as we wait for Leif Davis to take a corner having chanted “Come on You Blues” a few times for luck, Fiona comments on the grubby appearance of Blackburn’s yellow shirts that look like they’re covered in brown marks of unknown provenance.  An injured Jaden Philogene is replaced by Jack Clarke, Blackburn win another corner and two minutes of added on time are stolen from our futures before half-time arrives.

During half time, I talk to the man from Stowmarket (Paul), who has been in hospital.  He tells me all about it and I can only marvel again at the NHS and the beautiful idea of distributing resources amongst the population for the common good and according to people’s needs.  I vent more spent Suffolk Pride and at twenty-six minutes to two the football resumes beneath a hint of winter sunshine.  Five minutes in and Ipswich have a corner.  The crowd is mostly quiet today because Blackburn have had a lot of the ball, albeit without doing much with it.  But Ipswich are dominating now and the Sir Bobby Robson standers sing “When the Town go marching in” at a depressingly funereal pace appropriate for ‘Memorial Day’.  Five minutes later however they feeling are more up-beat as they chant ‘Blue and White Army’ and it works as Town win another corner.

But Ipswich’s domination is fleeting as a Blackburn shot is blocked and another goes tamely wide.  When Blackburn win another corner, I see just how bad Cantwell’s mullet is and so advise him to “get your ‘air cut, Cantwell” as any responsible citizen would.  “Come On Ipswich, Come On Ipswich” pleads the home crowd and as if in response Eggy and Hirst are replaced by Ivan Azom and Wes Burns who draws a cheer for just trotting onto the pitch.  “I don’t need to get Monkey out, do I?” asks Pat from Clacton, and Fiona and I agree we don’t need any lucky charms yet, because we’re still two-nil up. 

In the final twenty minutes of normal time three more Blackburn players, Trondstad, Cantwell and Cashin are booked by referee Mr Kitchen, all for fouls on Jack Clarke who has become Blackburn’s target man since Philogene had to go off.   Mr Kitchen meanwhile sports an impossibly neat but receding hairline as if like a 1960’s Action Man his hair has been painted on to his scalp.   More substitutions are made, Pat from Clacton tells me about the pantomime she saw, the dame was called Belle Ringer, and for a short while my mind wanders off, I’m not sure where but I’m back in time for the eighty-eighth minute when Jens Cajuste surges forward, slips a through ball to Wes Burns and his square pass is swept into the Blackburn goal by Sammy Szmodics.  Town lead three-nil and five minutes of added on time make no difference, although it sounds like Cedric Kipre has been chosen as man of the match by something called Holiday Testing Concrete Limited; I expect it’s something to do with Brutalist architecture.

The final whistle sounds and people stay and leave in equal measure to cheer the victors or catch buses and trains or queue in car parks. or just walk home.  It’s been a slightly odd game, good in parts, very good in flashes. Ipswich have been too good for Blackburn whose greatest contribution to the spectacle has been providing a pantomime villain in Cantwell. Most significantly however, for the first time this season the visiting supporters have failed to sing “Football in a library, do-do-do”.  Having had to get up in the middle of the night to travel over 400 kilometres for a 12:30 kick-off I don’t suppose they could be bothered.

Ipswich Town 2 Oxford United 1

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I just can’t help it but this morning I feel bright and optimistic. It’s the dawn of a new year, I had a good night’s sleep, a pale winter sun is shining, and I still haven’t forgotten Ipswich Town’s fabulous two-nil win at top-of-the-table, previously unbeaten at home Coventry City last Monday evening.  So cheerful am I that I can’t help feeling that everyone else must feel the same too.  Indeed, supporting my theory, yesterday in a work e-mail from my boss, he couldn’t resist telling me that he too was still “buzzing” from Monday’s win.   To add to the mix, today Town are playing Oxford United, who are just part of the sludge at the bottom of what I call the second division.

I’m not sure that I am buzzing or have ever buzzed, but I think I can at least lay claim to a pleasant hum as I make for the railway station, where the train arrives on time and I sit next to a man who will remain almost bent double over his mobile phone all the way to Ipswich.  Gary joins me at the first station stop and after the usual polite enquiries about our respective Christmases, he is eager to tell me about how Celtic lost the 1926 Scottish FA Cup final two-nil to St Mirren wearing white shirts.  Being at best still Medieval in outlook, Celtic blamed the shirts for their defeat and quickly off-loaded them onto Barhill Football Club in Ayrshire, who had conveniently just written to both Celtic and Rangers asking if they had any old kit they didn’t want.  The punchline to Gary’s tale of silly Scottish superstition resulting in generosity is a photo on Gary’s phone of four Barhill footballers, one of whom is Gary’s grandfather, each wearing one of the said shirts.  The story is the highlight of today’s journey because we fail to spot a single polar bear as the train eases down the gentle incline through Wherstead into Ipswich.

In historic, interesting Ipswich the sun still shines as we make our way down Princes Street and Portman Road and then uphill towards ‘the Arb’ on High Street.  Pints of Lager 43 and Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride (Eight pounds something for the two with Camra discount) are soon sitting before us in the beer garden, where we talk of Gary having only watched Tanzania in the African Cup of Nations on the telly, whilst I have watched at least some of almost every game.   Our conversation progresses onto  the defining characteristics and dates of Generations X, Y, Z, the “Great Generation” and the “Silent Generation”,  the merits of Dad’s Army, Porridge, the Detectorists and Morecambe and Wise, and the novel ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist’ by Robert Tressell, which we decide is as relevant today as it was when it was first published in 1914.  By the time Gary fetches two more pints our fellow drinkers in the beer garden are fewer in number than they were, and eventually at twenty to three we retain our record of being last to leave.

Gary and I part ways somewhere near the statue of Sir Alf Ramsey, bidding each other adieu until next Saturday’s eagerly awaited FA Cup tie versus Blackpool.  As has become normal, there are no queues outside the Sir Alf Ramsey Stand, only men in black of mostly south Asian heritage each brandishing some sort of hand-held detection equipment. For a moment as I pass through the famed turnstile sixty-two, I speculate whether a sitcom set outside a football ground and amounting to Citizen Kahn meets The Detectorists could be funny.   Having never watched Citizen Kahn I decide I ‘m not going to know.

After venting spent Suffolk Pride I emerge into the lower tier of the Sir Alf Ramsey stand just as the excitable young stadium announcer is reading out the Ipswich Town team and failing to co-ordinate his reading with the players’ names appearing on the score board.  I bellow out the players’ surnames, nevertheless, sounding like the echo to a public address system more than I do the crowd at Stade de l’Aube in Troyes or Stade de Furiani in Bastia. Before the na-na-nas of The Beatles’ Hey Jude can ring in the new year I wish a happy new one to Pat from Clacton and Fiona and nod to ever-present Phil who never misses a game and who is accompanied by his son Elwood, although the man from Stowmarket (Paul) is once again absent.

The final prelude to the match beginning is a minute’s applause for recently deceased former Town player Robin Turner, who in ten years started only twenty-nine games with thirty-three as substitute, but nevertheless famously kept Town on course for the 1978 FA Cup with two goals away to Bristol Rovers.  The respect shown for Robin is only very slightly diminished by the scoreboard at the Sir Bobby Robson Stand end of the ground showing his name as ‘Robin Tuner 1955-2025’, but it sounds worse than it looks as if aurally he might have been related to that Lesley Dolphin on Radio Suffolk.

When the game eventually begins it is today’s opponents Oxford United who get first go with the ball, which after a couple of short passes they boot in the general direction of Cumberland Towers and the YMCA.  Town soon have possession however, which they rarely lose, but they seldom make much of it either, although it feels like it will just be a matter of time before they do.   Oxford lack bold intentions and it smacks of gloating by Oxford tourist guides grown big-headed on fancy college architecture when their supporters’ chant that Ipswich is a “shit ‘ole”, when plainly it’s not.  But weak revenge is wrought on the hopefully thinned skinned academic visitors with the words ‘Cambridge Windows’ scrolling across the front of the Sir Bobby Robson Stand in brightly illuminated letters.  “Is this a library?” chant the Oxonians ironically in response, as if they don’t know what a library is and before anyone can chant “Oh fuck off you privileged twats”  to the tune of something by Gaz Coombes of Supergrass, they launch into “Football in a library , do-do-do” just like every other bunch of away supporters that ever visits Portman Road.

“Columbus Mechanical” announces the Sir Bobby Robson stand illuminations, and then “We are Columbus”.  I ask, but Fiona has no more idea of who Columbus might be than I do before she has a conversation with Pat from Clacton about this year’s pantomimes.  The sky has turned from blue to pale grey, Eggy loops a shot lazily over the Oxford crossbar. Only twelve minutes have dissolved into the past and Town win a corner. “Come On You Blues” I bellow, and perhaps as many as half a dozen people join in or at least turn round to stare at the idiot making all the noise. The early pussyfooting has gone; the corner came to nought but five minutes on and Town now attack with pace and clever passes. Oxford intercept the ball, they think it’s all over, but Chuba Akpom wrestles the ball back, Jaden Philogene advances feints, turns, twists feints again and shoots, and Town lead 1-0. Wow. I can feel myself smiling so much it makes me smile some more.

So how many more can we score? Eggy crosses to the far post, Davis heads the ball back and Philogene swipes the ball narrowly over the angle of post and bar from 12 metres or so.  As a brief side-show Oxford’s Siriki Dembele, who has replaced the poorly spelt and now injured Tyler Goodrham, looks to shadow box Town’s Darnell Furlong and is booked for his trouble by referee Mr Finnie, another one of those small, very neat men who seem attracted to officiating.

A half an hour has disappeared into the past and strangely Oxford have a corner. “Yellows, Yellows, Yellows” chant the Oxonians up in the corner of the Cobbold Stand, and some big bloke wearing a yellow shirt heads high over the Town goal.  Then Oxford equalise.  A poorly protected left flank, an unhindered run to the penalty area, an exchange of passes and someone with the unlikely surname of Lankshear scores.   We have ten minutes to live until half-time.  In the fifth of those minutes Furlong surges into the Oxford penalty area, squares from the by-line and Chuba Akpom diverts the ball into the Oxford net, well wide of goalkeeper Jamie Cumming. Town lead 2-1 and the world’s natural order is restored.

Forty-two minutes lost to the past and Nunez shoots, Town have another corner. “Come On You Blues” I bawl, but the Oxford goalkeeper gathers.  “Down with the Norwich, You’re going down with the Norwich” sing the Sir Bobby Robson standers to the tune of ‘Guantanamerra’, although stupidly keen to imagine university-based puns I like to think they are singing “sent down with the Norwich, you’re being sent down with the Norwich”.   “Two-one and you still don’t sing” is the Oxonians momentarily inaccurate but understandable response, followed up with an ironic “Your support is fucking shit” from a group of fans who would need to have bought two seats each to fill their allotted space in the Cobbold Stand.  Jaden Philogene shoots wide and three minutes are stolen from the future never to be returned, and are added to the first half.

With the half-time hiatus I vent more spent Suffolk Pride and then head for Ray, his son Michael and grandson Harrison at the front of the stand, stopping briefly to speak with Dave the steward on the way.   I tell Harrison to check out a music artiste called Spencer Cullum, whilst Ray tells me he won’t be at the next match because he is off on a cruise in the Caribbean; I hope it’s not on a Venezuelan fishing boat.

The football resumes at five past four as Portman Road is briefly enveloped in a radiant, pink sky like the backwash to an unexpected mid-afternoon aurora borealis.  Two more Town corners ensue and along with Oxford’s Brown, Chuba Akpom’s name is entered, no doubt very neatly into Mr Finnie’s notebook when his ire is stoked by the rough conduct of the Oxford defender. “Hot Sausage Company” read the Sir Bobby Robson stand illuminations.  As the violence continues, Helik scythes down Akpom and the home crowd jeer, singing “Who the fuckin’ ‘ell are you” to the tune of “Cwm Rhondda”, boastful of their ignorance of the Polish international defender.  Mr Finnie again licks the end of his pencil and re-opens his notebook.  “We forgot that you were here” sing the Oxonians, again ironically because judging by the empty seats in the away enclosure many of them genuinely aren’t here, although at £38 a ticket I can’t say I blame them. Whatever happened to ‘twenty’s plenty’?

Almost two-thirds of our afternoon’s ‘football experience’ has been experienced. Leif Davis crosses low, Nunez shoots, Cumming saves and Town have another corner.  Fiona and Pat from Clacton discuss Pat’s handbag.  Pat says she won’t get the masturbating monkey lucky charm out today, it’s too cold; anyway, we’re still winning. A Town free-kick is awarded; Nunez curls the ball over the defensive wall towards the top corner of the goal, but Cumming claws the ball away spectacularly.

It’s time for substitutions and Eggy and Nunez leave, making way for Wes Burns and Jack Clarke.  “Burns, Burns will tear you apart, again” predict the Sir Bobby Robson standers with help from Joy Division.  There is another Town corner and we are thanked for our incredible support by the excitable young stadium announcer, who tells us that we number 28,199.  Will Vaulks completes the neat list of Oxford names in Mr Finnie’s notebook, yet more substitutions are made and yet another Town corner and even an Oxford corner come and go.  At last, another additional three minutes are drawn from the infinite bank of time and then Town are up to second place in the league table because Middlesbrough have lost; vanquished Oxford face the ignominy of being one place below Norwich City who have beaten some Park Rangers belonging to the Queen.

The new year has begun, Ipswich Town have played and I’m still feeling optimistic.  As Pat from Clacton told me earlier, it’s the Chinese year of the horse, which it was in 1978 when Town won the FA Cup and in 1990, 2002 and 2014 when they didn’t.

Ipswich Town 1 Stoke City 0

/ martinpbrooks / 1 Comment

Matches against Stoke City always remind me of a bloke I knew when I was at university in the late 1970’s called Tony.  Tony was from Wolverhampton and had a thick West Midlands accent but supported Stoke City, or “Stowke” as his accent forced him to call them.  Tony, however, was what many people might term “a bit of an oik” and as well liking to boast that he had “shagged the Chief Constable’s daughter”, (Staffordshire’s or West Midlands’ I assumed), he also once defecated into a milk bottle and regularly claimed that he only went to Stoke City matches for the violence, or “vorlence” as his accent called it.  Oddly, however, he was also a really nice bloke.

Also a really nice bloke is my friend Gary, although he has no discernible accent and as far as I know has never been carnally involved with any relative of a senior police officer.   I must remember to ask him one day what he does with his empty milk bottles.    Gary joins me on the train to Ipswich, which a text from Greater Anglia has told me is running a little late this evening.  Unperturbed, we talk of the World Cup and Gary tells me how the city of Seattle, which has been nominated as one of the venues for World Cup matches, had decided to combine one of its match days with a Gay Pride Day.  The Gay Pride Day was chosen before the World Cup draw took place and when the draw was made last Friday Seattle discovered that on its Gay Pride Day it would be hosting Iran versus Egypt.  I laugh out loud as does the woman opposite us.

We arrive in Ipswich more than two hours before kick-off, but the floodlights of Portman Road are already shining, and Ipswich is aglow with electric light from lamp posts, buses, traffic signs, headlights and windows.  The sky is a deepening dark blue and the tarmac of the roads shiny black. The red and white stripes of a Stoke City shirt peak out from beneath a jumper. Gary and I hasten as best we can to ‘the Arb’, which isn’t quite as busy as usual, probably because it is mid-week.  First to the bar, I buy a pint of Lager 43 for Gary and a pint of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride and, impressed by Mick’s lunchtime snack on Saturday order a Falafel Scotch egg for myself, before we retire to the beer garden to drink, eat and wait for Mick.

Mick arrives just as Gary returns from the bar with more Lager43 and more Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride; at my suggestion he also has a pint of Suffolk Pride for the previously imminent Mick.   We talk of relatives’ funerals, Gary’s grandfather, who was a member of the Communist Party, and I tell of how I was watching Toulouse v Strasbourg on tv at the weekend and how when Strasbourg replaced Diego Moreira with substitute Martial Godo I remarked that I had been waiting for him to come on.  In fact, however, I had been waiting for some club or other to sign a player called Godot, or Godo as it turned out, so I could make that joke.

The beer garden begins to empty out as other drinkers fold and head for Portman Road, but like the carefree over-sixties that we are Mick gets another round in; rather curiously a gin and tonic for Gary this time, but I have another pint of Suffolk Pride and  Mick, eager for alcohol has a pint of Leffe.  Gary then tells us about a friend of his who went to Ireland and wanted to buy a newspaper in a village shop, but all the newspapers were dated the day before.   When he asked if they had any of today’s newspapers, the shopkeeper told him yes, but he’ll need to come back tomorrow.   We continue to laugh and drink and enjoy living before I suddenly notice that it’s twenty-six minutes past seven and we probably ought to go.

Once again, down in Portman Road where I can already hear the excitable young stadium announcer excitedly announcing the Town team, there are no queues at the entrances to the Sir Alf Ramsey Stand and I breeze through, throwing my aeroplane pose as I’m cleared of carrying any weapons by a man in dark clothing and a hi-vis jacket with a hand-held scanner.  Another similarly attired man tries to scan me again as I reach the famous turnstile 62 but rather than tell him I’ve already been scanned I just say “Oooh, I’m gonna be scanned twice”, which perhaps oddly, perhaps not, seems enough to deter him.

After venting spent Suffolk Pride, I arrive in the strangely sulphurous smelling stand to edge past Pat from Clacton and Fiona to my seat just as everyone bursts into respectful, appreciative applause for former Town goalkeeper David Best, who has died this week at the age of eighty-two.  I don’t know why, but I always think of David Best in the context of the night Town beat Real Madrid, but also wearing a red goalkeeper’s jersey, flying horizontally across the face of the goal in front of the North Stand to perfectly catch a shot and, when he spoke to me as he autographed my Texaco Cup final programme, having the sort of Dorset accent that I imagined belonged in the fictional creations of Thomas Hardy . Incidentally, David Best was for a while manager of Dorchester Town (Casterbridge) where Hardy had lived.

There’s barely time after the minute’s applause for Fiona and ever-present Phil who never misses a game to each hand me a Christmas card before the match begins.  It’s Stoke City who get first go with the ball, which they propel in the general direction of the Brewer’s Arms on Orford Street and the former Spiritualist church on Anglesea Road, whilst sporting their handsome traditional kit of red and white striped shirts and white shorts.   I will later notice however that the red stripes are all a bit wavy as if the kit designer had spent a long lunch hour in the Brewer’s Arms or was trying to convey the sort of weird ghostly aura normally accompanied by the made-up word “Woo-oooh”.  Happily, Town are in their standard blue and white and perhaps as a direct result of this soon have possession of the ball, are advancing down the left, exchanging a couple of passes and Jaden Philogene is cutting inside at the edge of the penalty area to curl the ball inside the far post of the Stoke City goal.  Town lead one-nil, and the game is barely two minutes old.  Every match should be like this I tell Fiona.

Two minutes later however, and Stoke have a corner, and three minutes after that their supporters are singing “Football in a library” and then “Your support is fucking shit” as they embark on a desperate attempt to make us feel bad about ourselves.  Stoke also start to dominate possession.  Behind me a bloke has his scarf wrapped over the top his head. “Dress rehearsal for your nativity play?” asks the bloke next to him.  Sixteen more minutes of winning one-nil elapse and Town dismantle the Stoke City defence again, only for Ivor Azon to shoot high and wide from a metre or so inside the penalty area with Stoke defenders scattered like shards of broken pottery.  The bloke behind me thinks he sees Nunez chuckling.

“One of you singing, there’s only one of you singing” chant the Stoke fans to an oblivious audience, and Jack Taylor generously allows time for the whole Stoke team to receive remedial coaching on the touchline as he receives treatment from a Town physio for some ailment or other.  “Who’s the Stoke manager?” asks Fiona, but I tell her I don’t know and all Fiona can come up with is Tony Pulis.  Later on, I will remember the name Tony Waddington, but Wikipedia will tell me he died in 1994.

The game re-starts and Stoke still keep the ball most of the time, but without ever looking like scoring.  I realise I recognise Stoke’s Nzonzi, having seen him play previously on the telly for Rennes and then I realise he even came on as a substitute for France in the 2018 World Cup final.  “Addy, Addy, Addy-O” sing the Sir Bobby Robson standers out of the blue, perhaps to celebrate the twenty-sixth minute but possibly in an attempt to encourage Town to keep possession of the ball a bit more often.  The chanting of “Come-On Ipswich”, a few minutes later, which sounds more like pleading, betrays our anxiety despite still being a goal ahead.  But gradually the chanting and pleading starts to work, and Town dominate the final ten minutes of the half, even inspiring more confident sounding but boringly repetitive chants of “Blue Army”, whilst Nunez and Philogene both shoot on target but at the Stoke goalkeeper, and Nunez also shoots wide.   

Three minutes of added on time are added on and then it’s time to leak more spent Suffolk Pride before speaking with Ray, his son Michael and grandson Harrison.  When asked by Ray for my thoughts on the game so far, I tell him that despite seemingly never having the ball, Ipswich look like the only team likely to score.  The football comes back at nine minutes to nine and Town soon have their first corner of the game in what will become a better half for the Town in which Stoke look even less like scoring than they did in the first half; although Pat from Clacton woke up with a blood-shot left eye this morning and so even if we did score again, it would be a bit blurry to her. 

Five minutes pass and it’s about now that I notice that the stripes on the Stoke shirts are not straight but a bit wiggly, and not for the first time when watching a team in red and white stripes I am reminded of Signal toothpaste.  Signal co-incidentally and appropriately, given tonight’s opponents, also being the name of the fictional local newspaper in Arnold Bennett’s passingly football-related, 1910, Potteries located novel ‘The Card’.  More Town corners ensue.  “Your support is fucking shit” opine the travelling “Stokies” as they ironically become the first set of away fans in well over two years to fail to fill at least half of the away section.  Not surprisingly, their chants are greeted with disinterested silence, which is followed later by confirmation that tonight’s attendance is a meagre 27,008, the lowest of the season so far.   The drop in attendance and therefore income is large enough to mean that at least one player won’t be getting paid this week.

Only fifteen minutes of normal time remain by now and later than usual Keiran McKenna dives into the world of multiple substitutions as Eggy, Azon and Taylor go for a sit down and Clarke, Cajuste and Akpom get to run around for a bit. Ten minutes left and Azor Matusiwa becomes the first player to be booked tonight by the referee, Mr Adam Herczeg, who is a sucker for giving a free-kick when anyone falls over. Meanwhile, Pat from Clacton won’t be having a baked potato when she gets in tonight, but she will have something cheesy from Marks & Spencer with a latte and she won’t be go to bed until midnight.  As for me, I wish my bed was just the other side of my front door so I could step straight into it when I get indoors.

The final ten minutes ebbs and flows a bit more than has been the pattern up to now but it’s Ipswich who should score and don’t.  Behind me a bloke complains that if he’d only known there would be no more goals he could have gone home after two minutes.   The game soon ends in the second and final minute of the unexpectedly brief period of added on time following a Stoke City corner, which doubtless has legions of pessimistic Ipswich fans anticipating going home disappointed.  With the final whistle, Pat from Clacton and Fiona disappear like water vapour, although Fiona does turn to say good-bye, which water vapour never does.  I applaud briefly and then, conscious that I have perhaps nine minutes in which to catch my train make a bolt for the exits.

It’s been a decent game again tonight, mainly because Ipswich have won again, but despite Stoke dominating possession by a reported 57% to 43%, Town have apparently had twice as many shots at goal (16) and six times as many shots on target.   Statistics are however famously boring and do nothing for one’s personal safety.  On my way back to the railway station therefore I instead keep a look out for any angry looking Stoke fans brandishing milk bottles. 

Ipswich Town 3 Coventry City 0

/ martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

It’s been a strange week of not feeling great and then feeling better and then not feeling great and then feeling better again combined with seeing the excellent Mark Steel at the Apex Theatre in Bury St Edmunds with my friend and former ‘boss’ Ray,  surprising myself by successfully arranging an on-line meeting at work, and then witnessing on tv the most stomach churning World Cup draw in history, in which the ridiculously fawning, bottom licking FIFA president Gianni Infantino (‘Johnny’ to his friend) prostituted the World Cup, the beautiful game and himself to the odious Donald J Trump.  It feels like nothing can ever be the same again after such a performance from the man, but I have woken up this morning to find that Ipswich Town are still playing Coventry City at Portman Road at three o’clock this afternoon and there are still eggs and bacon in the fridge.

It’s a day that is neither bright nor dull but the train to Ipswich is on time and the bloke who spoke to me when I boarded the train for the Wrexham match a fortnight ago is here again, but with a female accomplice. “Hello, again” I say, but that’s the extent of our conversation today, perhaps he’s ‘on the pull’ and sees me and my luxuriant head of hair as a threat.  Time passes quickly and Gary is soon sat next to me on the train and telling me how he could have gone to the footie with his brother, as he did for the Wrexham game, but instead decided to go with his trusted friend. The punch line is of course that his friend isn’t available, so he’s going with me instead.  Gary isn’t as vain as Donald J Trump, but his story is an obvious attempt to show off his brand of wit in this here blog.  I gain a modicum of revenge when Gary says he’s been to London to see a  production of Othello with Toby Jones, and I tell him I didn’t know he knew Toby Jones.  The highlight of our journey is as ever the sighting of two resting polar bears as the train descends through Wherstead into Ipswich.

In Ipswich, the Station Hotel is heaving with Coventry City supporters, and I remark to Gary that they are clearly a soft, wussy bunch because there aren’t many of them outside drinking in the beer garden. Gary suggests that I probably wouldn’t tell them that to their faces and I agree, telling him “I expect they already know”.   In Portman Road we don’t waste money on match day programmes and proceed as fast as Gary’s legs will carry us to the ‘Arb’, where with perfect timing we arrive at the bar just as Mick is buying a pint of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride.  Naturally Mick buys me one also and a pint of Lager 43 for Gary, and he also orders a falafel Scotch Egg. We retire to the beer garden like the tough Suffolk blokes that we are, although curiously Gary is an Essex boy and I was born in Wales.

Today’s conversation meanders like a lowland river and under instructions from my wife I tell Mick that the problem he has in being unable to straighten out one of his little fingers is an affliction he shares with the late Margaret Thatcher.  Understandably, Mick is not best impressed, but I tell him we thought he should know given his lustful feelings towards Kemi Badenoch.  Mick not unreasonably responds that Margaret Thatcher and Kemi Badenoch are ‘erotically’ very different. Any mention of Liz Truss would be a step too far and likely to result in inclusion on some sort of register.   Mick meanwhile woofs down his falafel Scotch egg and as other pre-match drinkers drift away, Gary gets in another round of Lager 43, Suffolk Pride and Jameson Whisky before we speculate as to why people leave so early for the match and wonder if they are going to another pub on the way.

It’s twenty to three when we leave ‘the Arb’ and roll down High Street past the Museum, whose reopening we eagerly await next year. We part ways near the statue of Sir Alf, bidding one another “adieu” until Wednesday evening and our inevitable alcohol-fuelled preamble to the Stoke City match.  At the back of the Sir Alf Ramsey stand there are no queues at all and I have a choice of electronic detector wielding men in dark clothes and high-vis tabards to approach with arms outstretched as if playing ‘aeroplanes’.  I pick a bearded man of probable south Asian origin and he asks me to empty my pockets “What all of them?” I ask incredulously, wondering why he would want to see my scarf, woolly hat, fingerless gloves, notebook and pencil, as I wave my mobile phone about.  We laugh and smile and I head for the famous turnstile 62, named in honour of the great Premier League win of sixty-three years ago, when hand-held electronic detectors and hi-vis tabards were just a dream.

Relieved of spent Suffolk Pride I’m soon shuffling past Pat from Clacton and Fiona to my seat a couple of rows behind ever-present Phil who never misses a game, and his son Elwood, who of course are already here.  The man from Stowmarket (Paul) is however absent again, but his grandson will later tell me he’ll be back for the Sheffield Wednesday game.  In the excitement of arrival, it takes me a while to realise that the excitable young stadium announcer is already halfway through announcing the team, and I only get to bawl the last three or four Town player’s surnames in the manner of someone Gallic with an abonnement at the Stade du Moustoir in Lorient or the Stade de la Meinau in Strasbourg.

Eventually, the game begins and it is Coventry City who get first go with the ball, which they attempt to boot mainly in the general direction of Sir Alf Ramsey’s former house on Valley Road and the Man On the Moon pub on Palmcroft Road.   Coventry City are sporting shirts, shorts and socks in a shade of orange so lurid as to be indescribable.  The sight of this ultra day-glo kit is quite overbearing and immediately explains why a team managed by Frank Lampard has so unexpectedly climbed to the top of the league and why so many Championship players are suffering from migraines this season.  As Ray will tell me at half-time however, the West Midlands Metropolitan Council highways department want the shirts back immediately after the game.   Town meanwhile are of course kicking towards me and my fellow ultras in our customarily tasteful blue and white.

The early exchanges on the pitch are uninteresting, as are the musical exchanges between supporters, with Coventry fans weirdly singing that song about super Keiran Mckenna knowing just what they need with Woolfy at the back and Ladapo in attack before launching into the old favourite about football in a library.   Meanwhile, I amuse myself pondering the origins of the two Coventry players with double-barrelled surnames, Kesler-Hayden and Mason-Clark. Are they perhaps the sons of people who Frank Lampard first met when at public school or were their parents just not married and unable to decide who had the best surname to give to their offspring.  Personally, I like the idea of the hyphen in double-barrelled surnames being replaced with “and/or” so the child can decide themselves. 

“Your support is fucking shit” chant the Coventry fans imaginatively as Town’s Sindre Walle Egeli has a shot on goal and, possibly channelling Frank Lampard’s probable familiarity with public schoolboy nicknames, I decide that from now on I am going to refer to Walle Egeli as Eggy for short.  In the row behind me an overly talkative man is revealing himself to be some sort of tactical expert, or at least someone who has a strong command of the vocabulary of the average Match of the Day pundit.  I console myself by enjoying the sight of low, winter sunshine illuminating the huge, white-painted girder above the roof of the Sir Bobby Robson stand.

Fifteen minutes have disappeared into forgettable history and George Hirst is an early victim of referee Paul Tierney’s yellow card after he fouls the cheeky-sounding Bobby Thomas.  Mr Tierney incidentally sports a Gianni Infantino hairstyle but without the stick-on eyebrows.  Four minutes later and it sounds like the Coventry fans are singing “Your boss is a Norwich fan”, which is banter of primary school standard rather than public school.  Back on the pitch, the main Coventry tactic that I have discerned so far is that it is necessary to take a very long time over throw-ins and to make sure they are thrown straight to Christian Walton the Town goalkeeper.  

The half is half over.  “No noise from the Tractor Boys” chant the Coventry supporters, and it’s not that surprising because as the bloke behind me succinctly puts it “Shit game at the minute”.  But then either Coventry briefly come to life, or Town nod off and a deep cross is inexpertly headed wide and over the bar by Kesler-Hayden.  A minute after that, Coventry’s Eccles, whose grandfather was a character in the Goon Show, has a low shot touched onto a post by the lengthily diving Christian Walton, moments before Mason-Clark “gives it both barrels” and Walton tips the resultant shot away over the cross bar.

Happily, Coventry’s serious attempts to score are now over and George Hirst is chasing a ball from an offside position and shooting past the far post, tricking the Coventry players into revealing how utterly unsporting they are as they plead with the referee to send him off.  It’s a pitiful sight, a perfect accompaniment to Gianni Infantino’s antics in Washington the night before and along with sponsorship by betting companies, dubious bit coin currencies and despotic regimes further evidence of just how rotten to the core professional football is.  “Super Frankie Lampard” sing the Coventry fans in an apparently unrelated incident, although after the match he will repeat that Hirst should have been sent off because of course if Hirst hadn’t kicked the ball past the goal and delayed the game by less time than it takes a Coventry player to take a throw in, Coventry would definitely have won.

The last five minutes of the half have Ipswich dominating as Eggy is fouled, and then so is Nunez, and Coventry’s Grimes (aka Grimey) is booked before Town win two corners in quick succession and we chant ”Come On You Blues” for all we’re worth as the ball is sent back and forth across the Coventry goal mouth until  Philogene squares it to Eggy, who curls it first time into the corner of the Coventry net from the edge of the penalty area. A minute of added-on time is added on, and the first half ends with Ipswich 1-0 up.

I spend half-time venting more spent Suffolk Pride before joining Ray, his son Michael and grandson Harrison at the front of the stand where Harrison riffs on the Coventry goalkeeper Rushworth and rush goalkeepers and we generally spend our time feeling happy.  The football resumes at two minutes past four and the pattern of play differs immediately from most of the first half as Town retain possession and look the better team. Nunez shoots wide at the end of a long series of passes between Town players.

“One-nil and you still don’t sing” chant the Coventry fans unaware of our vow of silence or that being tough enough to drink outside at the pub makes us the strong silent types.  Seven minutes into the new half and George Hirst is sent through on goal by Cedric Kipre but his shot is saved by Rushworth in exactly the manner that Hirst might have expected Rushworth to save his first half offside effort, which instigated the whole embarrassing “sending-offgate” scandal later to be promoted by a tearful, foot stamping Frank Lampard.  Eight minutes later and it’s Nunez who puts Hirst through on goal, this time in a more central position, and this time Hirst scores the second Town goal.  “Top of the League? You’re having a laugh” we all sing to the tune of Tom Hark, which was originally by Elias and his Zig-Zag Ji-flutes but later covered by The Piranhas, who I fondly recall seeing play regularly on a Sunday evening at the Alhambra on Brighton seafront in the late 1970’s.

Coventry fight back with a meagre corner but a 71st minute, triple substitution keeps Town fresh, although as the tension mounts Pat from Clacton says she feels sick.   The excitable young stadium announcer tells us that there are 29,025 of us here today and adds the usual platitudinous something about “incredible support” when it would be more honest to say “numerically impressive, but not especially noisy support”.    A seventy-fourth minute Coventry corner and another decent save from Christian Walton has Pat from Clacton swallowing hard and not thinking about the baked potato she’s going to have for her tea.  I meanwhile relieve the tension with the thought that Coventry number nine Ellis Simms looks like the bloke in the 1970’s illustrated sex manual ‘The Joy of Sex’.   Staying back in the 1970’s Pat then reveals the existence of a what she dubs a ‘lucky’ 1973 fifty pence piece commemorating Britain joining the European Union, that someone on the Clacton supporters’ bus had tried to pass off as legal tender and which she now has in her purse along with the masturbating monkey charm from Cambodia and Derek the Dodo from Mauritius.   I immediately place my faith in the lucky fifty pence piece and a return to the EU.  Hopefully, we can also rely on Ellis Simms not having the energy to pull a goal back for Coventry.

There are nine minutes left of normal time and a slow chant of “Oh when the Town go marching in” emanates from the Sir Bobby Robson stand, who really need to work on sounding more cheerful when we’re two-nil up with less than ten minutes to go.  With the final minute of normal time Christian Walton merely catches the ball, and I think it’s one of the best saves I’ve ever seen and we’re into five minutes of time added on, even though there have only been seven of a possible ten substitutions and no injuries.  I can only imagine we are recouping time spent on Coventry throw-ins but if this is the case the visitors are then hoist by their own petard as substitute Ivan Azon has a cross blocked but then strikes the ball obliquely into the Coventry net for a third Town goal, which confirms an ultimately comfortable victory.

As ever, Pat and Fiona are quickly away to catch a bus and a train but with time on my hands I linger to applaud the Town team from the field and gloat as the man I know through my West Ham United supporting friend Claire as  ‘fat Frank’, leaves the field with his day-glo clad supporting cast. Despite a dull first half, it’s been a very enjoyable afternoon overall and undeniably an excellent result.  It’s amazing how quickly a goal or three can make everything alright again.  With a celebratory beer and a couple of glasses of wine with my dinner tonight I might even be able to forget Gianni Infantino.

Ipswich Town 0 Wrecsam 0

/ martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

I am not ashamed to admit that I’ve got ‘a bit of a thing’ for Professor Alice Roberts the popular physician, anatomist, physical anthropologist, author and tv presenter.  I can’t help but smile, blush a little and feel a close affinity with her when she’s on the BBC’s ‘Digging for Britain’ programme and she uncovers some ancient artifact or other and comes over all misty eyed and wistful as she realises no one has clapped eyes on said artifact for a thousand years or more.  As a football supporter who keeps track of every game I’ve ever been to and every team I’ve ever seen, today is a bit of a Professor  Alice Roberts moment for me because today Ipswich Town are playing Wrexham (Wrecsam in Welsh) in the Football League, and that’s something neither I nor Professor Alice nor anyone else has ever seen before, not in a thousand years or indeed in the entire history of the planet or time itself.    Sadly, I doubt Professor Alice will be here today to see it, perhaps I should have invited her, but at least I will be here.

It’s been a miserable, grey, wet, November morning, lightened only by the occasional daydream  about Professor Alice sitting next to me at the match.  Fortunately, it’s not raining as I make my way to the railway station and board the train, which is on time.  “Going to the match” says a man on the platform. “Yes, well, I don’t usually wear this blue and white scarf” I say rather facetiously considering I don’t know the bloke. “Bit of a giveaway” he replies.  Of course, to make matters worse people do wear football scarves when not going to football matches, I’ve done so myself. 

The train arrives, it’s not very full and I find a window seat for what will be a lonely journey because Gary is going to the match with his brother today and will therefore not be on the train. Across the aisle from me sit an elderly man and what I assume is his wife, or lover. “More football” he says grudgingly as people in blue and white scarves, shirts and woolly hats board the train at the next station stop, I think they are the only words the couple exchange the whole journey.  Passing through Wherstead I spot a polar bear striking a Fox’s Glacier mint pose, well almost, and then the man opposite gets up fussily to take a bag down from the luggage rack. The woman glances at me fleetingly with a look of resignation that seems to say she realises he’s an idiot.

There are spots of rain in the air in Ipswich and only a handful of Wrexham fans are drinking in the garden of the Station Hotel.  In Portman Road, because this is the first time that Ipswich have ever played Wrexham here, I buy a programme (£4.00) from one of the booths that looks like they should sell ice cream.  Stupidly, I wish the seller “bon match” and then reflect upon the first time I ever saw Wrexham, in November 1978 at the Goldstone Ground in Brighton.  I will later decide I like the Brighton programme from that day forty-seven years ago more than today’s effort because it read ‘Wrexham’ in bold letters on the front.  Today’s programme just displays the two club crests in monochrome in the top right-hand corner, and they get equal billing with the flippin’ Sky bet/EFL logo.  Brighton won 2-1 back when Ipswich were the current FA Cup holders and the Wrexham team included players called Davies, Jones, Thomas and Roberts; very Welsh it was.  Having been born in Wales myself I am suddenly filled with bonhomie towards these immigrants for the afternoon and I half think about wishing any random Wrexham supporter “diwrnod da” but decide against it. 

‘The Arb’ is busy with drinkers and diners and when I eventually get served, I order two pints of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride (£8.40 with Camra discount) before retiring to the beer garden where I sit at a table beneath an umbrella.  I’m in the throes of texting Mick to tell him there’s a pint of Suffolk Pride waiting for him when he appears at the back gate.  “What a lovely thing to do” he says of my buying him a pint before he arrives and he then disappears inside to order some food and get the next round in early.  We talk of his continued lustful feelings towards Kemi Badenoch, blood test results, our disappointment that so many people are so willing to believe the worst, our continued and increasing despair regarding Donald Trump, mutual friends and the difficulty of describing one’s sibling.  Mick eats his food, cheesy chips, and I tell him of the ‘le Welsh’ festival in Lille next weekend, le Welsh being melted cheddar cheese with beer and an egg on top, served with bread and chips.  We laugh quite a bit and are dismayed that everyone leaves so early for the match and as per usual by about half-past two we’re the only drinkers left.

Having negotiated High Street, Crown Street, Lady Lane, Civic Drive and the Portman Road car park Mick and I part ways beneath the blind gaze of Sir Alf Ramsey’s statue.  Mick asks what and when the next game is, neither of us has any idea. I mention that I think there is a midweek game versus Stoke at some time, but we both have faith that we will work it out in good time.  At the back of Sir Alf Ramsey’s stand there are no queues at all and I approach the Anglo-Asian man looking for weapons with outstretched arms. He asks what I have in my pockets and I reveal the pair of woolly fingerless gloves that my wife knitted for me. “No mobile phone?” he asks. “Ahh, that’s up here” I tell him as I unzip a breast pocket on my multi pocketed coat to show him.

Having syphoned off some spent Suffolk Pride I find myself in the stand shuffling past Fiona and Pat from Clacton to my seat just as the excitable young stadium announcer, who today is wearing a woolly hat, tells us today’s line -up.  I try to bellow the Town players’ surnames as a Frenchman would as the announcer reads them out, but he’s reverted to not being in-sync with the scoreboard today so it’s not a great success.  My fellow football fans in the Stade Geoffrey Guichard or Stadium de Toulouse would doubtless be disappointed. Quel dommage.

Inevitably, ever present Phil who never misses a game is here but sadly his son Elwood and the man from Stowmarket Paul) are not, and this is because they have both been unlucky enough but at the same time lucky enough to have been benefitting from our National Health Service and have not been in a position to even take late fitness tests for today’s game.  It’s Wrexham that get first go with the ball, which they launch in the general direction of Coe’s outfitters and the Halal butchers on Norwich Road.  With Wrexham wearing red shirts and white shorts, and Town in blue and white I am naturally reminded once again of the Continental Club Edition Subbuteo teams from my childhood.  Wrexham, however, seem to me to be wearing a particular shade of red that marks them out as being Wrexham rather than Bristol City or Barnsley or Nottingham Forest. But then again, I do know they are Wrexham, even if the front of today’s match programme was very little help in making that clear.

The early part of the game consists of Pat from Clacton telling me she’s wearing new glasses and they’re a bit wonky and also how she’s been a bit ‘chesty’ with difficulty breathing since she had Covid, whilst Fiona has lost her voice and sounds hoarse.  As if that’s not enough, Wrexham win a corner after seven minutes and Pat also tells us she has a large floater in her eye.  She then can’t help but mention the other sort of floater, although none of us admits to knowing much about these and the subject is quickly closed.

Eleven minutes gone and Town win two corners in quick succession giving us the opportunity to chant “Come On You Blues”, which we do and a loud bloke behind joins in too, which is nice.  Dara O’Shea volleys past the far post from the second corner.  “Come on Town, these are rubbish, and Welsh” says a bloke a couple of seats away and it seems that one of the other blokes nearby has Welsh ancestry and so his friends are behaving like Edward I would have if he hadn’t been able to build castles to suppress the Welsh but had been reduced to just taking the mickey.  

Another ten minutes elapse and it’s the Welsh who are avenging the deeds of Edward I with their wit as they sing “Football in a library, do-do-do” and Portman Road is quiet, like it always was when there were barely 15,000 of us here a few years ago. Wrexham fans know all about that scenario. The game meanwhile is frankly a bit dull, like the weather, which is at least wet as well and I start to wonder about the words “Tingly Ted’s Hot Sauce by Ed Sheeran”, which appear on the electronic advert hoardings between the tiers of the Sir Bobby Robson Stand.   Who the heck is Tingly Ted?  Why is Ed Sheeran making hot sauce for him, and now Sheeran has defected to Barcelona is he making Romesco sauce and Salsa dips for Kinky Carlos or Perky Pedro?  I am relieved when the following advertisement is for EMP Drainage who are promoted with the words “Domestic and Commercial Unblocking”.

Such has been the level of excitement since three o’clock, I am surprised to find there are only eight minutes until half time and the home crowd are suddenly enjoying the booking of Wrexham’s George Thomason after he does an impression of a combine harvester meeting an unsuspecting Chuba Akpom in a corn field.   I can’t help feeling that we’re all just clinging on to the hopes raised by occasional attacks that penetrate the Wrexham penalty area.   A single minute of added time brings nothing new but just before it arrives Jayden Philogene has a shot that the Wrexham goalkeeper Arthur Okonkwo, who is very large and bright yellow, only stops with a fumbling save.

Half-time is spent venting more spent Suffolk Pride and then chatting to Ray and his grandson Harrison at the front of the stand.  Ray kindly offers me a ticket to see Mark Steele at the Apex at Bury St Edmunds, because his wife isn’t really that keen, whilst Harrison tells me of someone he knows, who asked him if he was the same Harrison mentioned in this very blog.   Unable to tell a lie, not unlike George Washington but doubtless very unlike Donald Trump, the now famous Harrison naturally admitted he was.

The second half begins at three minutes past four and regrettably fails to differ very much from the one that preceded it.  Philogene has another shot barely saved by Okonkwo, Wrexham number eighteen Ben Sheaf is booked for fouling Azor Matusiwa, there is a scramble in the Wrexham goalmouth and Egeli shoots over the Wrexham cross bar but the causes for celebration are limited as evidence by the bloke behind me breaking into a joyous chorus of the “Scum are going down” when he learns that Norwich City are losing 4-1 at Birmingham.

An hour has left us for ever.  “Wrexham, Wrexham” chant the Wrexham fans to no particular tune as their team indulges in some rare passing and retention of the ball before Matusiwa is booked, unfairly of course, and Keiran McKenna makes the first much needed substitutions, bringing on George Hirst and Jack Clarke for Ivan Azon and Jaden Philogene.  Jack Taylor has a shot over the cross bar and Town win a corner but with no success from that Pat from Clacton takes things into her own hands and removes a blue Dodo from her handbag, which she bought in Mauritius, the Dodo that is, not the handbag, which given Pat’s age might have come from Salisbury’s.   The Dodo passes to Fiona, to me and back again into Pat’s bag and we just hope he’s more successful than the masturbating monkey from Cambodia, who has been the ‘lucky charm’ until today.  Fiona and I decide to call the Dodo Derek.

Less than twenty minutes remain for Derek to work his magic but a Town corner is easily headed away, and more substitutions quickly follow with Nunez and Cajuste replacing Akpom and Taylor. Wrexham continue to get to every Town cross and shot before Town do. Today’s attendance is announced as being 29,147 and we are thanked by the excitable young stadium announcer for our “Incredible support”, although the Wrexham fans remain unconvinced as they launch into a reprise of the old favourite “Football in library do-do-do” after first telling us we’re “Only here for the Wrexham”, which frankly seems unlikely unless anyone is a fan of stifling defending and zero excitement.

Less than ten minutes of normal time remain, and another Town corner comes to nought before Keiran McKenna goes for broke by bringing on Kasey McAteer, who immediately begins to live up to previous performances by being flagged offside.  Only four minutes of normal time remain now, Wrexham win a corner and referee Mr Whitestone books Wrexham’s Lewis O’Brien when Jack Clarke runs into him.  Up in the Cobbold Stand, the Wrexham fans suddenly come over all Welsh and start singing Men of Harlech.  The end of normal time is now imminent. Town win a free-kick but like everything else this afternoon they might as well not have bothered although after some more bagatelle the ball runs to Kasey McAteer for possibly the best chance of the game. McAteer blasts the ball spectacularly high and wide, seizing the opportunity to be crowned the new Lee Martin.

Four minutes of added on time prove as disappointing and sapping of optimism as the previous ninety-one and with the final whistle from Mr Whitestone Pat from Clacton and Fiona quickly take flight, along with Derek the Dodo, which is at least a first for him.  I’m not far behind as I console myself with the thought that at least I hadn’t witnessed Town lose like I did in Wrexham back in January 1995 in the FA Cup third round.  I can be glad too that Professor Alice wasn’t with me, she would probably never have spoken to me again, and so I can still look forward to the first time.