clacton

Ipswich Town 1 Wolverhampton Wanderers 2

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This week has felt somewhat depressing, probably because I have been reading ‘The Kevin Beattie Story’ as told to Rob Finch (Cult Figure Publishing 2007).  It’s a sorry tale of lost innocence and cruel fate and its sadness was not helped by the fact that my copy of the book had belonged to a close, longstanding friend who sadly died; his wife kindly asked me if I’d like any of his collection of ITFC related stuff, and the Beattie book was the one thing I didn’t have in my own museum.

Wednesday’s win for the Town in Bournemouth perked me up a bit, although I hadn’t bothered to find it on the telly, preferring to watch the second semi-final of the Coupe de France between AS Cannes and Stade de Reims.  But now, as I step out into a bright blue Saturday afternoon, my mood has performed a summersault, and I can only think of a Town home win, a series of further improbable wins and the greatest escape from relegation ever seen.  The season starts now and given that today’s game is only the second match at Portman Road in almost six weeks, it genuinely feels like it.

Unhappily, my journey to the match begins with a rail replacement bus service, but on the plus side I sit across the gangway from a woman of retirement age brandishing an ‘Extinction Rebellion’ placard.  I think to myself how I might like to go on some demos in my retirement.  As a baby-boomer, moulded by the 1960’s I think I owe it to future generations to stoke up a bit of revolution before I shuffle off this mortal coil.  The diesel engine powered bus ride is mercifully brief and I’m soon with Gary on an electric train to Ipswich looking out for polar bears.  We sit at a table and a man about the same age as me, possibly a little younger, sits down opposite us, first asking if we don’t mind if he sits there. “As long as you don’t disturb us” I tell him, by which I really mean “As long as you don’t join in with our conversation”, and that of course is exactly what he does.  I’m not sure why I feel averse to social interaction today, perhaps it’s because with no match for three weeks I ‘ve become overly introverted.

Our arrival in wonderful down-town Ipswich is heralded by loud chanting from the car park of the Station Hotel where Wolverhampton supporters are singing “We are Wolves, We Are Wolves, We Are Wolves”.  Such loud, pre-match singing has been unusual from visiting supporters this season and Gary and I speculate as we head for the Arb, that either the beer here in Ipswich is stronger than they’re used to in Wolverhampton, or they’ve all arrived early and been here for several hours.  Gary asks if I’m going to get an ice cream; I tell him I am, but as usual I come away from the blue booth with just a match programme (£3.50).

At the Arb, there is no queue for the bar and I am soon stood in the beer garden holding my pint of  Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride and one of something called Rosa Blanca belonging to Gary (the Lager 43 is ‘off’), as I wait for him to emerge from the toilet.  He takes an age, so regrettably I can’t help surmising that he must ‘doing a number two’.   Mick does not join us today because he is watching his paramour’s granddaughter play for Ipswich Town Under-16 girls against Leeds United at Needham Market (kick off 12:30).  I assume that the Leeds team is also made up of under 16 girls. After another pint of Suffolk Pride for me and an Estrella Damme for Gary, (he didn’t like the Rosa Blanca) it’s gone twenty to three and is time to leave for Portman Road and the main event of the day.

The back of the Sir Alf Ramsey stand is thick with queues when I arrive and as I stand in line I pass the time by looking up at the dark metal fascia of top of the stand, which is impressively streaked with guano, although there is not a seabird to be seen, as if when asked they will say “it was like that when we got here” .  The queue to turnstile 62 is as ever the slowest, so I switch to the seemingly better lubricated turnstile 61, but I’m still syphoning off excess Suffolk Pride as the team is read out and by the time I am reacquainting myself with Pat from Clacton, Fiona, the man from Stowmarket (Paul), ever-present Phil who never misses a game, and his young son Elwood, all trace of the excitable, young and somewhat lanky stadium announcer, and his sidekick Boo Boo, has gone.

It’s the Town that get first go with the ball this afternoon and naturally sporting the famous blue and white they are soon getting the ball to travel in the direction of the goal just in front of me and my fellow fifty plus (with the exception of Elwood) Ultras.  Wolverhampton are almost in their signature gold and black kit, but disappointingly their black shorts seem to be in the wash and their ‘gold’ shirts and substitute shorts aren’t that golden, more of a dark yellow, so anyone who is a bit short-sighted, or just contrary like me, might think they’re a poor man’s Cambridge United.

Pat is soon asking me if I’m well and we exchange complaints about aching knees and joints, it’s been that kind of a week.  “Oh when the Town go marching in” chant the north standers miserably as if we’ll be doing it under duress, and the Wolverhampton number twenty-seven shoots over the Town cross bar.  “Ed Sheeran, what a wanker, what a wanker” sing the Wulfrunians, as well they might, given that they share their love for their team with the likes of Robert Plant and Noddy Holder.

The Wolverhampton number nine shoots and Palmer saves as the prequel to repetitive chants of “Come on Wolvers” which are the soundtrack to three consecutive corners before Town earn a couple of corners of our own and I get to bellow “Come On You Blues”,  which always seems to amuse Pat from Clacton,   Then the ball is crossed in again.  Dara O’Shea heads the ball back across goal and Liam Delap slides in to score, and Town lead one-nil. “Liam Delap, Ole,” chant the multilingual home supporters and Pat from Clacton snaps pictures of our hysterical faces.    This is what being in the First Division is supposed to be like, but then reality bites as we have to wait for VAR to confirm that what we think we saw, we really saw.  “VAR don’t work in football” says the bloke behind me bitterly as we grow cold and old waiting for the decision, which presumably takes so long because there is controversy over whether the blade of grass on the toe of Liam Delap’s boot is a part of his boot, in which case he’d be offside, or part of the pitch, in which case he isn’t.  Surprisingly perhaps, the goal stands, and feeling even more excited than I did when we actually scored, I celebrate all over again.

High on the goal and VAR decision I am  more convinced than ever that the Town will escape relegation, and decide that the Wolverhampton number seven, who mysteriously is just called ‘Andre’ , looks a bit like Freddie Mercury.  Naturally intrigued, Pat from Clacton zooms in on him with her camera and disappointingly concludes that he looks nothing like him.  It must have been the spring sunlight playing across his dark moustache.  “Balustrades” reads the electronic advert between the tiers of the Sir Bobby Robson Strand, and then “Hot Sausage Company”, before then trying to convince us  it is the ideal place to get one’s pre-match meal, making me wonder in the interests of a balanced diet what vegetables they serve to accompany the hot sausage.

Life winds down towards half-time with an indirect free-kick on the edge of the Town six yard box after Alex Palmer misjudges a back pass and has to make a diving save to prevent the ball from going into the goal.   Another lengthy delay ensues as the referee struggles to employ the ten-yard rule within a space of only six yards, and predictably perhaps Wolverhampton miss anyway.  Alex Palmer is booked for encroachment, probably because he felt responsible.   Incredibly, but thankfully, only three minutes of added on time are added on and the first half ends with the home crowd feeling quite content with our lot.

Half-time is a blur of talking to Ray and his grandson Harrison, feeling a spot of water on my hand from the  sprinklers on the pitch, syphoning off more Suffolk Pride and eating an oddly named ‘Alibi’ chocolate bar,  which I found in the World Food aisle at Sainsbury’s and which comes from Poland and is a bit like a plain chocolate Toffee Crisp, but bigger; rather nice.

The football resumes at five minutes past four under the same clear blue sky that’s been here all day.  “Come On Wolvers, Come On Wolvers” is quaintly reprised up in the Cobbold Stand, Wolverhampton win a corner and Ipswich win two, but it is the team from the Black Country who are mostly running at the Town defence with the ball and looking quite good, much better than they did in the first half, unfortunately.  Silky Nathan Broadhead is replaced by the more combative Jack Taylor for Town.   There are only twenty minutes left and Town still lead but it doesn’t feel like it. “Come on Wolvers” continue the Wulfrunians and a SWAT team snatches away one of their number who has presumably been being doing something good football spectators shouldn’t. I beginning to think that the Wolverhampton team is a bit whingy, whiny and rough and a bad influence on their supporters.   “Hark now hear the Ipswich sing, the Norwich ran away” chant the Sir Bobby Robson standers referencing football hooliganism of yore in solidarity with the naughty boys of Wolverhampton.

After the seventy first minute, the seventy-second minute turns up as we expected it would, but with unexpected consequences as Wolverhampton’s Pablo Sarabia turns on the edge of the penalty area and shoots with no particular power at the Town goal.  From where I am sitting I am fully expecting Alex Palmer to dive across to his left and palm the ball away, but instead the ball unsportingly evades him and carries on onto the corner of the net.  Town are no longer winning and life is suddenly not as sweet as it was a few moments ago.  Of course, VAR has to give us false hope that a loose thread from a gold shirt was in an offside position and might have distracted Palmer,  but it is not to be and our pain is doubled with the seemingly inevitable confirmation that the goal was indeed a goal.

“We are Wolves, We are Wolves” chant the visiting Wulfrunians, at last feeling bold enough to identify themselves in public, and by way of confirmation we are told that there are 2,955 of them  amongst a total crowd of 29,549 and we are all thanked for our “incredible support,” which I can’t help thinking  gets a little less incredible and a little more ordinary every time we are told that it’s incredible.   Meanwhile, back in the Cobbold stand the Wulfrunians have broken free of their shackles and launched into a chorus of the socialist anthem the Red Flag, although despite the lyrics of the song expressly forbidding it, they have changed the colour of the flag from red to gold. Flippin’ revisionists.

Ten minutes of normal time remain as hopelessly inaccurate shots rain in on the Town goal and the Wolverhampton fans gain in confidence to the extent that they tell us we’re “Going down with the Albion”, by which I assume they must mean Burton Albion because both West Bromwich and Brighton & Hove are both securely mid-table.  Either their barbed taunts provoke a reaction, or Keiran McKenna looks at his watch and realises it’s nearly tea-time as he makes a sudden rash of substitutions with Delap, Townsend and Cajuste replacing Philogene, Davis and Hirst on the bench.  The changes unfortunately bring disaster for Town as within three minutes a run into the box and a low cross allows a large Norwegian by the name of Strand Larsen to score a close-range goal similar to that which Delap scored in the first half.  “Like a a bag of cement” says the bloke behind me about some Town defender or other. “Piss poor” he concludes.  VAR twists the knife by again making us wait for confirmation that the goal was a goal, as all hope at first slowly but then more quickly bleeds out of us.

Seven minutes of added time are of no help; we lose and are well beaten by a more skilful, more exciting, more proficient team, interestingly made up entirely of players from Portugal, Brazil, France, Spain and other countries that aren’t England.   But the league table still says that they are the next worst team after us.

Not to worry, this sorry tale of a season of lost innocence and cruel fate will soon be over.

Ipswich Town 2 Nottingham Forest 4

/ martinpbrooks / 2 Comments

One of the many awful things about the awful English Premier League is that it is possible to go weeks on end without a home game.  It is three weeks since Ipswich played at Portman Road, and in that time the cost of the rail fare to Ipswich has increased by about four per cent.  It feels so long since I last went to a match that I would believe it if someone told me that not only have the fares gone up, but electric trains have replaced steam ones too.  It is with a sense of dim resignation therefore that I set out for the railway station beneath a blue, but cloud strewn sky.

Gary joins me at the first station stop after I send him instructions by text that I am sat at the back of the second, forward facing, pointy-ended carriage.  The train does not seem as busy as usual as if everyone is losing interest.  Descending into Ipswich through Wherstead, we spot one polar bear having a swim and another languidly strolling along like polar bears do.  Arriving in Ipswich we head for ‘the Arb’ via Portman Road, where Gary is handed a Panini sticker, which bizarrely features the gormless, messy-haired portrait of local ginger celebrity Ed Sheeran.  I tell him he should hand it back.  We pause to buy programmes (£3.50 each) at one of the booths that look as if they should also sell ice creams.  Today’s programme has a boring picture of a footballer on the front cover, I think it’s Luke Woolfenden, but am struck by the thought that it looks a bit like Kurtan Mucklowe from TV’s This Country.  Either way, the world would be a better place if the ‘poster’ design on the inside of the back page featuring the Cobbold Stand was the front cover of the programme.  I am sure that if the poster designs had continued to be used as front covers as originally intended, Town would not be in the relegation zone. Damn you Umbro.

At ‘the Arb’, Gary buys the drinks (Lager 43 for him, Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride for me), and then Mick appears, and Gary buys him a drink too (Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride), and at Mick’s request, a packet of potato crisps (Fairfeld’s Cheese and Onion flavour).  We repair to the beer garden where unusually there are plenty of vacant seats and tables, further evidence perhaps that the supposed excitement of Premier League football is wearing thin, or that it’s been so long since we had a match people thought, or hoped, the season was over.  We talk of firing squads, lethal injections, the full moon over Felixstowe, Allan Hunter, kitchen tidiness and wedding anniversaries.  We laugh a lot, Gary gives Mick his sticker of Ed Sheeran, Mick buys more drinks (Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride, Lager 43 and a Penderyn Welsh whisky) and we predict a 2-1 win to the Town on the understanding that we actually expect them to lose, again.  Proudly, we claim the distinction of being the last Portman Road-bound drinkers to leave the pub.

In Portman Road we part ways near Sir Alf Ramsey’s statue and wonder on what far off date we will meet again for the next home match, which we think is against the Wanderers of Wolverhampton.  I sense that we don’t care too much about what match it will be, but are already mostly looking forward to the hour to be spent in the pub beforehand. At the back of the Alf Ramsey Stand the queues are modest in length, but I join those being ushered through the side entrance, which makes me feels like I’m entering Studio 54 or some after hours boozer. After venting excess Suffolk Pride I am soon with Pat from Clacton, Fiona, the man from Stowmarket (Paul), ever present Phil who never misses a game, and his son Elwood.  I must be early again today because I’m here in time to witness the attempt to barbecue any stray pigeons and seagulls in front of the Cobbold Stand, and to shout out the surnames of Town players in the style of the ‘Magic Fans’ of St Etienne or ‘Les Dodgers’ of Lens as the overly enthusiastic young stadium announcer reads out the team before he finally, embarrassingly, bellows ‘Blue Army’ into his microphone.

Today’s visitors and therefore inevitable winners are Nottingham Forest, who also get first go with the ball, which they initially send only in the general direction of the goal in front of the Sir Bobby Robson stand.  Sensibly, Nottingham wear all red, having only swapped their usual white shorts to avoid any hint of a colour clash, rather than donning some weird all-black or gaudily-coloured away kit which will sell well in replica versions in Myanmar, Papua New Guinea and South Korea, but is not necessary.

In the upper tier of the Cobbold stand the Nottingham fans sing incomprehensibly about their team, who hold on to possession for almost two minutes before Town get to have a go with it too, courtesy of a throw-in. “England’s, England’s, number ten” continue the Nottinghamians mysteriously, about a player who, unless it’s Nigel Clough, I have probably never heard of.  It’s the fourth minute and Town have a free-kick in the sort of location from which Colin Viljoen or Arnold Muhren might have easily scored in happier days, but today’s effort only strikes the defensive wall.

“Down with the Leicester, you’re going down with the Leicester” chant the Nottingham lot as I fantasize about a big wheel of red cheese, whilst the words “Home of the XL vent shipping container” scroll their way along the front of the Sir Bobby Robson stand before disappearing into the side wall of the Planet Blue shop. Not much is happening on the pitch, but with a seemingly limitless but mostly unimaginative back catalogue of songs and chants, the Nottingham fans proceed to resurrect Tony Christie’s cheesy ‘Road to Amarillo’ before hitting on the old classic “Football in a library, do-do-do”.   The Nottingham Forest team seems fashionably short-haired, looking as if National Service didn’t end in the East Midlands in 1960, like it did in the rest of Britain,  but the exception is number thirty-four who resembles side-show Bob from The Simpsons, and probably has more hair on his head than all of his team mates put together; if he went to head the ball with any part of his skull but his forehead, there’s a risk the ball would disappear.

Ipswich win a corner and I bawl “Come On you Blues” with minimal accompaniment before Omari Hutchinson shoots over the cross bar. Pat is working hard taking photographs this afternoon and seems particularly interested in snapping the Nottingham number five.  “Murillo” she says. “What like the cherry?”  I ask.   Pat tells me she follows him on some social media platform or other.  “Oooh, he’s gorgeous” she says. “Take a look, you might even fancy him yourself”.     “If you hear something that doesn’t seem right” read the advertising screens between the tiers of the Sir Bobby Robson stand.   I think of Gary’s Panini sticker, which he gave to Mick.

Over twenty minutes have gone forever, and Town aren’t losing.  Cruel hope and foolish optimism begin to insinuate their way into my mind.  Nottingham take a corner and still it’s goalless. “Come of You Reds” sing the occupants of one end of the Cobbold Stand. “Ole. Ole. Ole” sing the occupants of the other.   The game is a third of the way to finishing goalless.  “Blue and White Army” chant the Sir Bobby Robson standers a good two or three times and the words “Hot Sausage Company” appear above them in bold red letters moving from left to right.

The thirty fourth minute and Nottingham earn a corner as Alex Palmer’s hacked clearance cannons off Jens Cajuste.  The corner is cleared but then crossed in again, knocked down and a big bloke called Milenkovic scores.  Bugger. Two minutes later Town lose possession, have no left back and Elanga sprints away with the ball down the Town left and scores.  “We’re gonna win 3-2” says Fiona. “Yes, we’re going to win 3-2” I reply as convincingly as I can.   Five minutes later, the ball bounces and Elanga scores again.

Pat from Clacton is going to Great Yarmouth this week for her twice-yearly week of playing whist.  She’s hoping to win lots of money and is looking forward to seeing the sun rise over the sea from her bedroom at the Palm Court hotel.  “Down with the Leicester, you’re going down with the Leicester” chant the Nottingham fans, but Pat won’t mind.  The half ends with Kalvin Phillips shooting over the bar, two minutes of added on time and an obese woman walks up the steps from the front of the stand carrying a bottle of Coke and bag of crisps.

With the half-time break, I take a short walk to the front of the stand to speak with Ray, his son Michael and grandson Harrison. In front of us are three ‘trainee’ guide dogs.  “What do you call a group of dogs?” asks Ray. “A pack” I tell him “So this is a pack of guide dogs”.  We go on to talk about the popular image of packs of dogs tearing other animals or even people apart, and contrast this to a pack of guide dogs who we imagine compete with one another to help people.

It’s three minutes past four when the match resumes. Town soon win a corner and Omari Hutchinson has a shot, then win another and O’Shea heads over the goal. As the man from Stowmarket remarked before the game, it’s very cold today, possibly the coldest it’s been at Portman Road all season. Kalvin Phillips is the first player to be booked because fifty-four minutes have departed and it’s about time for a booking.  Pat reveals that she’s already started looking forward to eating the baked potato she’s having for her tea.  There is a half an hour left and whilst Town are having most of the possession there’s not much going on.

The best bit of the game so far arrives when Nottingham’s Nicolas Dominguez rolls around on the ground having committed a foul, gets up, gets booked and then hobbles about pathetically. “There’s nothing wrong with you” chant the Sir Bobby Robson standers to the tune of Verdi’s “La Donna e mobile”, which the Argentinian Dominguez will no doubt appreciate if he’s ever been to the Teatro Colon opera house in Bueno Aires.

“It’s not worth getting monkey out, is it?” asks Pat, raising the possibility of employing her masturbating monkey good luck charm to influence the result.  “Probably not”, agree Fiona and I. “He can’t perform miracles” says Fiona, and I suggest that we’d have the RSPCA round, especially on a day as cold as this.

Town win yet another corner, but nothing comes of it and the bloke behind me comments that “You can make all these passes around the penalty area look good, but it don’t do anything does it, fart-arsing around with it?”.  As I digest the truth of this, the excitable young stadium announcer tells us that we are 29,878 and 3,000 of us are mainly here to watch Nottingham, not Ipswich;  meanwhile the Nottingham fans sing something which sounds like “We’re eating porridge”, but they could be singing about Norwich.  I resign myself to neither knowing nor caring, but instead enjoy the mass substitutions from both teams that greet the 80th minute.   What game-changing substitutions these prove to be as within two minutes Town are on their way to winning the second half.  Presumably elated at having for once not been substituted, Jens Cajuste superbly turns and scores into the top corner of the Nottingham goal.  Admittedly, just four minutes later a typical breakaway at pace allows Silva to restore the three goal lead for Nottingham, but then in one of the four minutes of added on time, substitute George Hirst rises to head into the other top corner of the Nottingham goal to win the second half for Town.  Most of the home crowd have left by now, which in itself is quite satisfying because people who leave early don’t deserve to experience the joy that late consolation goals bring to proper fans.

The final whistle sounds, and with my train home still twenty-five minutes away, I stay to applaud what people not prepared to wilfully disregard all that happened before four o’clock will fail to realise is a victorious Town team as they traipse off the pitch.  There are now just four home games left, we’re out of the FA Cup, in the relegation zone, effectively nine points behind the team above us in the league, and Spring is in the air. Today, it still feels like Winter and I suspect it will continue to do so for another four games, whatever the weather does. Up The Town!

Ipswich Town 1 Southampton 2

/ martinpbrooks / 1 Comment

It’s not been a particularly good week, I’ve been tired, bored and feeling lazy a lot of the time, and have been trying not to think about football.  Ipswich have scored once and conceded twelve goals in their last three league matches, and I’ve dreamt that they will lose again on Saturday.  But then it has been January, and the days are mostly still short and miserable, even if they are growing longer and promising to be brighter.   Now, suddenly, it’s February and Town are about to play Southampton, by far the worst team in the league.  As people are wont to say, what can possibly go wrong?

It’s a dull, chilly day and the train is a minute late, another wasted, pointless minute in which all I do is introduce more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  I sit on the left-hand side of the train carriage because when I did that before, Ipswich beat Chelsea, actually beat them; our only home win in the league this season, so far.  Opposite me, a woman stares down at her mobile phone and I have to listen to the annoying jingles and voices emanating from it.  Why does she think it’s acceptable to disturb other people’s peace like this? Naturally, I don’t ask her, but instead look at my own mobile phone, checking the latest score in the match between Pen-y-Bont and Haverfordwest County in the Welsh Premier League, it’s nil-nil.  I log on to S4C-Clic where the game is being shown live, but it’s half-time so there’s nothing to see.  Happily, when we get nearer to Ipswich the woman puts her phone away, as if acknowledging that we’re approaching civilisation where social standards are higher. Descending through Wherstead I spot a polar bear, just the one today.

Arriving in Ipswich there is sunshine and blue sky emerging from behind the clouds; I have my train ticket ready on my phone and opt for human contact, heading for the gate where there is a ticket collector.  I show him the weird square bar code thing on the e-mail from Greater Anglia, I think it’s called a QR code, but he says he needs to see the ticket, I thought it was the ticket.  “Don’t worry” I tell him, “I’ll go through the automatic gate, it’ll be easier” and it is.

I walk briskly over Princes Street bridge, past the police station and into Portman Road where I pause to buy a programme (£3.50) and find myself approaching the programme seller from one direction, exactly as another man approaches from another; we’re set to collide, which makes the programme seller smile, and I do too, but the other man doesn’t, so I adjust my stride and nip in, in front of him. As I continue on to the Arb, programme zipped into an inside pocket of my coat,  I wonder at all the thousands of ‘new’ Town fans in the streets on a matchday lunchtime.  What did they used to do when Mick McCarthy was manager? Some of them don’t even look like football fans, more like visitors to a theme park.

At the Arb, I’m soon served with a pint of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride (£4.14 with Camra discount) and am heading for a seat at the one free table in the beer garden, which seems to have been left just for me.  Mick isn’t here yet, so I look at the match programme and enjoy the cover which thanks to the philistines at nasty Umbro (You can stick Umbro up your bum bro’) is inside the back page. Today, the inspirations for the design we are told, are the covers of jazz LP’s and Conor Chaplin, who appears with a halo which, given that he is a Pompey boy, suitably ‘sticks it’ to the Saints of Southampton.  My wife, a Pompey girl would approve, and she doesn’t approve of much.

Mick soon appears, saving me from having to read too much of the programme, and mysteriously asks me if I’ve ordered anything to eat. He heads for the bar and returns with a pint of Suffolk Pride and we talk of clearing his dead neighbour’s house, Donald Trump’s insane ramblings, the film of ‘A man called Otto’ and when football club boardrooms were populated with the owners of local businesses.  Mick eats a vegetarian Scotch Egg before I buy another pint of Suffolk Pride for me and a Jamieson whisky for him (£8 something with Camra discount for the beer).  By twenty-eight minutes to three we are alone in the beer garden and we speculate as to why people are so keen to get to Portman Road early.  Mick laughs that there will be queues at the turnstiles for the West Stand  in Sir Alf Ramsey Way but he will walk on to the end turnstile where there will be no queue.  We agree that ‘people’ are so stupid, “Brexit voters.” I tell him, and we laugh some more.

We leave the Arb at about twenty to three and part ways near the statue of Sir Alf Ramsey. Mick asks what the next match is, I have no idea, and revel in our ignorance, like people do.  The back of the Sir Alf Ramsey stand is thick with people, so I take the long way round to approach turnstile 62 where the queue moves at an acceptable pace and I ask the security person if he’d like me to strike a pose as he waves his firearm detector over me; he smiles broadly and seems happy for me to do so, and so I go for something that is a cross between John Travolta and Usain Bolt .

The excitable young stadium announcer has already excitedly announced the Town team by the time I join Pat from Clacton, Fiona, the man from Stowmarket (Paul), ever present Phil who never misses a game, and his son Elwood on the bottom tier of the stand. The game begins, and it is Southampton who get first go with the ball aiming it the direction of the goal in front of the Sir Bobby Robson stand. Town are of course in blue and white, but Southampton stupidly sport a pointless, unnecessary away kit of yellow shirts with navy blue shorts. The yellow is of a horribly pale washed out shade, as if their shirts from the 1976 FA Cup final had been very hard wearing and in constant use  for most of the past forty-nine years.

I can smell meat pie as the supporters of both clubs exercise their voices beneath a light blue afternoon sky and Town win an early corner through on-loan Paraguayan Julio Enciso.  It’s an early chance to chant “Come On You Blues” and I do, which is just as well because unbeknown to me, it will be the only corner Town win.  “If you see something that doesn’t look right send a message to the clubs dedicated reporting number” announces the illuminations across the centre of the Sir Bobby Robson stand.  I think to myself that Southampton’s shirts fit that description, but is that what they mean?

Ten minutes pass into history and the incisive Enciso has a shot which Southampton ‘keeper Ramsdale saves.  “Blue and White Army, Blue and White Army, Blue and White Army” chant the home crowd and Pat from Clacton talks to Fiona about having seen Peter Andre.  Back on the pitch, Southampton seem to be unexpectedly dominating possession. I had thought that this might be one of the few games that the Town would dominate.  ”Bloody dangerous going forward. Awful at the back” says the bloke beside me of Southampton and I notice that Axel Tuanzebe has had his hair braided, I guess he had a lot of time on his hands when he was out injured.

Another eleven minutes pass by and Southampton score, getting down Town’s left and pulling the ball back for Aribo, the Premier League player whose name most resembles that of a brand of jelly sweets, to awkwardly bounce a shot past a diving Aro Muric. “Oh bugger” is surely the collective thought of twenty-seven thousand people, even those in the family enclosure, whilst the two-thousand nine hundred odd Southampton fans in the top tier of the Cobbold Stand begin singing about saints going marching in, confirming what Martin Luther already knew centuries ago that the Roman Catholic church has a lot to answer for.  Buoyed by their religious fervour and one-nil lead, the Southamptonites attempt to be humourous by  singing “Sit down if you love Norwich”  before moving on to chants of “Your support is fucking shit”.  Crushed by their untamed wit, grown men in the top tier of the Sir Alf Ramsey Stand openly weep.  

Ten minutes have passed since the fateful goal and Southampton are now playing a game of strategic fouls to break up play, but when Liam Delap bundles past Bednarek with a pass from Nathan Broadhead, he is through with only Ramsdale to embarrass, which he does and Town are deservedly level. “Our number nineteen, Liam Delap” shouts the excitable young stadium announcer adding ear popping emphasis to the letter ‘P’ in Delap.  “Hot Sausage Co” say the illuminations between the tiers of the Sir Bobby Robson stand, and Nathan Broadhead almost adds a second goal, but his shot is saved by Ramsdale.

Half-time looms with Town on top. Southampton’s number forty, Welington is booked for a very blatant foul and I tell Fiona he used to play for Wimbledon, with Orinoco, who, along with Tomsk,  she seems to know all about.  Omari Hutchinson runs and shoots at Ramsdale, and three minutes of added time are added on as the excitable young stadium announcer confirms “That’s three minutes added time”, just in case we weren’t paying attention the first time he said it.

With half-time, I eat a Slovakian Horalky wafer and syphon off excess Suffolk Pride before, as tradition dictates, speaking to Ray, his son Michael and grandson Harrison. Ever-present Phil who never misses a game expresses surprise that I’m not wearing a Pompey favour on account of Mrs Brooks being a Pompey fan, but I tell him I am just under strict instructions that Town must win.  At four minutes past four the football returns beneath a clear blue sky with all clouds having dispersed, and the roof of the Sir Bobby Robson stand turns pale orange like Donald Trump in the soft glow of the winter’s afternoon sunlight.

Southampton have made a substitution replacing a local Hampshire firm of solicitors Taylor Harewood-Bellis with Jack Stephens,  who himself is substituted ten minutes later to be replaced by Will Smallbone, a character from Charles Dickens’ Old Curiosity Shop, possibly.  Jens Cajuste treats us to one of the worst shots ever seen at Portman Road as his shot fails to travel in the general direction of the goal at all.  An hour has passed and Southampton, the ‘Scummers’ as my wife and many others call them, win a corner.  Nathan Broadhead takes a rest and Philogene replaces him, and with game two thirds over and Town not winning against the league’s biggest duffers, the crowd seems impatient.  Pat tells us that at the end of May she’s going on cruise around the western Mediterranean which takes in Rome, Corsica and Sardinia; it should be better than this match is turning out to be.

Only sixteen minutes of normal time remain. “Come On Ipswich, Come On Ipswich” chant the crowd, beginning to sound desperate.  Jack Taylor replaces Jens Cajuste and the excitable young announcer tells us that we number 29,902, with 2,961 of us not really being ‘of us’ ,but of the other lot.  “Pompey get battered everywhere they go” sing the other lot as they display, given their status as the only club in the English professional leagues not to have reached double figures in their points tally, considerably less grasp on the concept of irony than even the average American.

With the match into its last ten minutes, Southampton edge into the lead in the corner count before a break down the left from substitute Sulamana ends with a shot, which Muric initially saves.  But Muric cannot hold the ball and Southampton’s number thirty-two, Paul Onuachu , a man so huge he didn’t need to be in the Town half to do this, just sticks out a leg ahead of Jacob Greaves and pokes the ball into the net .  Defeat was unthinkable, but now it’s not being thought, it’s actually being witnessed.  Some of Town’s famously loud and loyal supporters leave, and some of their famously less loud, less loyal ones do too.

It doesn’t look like Town are going to win this now,  even though when eight minutes of added time are announced I tell Fiona this gives us so much time we can probably win four-two.  Of course, it doesn’t, and the eight minutes evaporate into a cloud of frustration, which finally condenses with the referee’s final whistle into a stream of boos, mostly, I hope to think, from the people who weren’t present when Mick McCarthy was manager.

So, the Town have lost to the team which is likely to go down in history as the one with the worst record of any top division team, a team we all expected to beat.  Whatever, we’ll just have to beat some teams we’re not expected to beat, or get relegated; that’s what comes of running towards adversity I guess, death or glory.

Ipswich Town 0 Manchester City 6

/ martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

This morning, I read that Pierre de Coubertain, the Frenchman who founded the modern Olympic Games had said, in French “The important thing in life is not the triumph but the fight.  The essential thing is not to have won but to have fought well”.  Such a view seems rather out of date nowadays, but to his credit he was born in 1863 and when he was a lad the high ideals of amateurism and the Corinthian spirit still flourished.  I have a lot of sympathy for such views because if winning is important then some people will cheat, and when that happens we might as well pack up our goal nets, deflate our footballs, give the referee his bus fare and just go down the pub.

To save time, I haven’t put up nets or inflated any footballs today but I will soon be in ‘the Arb’ with Gary and Mick.  Although beneath cold, grey skies, Gary and I had a largely enjoyable train journey to Ipswich, talking humourously, I think, about Memorial Matchdays, last wills and testaments, and postmen working in the afternoons as pall bearers.  But best of all, we saw two polar bears, one of which was almost pulling the classic Fox’s Glacier Mints pose, even if it did look like it had also been rolling in his own excrement.   On Princes Street bridge a middle-aged Manchester City supporter asked us (Ipswich Town) to go easy on them (Manchester City) today and I felt somewhat resentful of his probable sarcasm.  “Are you being sarcastic?” I enquired, unable to think of anything in the least bit clever to say, and I still haven’t.   In Portman Road we each buy programmes (£3.50) in the modern cashless manner from a bloke with a little blue trolley, and to make up for my electronic ticket having worked first time at the railway station, the technology fails and I have to type in my PIN number.  Leaving the programme seller to his trolley, we speak of how dull and uninspiring the front covers of the programme is compared to the poster design inside the back page.  Town’s kit manufacturer Umbro reportedly objected to the posters because they don’t flaunt the Umbro logo,  and I tell Gary I dream of a fans’ rebellion a bit like Mai ’68 in Paris, but with a boycott of replica kits under the slogan of “You can stick your Umbro up your bum Bro”.

The Arb is predictably busy when we get there and it takes a short while for Gary to kindly buy me a pint of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride whilst treating himself to a pint of Lager 43 too.  Mick is already in the beer garden, sat alone at the sort if wooden table Yogi Bear might have known, but he’s soon released from his isolation as we arrive to talk about the new Bob Dylan film, which Gary has seen and Mick and I haven’t and whether Mick has drunk the Calvados I gave him before Christmas (he has).  More conversation, Suffolk Pride, Lager 43 and a Jamieson Whisky for Mick follow (£13 something for the three), before most if not all of the other drinkers have departed for Portman Road and then we do the same, parting ways within earshot of Sir Alf Ramsey’s statue, if only Sir Alf’s bronze effigy could hear.

The queues for the turnstiles are much shorter today than they were on Thursday evening, and seemingly cured of my need to always use turnstile 62, I enter by turnstile 59, that number corresponding to the year I was conceived.  As ever, Pat from Clacton, Fiona, the man from Stowmarket (Paul), ever-present Phil who never misses a game, and his son Elwood are all here before me, lapping up the loud music and pyrotechnics that crowds of 29,000 people demand.  I smile broadly as Pat from Clacton takes my photograph before the excitable young stadium announcer tells us today’s team and I attempt to bawl out their surnames in the manner of a Frenchman in the tribunes of  Stade de la Mosson or Stade Geoffrey Guichard.

Death however, stalks every football match nowadays like the smell of frying onions used to, and after Thursday’s Memorial Matchday, today we have a minute’s silence for the very recently deceased Denis Law.  But there is no silence, as the Manchester City fans , musical and loud as they are, like the ugly Gallagher brothers, won’t stop singing some song or other to which the words are completely unintelligible, and so the silence isn’t a silence, it becomes an  applause, and it doesn’t seem like it lasts a minute either, but I don’t suppose Denis is bothered.

Finally, after the na-na-nas of  The Beatles’ “Hey Jude”, the match begins and Manchester City get first go with the ball, which they mostly pass in the direction of the goal in front of the Sir Bobby Robson stand.  The Town are of course in their signature blue and white kit, and therefore Manchester City are in a change kit of all burgundy or claret, like eleven fine wines but minus the bouquet of damson, truffle, chalk and damp fur.  These footballers probably smell of eau de parfum by Chanel or Guerlain.

Excitement reigns in the opening minutes as the home fans chant “Addy-Addy, Addy O “ and City fans chant “City, City, City, City” as if  people have become incapable of singing verses, being  mesmerized by the incantation of endless choruses.  It works for Town, who inside three minutes win a corner when Omari Hutchinson shoots goalwards, and then win another. “Come On You Blues” is my mantra.  “Good start” says the bloke beside me appreciatively and perhaps with a hint of surprise.  “Who the fook are Man Uni-ited”  sing the City fans to the tune of “Glory ,Glory, Allelujah” and Erling Haaland the Norwegian sky-blue shoots over the Town cross-bar and then the City number eight does so too before City win a corner as they dominate possession, but don’t  seriously look any more likely to score than the Town do, and fifteen minutes have already disappeared for ever.

O’Shea heads at the City goalkeeper from a free-kick after  a rampaging Liam Delap is fouled, and I realise I’m not noticing the adverts on the Sir Bobby Robson Stand, I’m watching the match.  “At least we’ve had a shot on target” says Fiona.  But then something goes wrong on the Town right, de Bruyne is behind the Town defence, he passes and Foden scores, hovering in mid-air to control the ball before flicking it into the Town net.  It feels a bit like our best chance of not losing has just gone. Confirmation comes three minutes later as short, quick passing ends with a low hard shot into the corner of the Town goal from the edge of the penalty area, and we’re losing 2-0.

“Down with United, you’re going down with United” chant the City fans to the Cuban folk tune Guantanamera, as if our losing brings more joy to them than their winning.  I suspect it’s a result of low self-esteem, like a lot of things in England; and they are from ‘Up North’.   Half-time is approaching and de Bruyne and Foden do pretty much what they did for the first goal and the score is three – nil.   Usually, with Town losing like this I would have been distracted by player’s with funny names or what the team managers are wearing, but despite the pain tonight I’m strangely absorbed by the football.

I speak to the man from Stowmarket (Paul) and then Dave the steward and Ray and his grandson Harrison.  The mood is one of cheery resignation; everyone thinks we’ve played quite well, it’s just that Manchester City are out of our league; they’re backed by the 34th richest nation on the planet, while we’re backed by a firemen’s retirement fund. They have players worth as much as our entire squad, and to think I can remember when City were like a northern Tottenham Hotspur or West Ham United , clubs with a decent history but now seemingly playing mostly for laughs.  Despite his status as  a convicted sex offender, former radio summarizer Stuart Hall accurately referred to Old Trafford as the Theatre of Dreams and Maine Road as the Theatre of Base Comedy.

At twenty-five to six, as much of the  nation sits by roaring log fires tucking into toasted crumpets and Battenburg cake as they watch Country File, the second half begins. Almost immediately, and I think four minutes later can probably be called ‘immediately’ in the context of a lifetime, Town almost score, as a flowing move ends with a shot from Ben Johnson being saved by the City goalkeeper Ederson,  Moments later however, Doku who hopefully has a sister called Sue, runs down the Town right hand side into the penalty area and scores with a lucky deflection.   Nine minutes later, with Pat from Clacton quietly singing “We’re gonna win 5-4” to the tune of Rodgers’ and Hart’s “Blue Moon”, Erlong Haaland scores a fifth goal after Jack Clarke spoils an otherwise tidy performance by passing directly to the player he should have probably taken most care not to pass to, Jeremy Doku.

Town do win a corner,  and make lots of substitutions, but then so do City.  Kevin de Bruyne, whose haircut is clearly an homage to that of former Town legend Ted Phillips is replaced by Jack Grealish, a man whose transfer fee was at least as much as the entire Town team added together and whose large calf muscles seem to have piqued the interest of Pat from Clacton.  I resist telling her that I think I’ve got quite an impressive set of calves myself, and shapely with it.

Just beyond the hour both Town players with the initial JC ( Jack Clarke and Jens Cajuste) are substituted, and perhaps because this is some sort of blasphemy, it’s only seven minutes later that a sixth goal is conceded as two of City’s players move on a different plane to everyone else with a high diagonal pass being met with a looping header as everyone else looks on.

There are twenty minutes still to go and the home crowd is subdued, but still happy in their resignation.  Some leave, perhaps because they think they’re too good for this, but they’re really not, and many who remain sing, not defiantly or sarcastically but appreciatively, because as the bloke next to me says, two years ago we were losing at Oxford United but now we’re losing to that season’s European Cup winners.  Ever since relegation to the third division in 2019, Town fans seem to have understood about supporting a losing team.

I can’t pretend I’m not happy as the final whistle blows, not with result of course, but because the ordeal is over and at least Pierre de Coubertin would have been impressed.

Ipswich Town 0 Brighton & Hove Albion 2

/ martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

It’s been a much more eventful, activity-packed day than usual, with visits to my dentist and my surviving aged parent, a bit of driving around Ipswich, and spending my once a week day in the office, from the window of which I saw the Brighton and Hove Albion team bus drive by.   It’s nevertheless been a grey day, but now, as I pass through the portals of ‘the Arb,’ darkness has fallen and as it’s not raining or snowing the weather is no longer noticeable, although for January it’s quite mild.  Most incredible of all however, today is Thursday, and the Town will be playing at home tonight.  Foolishly nostalgic, I pine for the days when no football was ever played on a Thursday unless it happened to be Boxing Day, or two clubs were embroiled in multiple FA Cup replays, such as when Ipswich gloriously beat Leeds United on Thursday 27th March 1975, or less gloriously lost at home to West Ham United on Thursday 6th February 1986. But whatever, I’m here now.

In the present, Mick is already stood at the bar ordering a pint of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride and some food and he kindly buys me a pint of the same, and when I say I want to order some food too, he says he’ll pay for that as well; what a great bloke he is.  We repair to the beer garden, which is deserted, and wait for our food.  Over vegetarian burgers with what we think are sweet potato chips, we discuss how our lives and attitudes have been shaped by passing the 11-plus and being sent from rural primary schools to ‘posh’ schools at the expense of the County Council,  working class people’s mistrust of authority,  comedy, and how the environmentally friendly ‘Ecover’ cleaning brand is actually owned by evil multi-national Johnson and Johnson. After another pint of Suffolk Pride for me, and a Jura whisky for Mick because I misheard the bar maid when she said they only had Jamieson Stout and thought she said that the Jamieson is ‘out’, it is nearly ten past seven and time to exit through the now totally deserted bar towards Portman Road.

With ten minutes until kick-off, Portman Road is thick with queues, but I buy a programme from a queue-free seller and make my way around to approach the Sir Alf Ramsey stand from the direction of Russell Road. I join a shuffling queue but am quickly ushered towards a side gate in the style of Mr Benn and find myself inside the stadium just in time to bawl out the surnames of Burns, Broadhead, Hutchinson and Delap like a Frenchman would, as the excitable young stadium announcer reads out the Town team.  Around me, the familiar faces of Pat from Clacton, Fiona, the man from Stowmarket (Paul), ever-present Phil who never misses a game, but not his son Elwood, who is absent tonight, await the imminent kick-off to a soundtrack of na-na-nas from The Beatles’ song ‘Hey Jude’.  Kick-off is delayed however because tonight is the annual “Memorial Matchday” and we are told that a minute’s applause for recently deceased Town fans will begin with the referee’s whistle, but instead it starts straight away, so keen are the remaining Town fans to celebrate the dead. Perhaps football has finally replaced religion.

It’s Brighton who get first go with ball, which they mostly try to send in the direction of the goal fronting the Sir Bobby Robson stand; they wear a kit of all yellow, just as they did when I first saw them play a league game at Portman Road back in 1980.  Unless you’re FC Nantes, in which case it’s your home kit, all-yellow is the anonymous, archetypal away kit, which is what away kits used to be before everything was put up for sale, or ‘monetised’.  The Town are of course in blue and white.

“Al-bion, Al-bion” chant the Brighton fans boringly, as if they’re here under duress, before launching off into some song or other which at one point sounds disturbingly like ‘On The Ball City’.  On the pitch, Brighton start well, selfishly keeping the ball to themselves.  “Who’s the Brighton manager?” asks Pat from Clacton.  He’s German isn’t he says Fiona.  “I don’t know who he is” I reply, “Alan Mullery?”.   “Alan Mullery!” says Pat as if she’s really saying “Pffft”.   “I suppose Steve Foster is playing at the back is he?” scoffs Fiona.  Behind me, two blokes discuss the Brighton team, although this mostly consists of them saying players’ names and then adding “Yeah, he’s good”.

Brighton claim the game’s first corner in the eighth minute and we are treated to more morose repetition of “Al-bion, Al-bion”, which compares unfavourably with what I expected to hear, which was the much more upbeat “Sea-gulls, Sea-gulls”.  But in the final league table of disappointment over the course of the evening I don’t expect it to rank highly.  Ten minutes have passed and so far the game is all Brighton, and Ipswich fans are looking to the floor or the sky and whistling as if a little embarrassed, before some Bobby Robson standers eventually sing “Hark now hear the Ipswich sing, the Norwich ran away” in an attempt to change the subject.

“Thank you to today’s sponsors” reads the illuminated strip between the two tiers of the Sir Bobby stand but I quietly curse Umbro for apparently objecting to the poster style front page of the programme like philistine, money-obsessed bastards. The Brighton fans sing “Football in a library, der, der, der” to no particular tune.  Twenty minutes pass and Brighton have dominated them all, but without looking as if they will score, and therefore the belief remains that if only Ipswich can keep the ball for more than a few seconds they might nip away and demonstrate to Brighton what the point of the game is.  Brighton win another corner to no effect, before hope springs from the fleet of foot Nathan Broadhead, who runs away down field, shoots and the modern equivalent of Perry Digweed makes a diving save to give Town a corner and an opportunity to shout “Come On You Blues” with feeling .  It’s an event that changes the pattern of the game and enlivens the home crowd as chants of “Blue and white army” ring out. The twenty fifth minute, and Omari Hutchinson runs and shoots and ‘Digweed’ saves again.  “Town have woken up.“ says the bloke behind me and three minutes later Liam Delap runs and shoots at ‘Digweed’ too.  The words “Mezzanines, Staircases” flash across the front of the Sir Bobby Robson stand and Liam Delap oafishly barges his marker Paul van Hecke, to the amusement of many, and referee Mr Harrington awards a free kick.  Moments later Delap is fouled by van Hecke in what looks like revenge, but Harrington plays on.  “Winding him up” says the bloke behind me.

The Town continue to look the most likely team to score; Hutchinson sends Wes Burns down the right, Burns pulls the ball back but Jens Cajuste and Hutchinson both go to shoot at once and bounce off one another like Keystone Cops as the ball runs on and is cleared.  “Blue and white army, Blue and white army.” Chant the Sir Bobby Robson standers over and over and over again. Pat from Clacton tells me she had her tea before she came out; toad in the hole.  Brighton win a corner, “Al-bion, Al-bion.”  “Blue and white army, Blue and white army, Blue and white army.”  Two minutes to half-time and again Hutchinson shoots and ‘Digweed’ saves.  A minute of added on time is taken from the well of infinity and I wonder if we get ‘added on time’ when we’re about to die; if so, I expect to get quite a bit, some for the few days when I was in a coma in 2019, but mostly just for time wasting.  With that minute soon gone forever and half-time in full swing I go down to the front of the stand to chat with Ray, who with his wife Ros has been on a cruise to the unfortunately named Canary Isles and has missed the last three home matches.  He was sick in the Bay of Biscay too; I’m glad I stayed at home, not that I was invited, that would have been very weird.

The football resumes at twenty-eight minutes to eight.  “RJ Dean Plasterers” say the bright lights of the illuminated adverts on the Sir Bobby Robson stand and I think of Pearl and Dean the cinema advertisers before Liam Delap seemingly barges Joel Veltman just for the hell of it, like a sort of hobby to undertake in idle moments; Delap is booked.  Four minutes later, Joao Pedro, Brighton’s number nine, raises the level of violence as he flies through the air to shoulder charge Christian Walton.  Pedro is also booked, despite much baying for a red card from home fans, and VAR confirms that a yellow card is sufficient censure, possibly because he didn’t draw blood.

The half is almost twelve minutes old and the ball drops to Wes Burns in the Brighton penalty area, but his snapshot carries on beyond the far post.  It will prove to be the Town’s last decent attempt on goal and the game is about to change course as within two minutes Jacob Greaves can’t quite stop a ball from going beyond him and Yasin Ayari gets behind the Town defence and pulls the ball back to O’Riley, but it’s Mitoma who sweeps it into the net.  It’s the goal either Jens Cajuste or Omari Hutchinson would have scored in the first half had they not both tried to score it at the same time. 

It’s only 1-0, we’ve been one down before, but from here on Town are not going to be in the game. Pedro turns and forces an excellent flying save from Walton, Brighton win corner after corner and Town play the ball across their defence but seldom retain possession as far away as the centre circle.  Substitutions make no difference and finally, eight minutes from the end of normal time a free kick on the left is played into the Town penalty area, is deflected onto Jack Taylor and falls to Georginio Rutter, who is able to turn and stroke the ball into the Town goal.  VAR decides that the man on the pitch with the best surname, Lewis Dunk was not interfering with play when stood offside and Town are losing two-nil.

“How shit must you be , we’re winning away” sing the Brighton supporters, putting yet another set of carefully crafted lyrics to the football supporters’ staple ‘Sloop John B’, and the excitable young stadium announcer tells us that our ‘incredible’ support numbers 29,403, although 2,977 of us have been shouting for the wrong  but nevertheless winning team.

Six minutes of additional time fail to adequately atone for the lost hope and disappointment suffered, and with the final whistle Pat from Clacton, Fiona and ever-present Phil are away faster than greyhounds out of a starting trap.  I’m hot on their heels as I try to put distance between myself and the scene of yet another of life’s failures but feel a bit like I’m the dog who’s been doped.  I’ll be back on Sunday though, having forgotten all about it, perhaps until that final moment when my life will flash before me and I head for the ultimate memorial matchday.  Once a Blue, eh?