Ipswich Town 0 Liverpool 2

September 6, 2026September 7, 2026 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

Nothing says “Colchester United” to me more than a football match on a Friday evening. Back in the days when I still liked nearly everything about football it was possible to watch Ipswich Town on a Saturday and as a sort of aperitif or starter for the football weekend, travel down to Layer Road on a Friday evening, park the car for nothing at the Gujarat Barracks, watch the likes of Mick Packer, Steve Dowman and Trevor Lee strut their stuff (this was the age of ‘disco’), stop for a pint and a packet of crisps on the way home and still easily have change from a tenner. Tonight however, for the price, in 1980 of a second-hand Austin Allegro, I shall be watching Ipswich play Liverpool with no thought of Colchester United at all.

It’s been a cloudy day, but quite a warm and breezy one and I’ve been indoors completing the first of the final ten working days before I retire. I meet Gary on the train to Ipswich, and we talk of how many days are left until I retire, the recently released film about Charles de Gaulle and how we agree that subtitled films and tv are better than dubbed films and tv. Travelling through Wherstead we are both as excited as the other to spot a polar bear, a part of the match day experience no other Premier League football club can offer.

It’s almost five-thirty when we reach our destination and Ipswich is busy with people and traffic like the busy place it still occasionally is. I ask Gary which way he wants to walk up to the Arb today and he chooses the Portman Road, Great Gipping Street, Civic Drive, Spiral car park, Lady Lane, St George’s Street route, although he claims not to be bothered either way. Personally, I think I prefer the Museum Street route, although I am a big fan of the Spiral car park, Civic Drive and the old Crown Court building which remind me of the optimism of the 1960’s. I see that the Crown Court building has been sold; I’d like to see it re-open as Ipswich’s museum of modern art and hope it isn’t demolished.

I am first through the door at the Arb and order a pint of Estrella Galicia for Gary and one of something brewed by Lacons for myself. Gary finds a table in the beer garden whilst I pay for the beer (£10 something with Camra discount I expect) and I then join him. Gary tells me that as long as Ipswich win by six clear goals tonight they will be top of the league. We agree that 9-3 is unlikely so pin our hopes on an 8-2 win. It’s not long before Mick arrives but he soon heads inside to order some food and returns with a pint of a golden ale by Mauldon’s, which he says isn’t very pleasant and I admit that my beer is pretty ropey too. We had both been looking forward to drinking Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride. Our conversation takes in the sale of Mick’s dead neighbour’s house, Mick’s holiday in Scotland and an amusing story at a camp site where, when Mick’s companion asked if they could have a pitch with a view the site owner said “So you want a fucking view do you? Everyone comes here wanting a fucking view” and when told that his site got good reviews on-line he said “I couldn’t give fuck about on-line reviews, you can stuff fucking Google up your arse”. It’s a great story, the sort to make a holiday truly memorable.

It’s gone seven-thirty by the time we leave for Portman Road after two further pints of Estrella for Gary, another disappointing pint of something by Lacon’s and a better pint of Lacons Encore for me, and cheesy chips and another disappointing Lacon’s pint and a double whisky for Mick. There are queues in Portman Road for the Cobbold Stand but the queues for the Sir Alf Ramsey Stand are much shorter than they were for the Sunderland match and I’m soon checked for scrap metals, weapons and explosive by a friendly man with big hair before accessing the illustrious turnstile 62. I arrive at my seat amidst a fog of thick smoke and a storm of great balls of fire like a scene from Dante’s Inferno.

Fiona, the man from Stowmarket (Paul), ever-present Phil who never misses a game, and his son Elwood are of course here already but Pat from Clacton has been feeling a bit under the weather and stayed home to watch the match on the telly. In her place are her niece, in the seat in front of Pat’s and her niece’s husband in Pat’s seat. In front of us, Bluey and Crazee and the excitable young stadium announcer, who tonight has two sidekicks both in freshly pressed suits. They look like they’re going to a wedding but it reminds me of the old joke “What do you call a Scouser in a suit?”, “The accused”. I try and join in with the excitable young stadium announcer’s announcing of the Town team but this evening he has become over excited and fails hopelessly to co-ordinate his reading out of the player’s surnames with their appearance on the scoreboard. My attempts therefore to sound like a Frenchman at the Allianz Rivier in Nice or the Stade Oceane in Le Havre are woeful.

When the game begins, it is Liverpool who get first go with the ball, which they send in the general direction of the goal closest to the former Unemployment Benefit office on Handford Road. Reassuringly, Liverpool are not wearing an unnecessary away kit tonight but are decked out in their traditional all red, albeit a version flecked with white marks as if it had been hung out to dry on a washing line where there were a lot of pigeons. As ever, Ipswich are in their signature blue shirts and white shorts with not even a hint of guano. The game begins at a fast pace and Liverpool win a corner within the first minute. The lead in my pencil breaks and I reflect on changing times and the absence of any Scots and Irishmen from the Liverpool team. I remark to Fiona that if his football career goes awry, the Liverpool goalkeeper looks as if he could always get a part in “Jesus Christ Superstar”, as long as no one mistakes him for Russell Brand.

In the sixth minute Liverpool score, Isak rattling the ball high in the net a nano second after it leaves his foot. “Allez, Allez” something, chant the Liverpudlians in the Cobbold Stand noisily. Three minutes later Isak scores again and my ears work out that the chant is “Isak, Allez, Allez”, which seems a bit odd given that he is a Swede not a Frenchman, but also probably confirms that Liverpudlians don’t know any Swedish or seemingly how to use Google translate, which would tell them to sing “Isak Kor!”.

It feels like the game may already be lost, but soon Fatawu is shooting over the Liverpool goal for the Town. I remark to Fiona that nearly all the Liverpool players appear to be much larger than the Ipswich players and like Under 12’s versus Under 8’s it’s not really fair and suggests the ‘big clubs’ dominate by buying their players by the foot. In the prevailing spirit of unfairness, one of the linesmen awards Liverpool a corner, which the Sir Bobby Robson standers agree should have been a goal kick. “Lino, Lino you’re a punt” they chant, curiously pronouncing the ‘p’ in hunt as a ‘c’. When the corner comes to nothing and the same linesman awards Town a throw, the chant becomes “You’re still a fucking wanker”. Just one more step up in this progression and the linesman would qualify to referee international matches.

We’re just over half-way through the first half and Town win a corner providing the opportunity to bellow “Come On you Blues” and have people turn around and look at me to see what someone who verbally supports their team looks like and whether perhaps I am a wearing a half and half scarf. As usual, the corner comes to nothing, but unusually Russell Brand unexpectedly and unintentionally catches the ball between his knees when it bounces up off the ground. Under recently re-written rules this would probably have rendered all Town players offside if the ball had somehow ended up in the net.

Another two minutes fade away. Julio Enciso bears down on goal, but his cross is hacked away from inside the six-yard box and then Leif Davis arrives beyond the far post only to head another cross over the bar. Liverpool are then denied a goal because it was offside, but the half comes to an end after two more Town corners and more chants of ‘Come On You Blues’, with other people actually joining in on the second occasion as if singing and chanting at a football match was normal.

Half-time is a time to reflect and I conclude that Town are losing, and despite having played pretty well after the first ten minutes they probably won’t win, or even draw, but I will stay, just in case, and because I’ve never left early yet. The football resumes at two minutes past nine. Liverpool have an early corner. Town’s Fatawu shoots wide; I can’t see by how much but it’s a shot that looks good enough to draw ‘oooohs’ from the crowd. After just twelve minutes, a third Liverpool player is booked, perhaps it’s because they’re so much bigger than us, perhaps it’s because they’re ‘dirty northern bastards’ but of course all of them are from south of the Penzance or east of Lowestoft.

Substitutions are made. Bradley Barcola makes his debut for Liverpool. He is a player who alone cost an insane £129,000,000, an insane 70% of the insane total Ipswich have spent on our entire team. Jack Clarke replaces Daizen Maeda, and Emersonn is replaced by Town’s new £20,000,000 signing Zian Flemming. Fiona admits to knowing the names of more of the Liverpool players at the start of this season than our own team. I tell her I’ve only heard of Virgil, and that’s just because I remember him in Thunderbirds.

With twenty minutes of tonight’s ‘match experience’ remaining, we are treated to Portman Road’s first brush of the season with the drama that is VAR as some bloke in red falls over in the Town penalty area when tackled; eventually the referee, Mr Darren England awards Town a free kick for an earlier offside. Mr England announces his decision over the public address system and to my ears sounds like he has a slight Scouse accent.

The remains of the game are in Town’s favour with a few shots deflected wide and another corner predictably coming to nothing. I have reluctantly given up on Town scoring the eight goals required to go top of the league tonight, but still draw hope from the fact that only last week Paris St Germain drew 2-2 in Lille after being 2-0 down as the game entered time added on. Tonight’s attendance is announced as being 30,019. It is only the second time since the 1980’s that more than 30,000 people have been to Portman Road. The last time was in 2024, also against Liverpool, and along with the atypical number of east Asian people in half and half scarves I will later see on the train home, I consider that this supports my theory that Liverpool have even more non-local supporters (sometimes known as ‘plastic’ supporters) than Manchester United.

Eventually, Mr England adds five minutes of additional time in which with a low shot Jack Clarke elicits a slow looking, diving save from the Russell Brand lookalike in the Liverpool goal. Along with many others I hang on to applaud the Town team after the final whistle, because leaving aside the opening nine minutes, which were a long time ago now, they’ve done alright. I also check to see if Bradley Barcola is as skinny as he looks on the telly. He’s not, but he does look sort of stretched in the middle, a bit like an insect does between its thorax and abdomen. I bet they won’t mention that on the telly, or Colchester United.

Ipswich Town 3 Leicester City 1

August 26, 2026August 26, 2026 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

The English Football League Cup, as it was originally called back when participating in or watching the sport of football was more important than just the money that could be extracted from people in the process, is a curious competition. The French abandoned their version of it, the Coupe de la Ligue, a few seasons ago, and I’m pretty sure the Germans, Italians, Spanish, Dutch and Belgians have never even had one. But the Scots have one and it seems that in Britain we are suckers for a secondary cup competition, and as if to prove the point non-league football has tertiary, quaternary and probably quinary cup competitions too; more than you can shake a floodlight on a stick at in fact, floodlights on sticks being essential on the late summer and autumn evenings when these early round cup ties are played.

I liked the League Cup more in the past, before the invention or discovery of “energy drinks”, when the early rounds were over two legs, guaranteeing away trips to exotic locations such as Torquay, Wigan, Exeter and Stockport. But despite Ipswich having reached the semi-finals four times (losing all of them of course) I do wonder “what is the point?”, and possibly so did the Town XIs that in recent years lost at home to Newport County, and Colchester United. Famously, for former Town manager Mick McCarthy, it was a badge of honour to exit all cup competitions as soon as possible. Tonight, Town have drawn five times finalists and three times winners of the competition, third division Leicester City.

It’s been a bright, warm, late August day beneath a clear blue sky, although I’ve been mostly indoors, eking out the final sixteen days of my working life. Just before five o’clock I catch the train to Ipswich, which might be on time, and Gary joins me at the next station stop to talk of couples in which one partner is much older than the other and to look for polar bears; we spot two, both not surprisingly and reassuringly in Wherstead. On arrival in Ipswich, the train draws unexpectedly into Platform Two, but it doesn’t worry us unduly and we stroll calmly across the forecourt-cum-plaza and up Princes Street towards ‘the Arb’, where I am first to the bar to order a pint of Estrella Galicia for Gary and one of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride for myself (£10.70 with Camra discount). We retire to the beer garden and a table where we can sit without the sun in our eyes. Gary wears his replica 2026/27 season Ipswich Town away shirt this evening and I remark that this cream top with narrow black and red bands appears to be a popular choice for the mature gentleman, with at least two other grey-haired old duffers sporting one in the beer garden this evening. As expected, time passes and Gary buys a second round of drinks, a repeat of the first. We talk of TV quiz shows and attending the Chappel beer festival and I ask Gary if he is no longer on his diet; he isn’t. Gary doesn’t manage to finish his second pint of Estrella Galicia before we decide to leave for Portman Road and judging by the loud fart he emitted earlier as we walked here, for which he did apologise, I think he’s probably a bit dyspeptic this evening.

In Portman Road, at one of the booths that look as if they might sell ice creams but don’t, we each buy a programme after I first ask how much they cost. I am prepared to pay £3 but not £4 for a programme and whilst Gary points out that the £4 programme is probably better value for money in terms of pages, I tell him that the programmes are full of “old rubbish” anyway, so I am therefore happy to pay proportionately more for less. Tonight’s programme has an interesting and unusual front cover depicting an unlikely scene of a flying carthorse about to knock over the League Cup with its front right hoof whilst an upset looking fox takes evasive action.

The queues to be checked for weapons, explosives and scrap metal are shorter than on Saturday and move more quickly, and we are soon breezing through the commemorative turnstile, No 62 and ascending multiple flights of metal stairs to our seats in the top tier of the Sir Alf Ramsey stand, where the public address system is so loud I imagine it might be possible to successfully sue the club for causing hearing damage. When the teams eventually appear from the ‘tunnel’ I don’t notice them at first because of the absence of the usual accompanying balls of flame, confirming this fixtures’ status as something more akin to a meaningless pre-season friendly. The game begins with Leicester City having first go with the ball, which they try and kick mostly in the general direction of Vets4Pets on Handford Road, where they are bracing themselves for a sudden influx of squashed foxes, and carthorses with bruised fetlocks.

Leicester are parading a necessary change kit of burgundy, maroon or possibly dark red shirts ,with white shorts. Ipswich are adorned in their signature blue shirts and white shorts. It might be my failing eyesight but momentarily from time to time, when they’re at the far end of the pitch, I can’t tell the two teams apart. Ipswich start well and Chuba Akpom is shooting wide of the goal within thirty-five seconds, with a noisy crowd fully behind him. But the joie de vivre doesn’t last long and before ten minutes are up the Leicester fans are asking “Is this a library?” through the medium of opera.

Fifteen minutes of our lives have been lost to history and the game is dull. All around me people sit impassively, staring ahead, not speaking. The sky above the Sir Bobby Robson stand is pale blue but growing darker and a faint red smudge can be seen through the metal girder above the roof as the sun goes down. Three or four silhouetted seagulls ‘bust some shapes’ on the roof the West Stand as if auditioning for the opening credits to a new Bond movie. A man in a smart suit, who looks like Ken from the BBC tv sitcom Citizen Smith, appears at the top of the steps into the top tier of the stand and then turns around and goes back down the steps. “Sorry mate” says a girl in her teens to a man in his seventies as she gets him to stand up as she returns to her seat having perhaps been for a pee.

Twenty-four minutes have been lived and lost and something vaguely football-like happens, the home crowd stirs from its slumber. “We forgot, we forgot, we forgot that you were here” chant the Leicester fans to the tune of Cwm Rhondda; I wish they’d forget they were here too. Town win a corner and then another and Dara O’Shea’s header is saved by Leicester goalkeeper Stolarczyk. There are now ten minutes left until half-time and Town win a third corner before Leicester get one too, courtesy of an interrupted shot from Conor Chaplin and with five minutes remaining Leicester’s Olabade Aluko is the first player to feel the wrath of referee Mr Lewis Smith and his bright yellow card after a foul on Eggy. Mr Lewis is clearly now making his own entertainment and awards a corner to Leicester to punish Town goalkeeper Christian Walton for apparent time-wasting. Leicester proceed to take more time over the corner kick than Walton took over the goal-kick, which if the laws of the game are to be consistent should I think mean that Town now get awarded a goal-kick for Leicester’s time-wasting. Eventually, the corner kick is headed over the Town cross bar before a minute becomes as much time as the officials dare to add on.

With the half-time whistle, Gary and I descend into the bowels of the stand, or at least its chest cavity, where we meet Gary’s nephew Dan, who is here with his wife Sarah, but she is still sat in her seat up in the moderately fresh evening air. Down here in the guts of the stand the air smells positively stale and a bit sweaty to be honest, not pleasant at all.

At ten to nine the players return to the pitch to once again attempt to find the secret to entertaining football and possibly a goal. Quickly, Town succeed, but the ‘goal’ is deemed offside, a particularly harsh decision, even if correct; like taking food away from a starving man because the best before date was yesterday. Meanwhile, the Leicester supporters chant “He’s one of our own, He’s one of our own” about some youth or other in their team and I question if that’s really a good thing, before wondering what it is of their own that he is one of? A juvenile delinquent? Sex offender? Leicester city councillor?

The game moves on, plagued for a while by the ball mysteriously being deemed to have gone out of play and by offsides not visible to the naked eye. The final third of the match looms up out of the night and the Leicester fans offer a cheery, allegro rendition of “When the blues go marching in”, which compares very favourably to the dirge-like version of the same song favoured by the Town supporters. When the hours mark arrives, Leicester flinch and make the first substitutions, Within two minutes Town take the lead as for the first time Jack Clarke has plenty of space down the left to run into before his accurate low cross is swept masterfully into the corner of the Leicester goal by Eggy, a player whose goalscoring ability is kept largely hidden when he is used as a winger who only passes the ball back and to the side.

From here, the game picks up, as Town win another corner, Cedric Kipre is booked and the crowd in the Sir Alf Ramsey stand get far more enthused about the ejection of a couple of Leicester fans from the Cobbold stand than anything that has happened on the pitch. Quickly however, Leicester win a corner and equalise with a header from Aluko, who no one had bothered to mark. “Premier League, You’re ‘avin’ a laff” chant the Leicester fans to the tune of Tom Hark in their curious east Midland’s dialect. They’re not wrong, Mark Ashton and Co are ‘laffing’ all the way to the bank, for the time being anyway.

As the game enters its final twenty minutes Town take the lead again and in fine style, Nunez instinctively squeezing the ball in off a post from outside the penalty box, and then with Town 2-1 up Wes Burns arrives as substitute for Leicester to much adulation. Happily, Burns makes no impression on the game at all and as the final ten minutes turn up, we are told that there are 21,559 of us here tonight, Town make more substitutions and weirdly a few people suddenly shout “Blue Army” as if they are afflicted with Tourette’s syndrome.

Two minutes of normal time remain and for the second time this evening Chuba Akpom is through on goal with just the Leicester goalkeeper to beat. Last time his shot rolled beyond the far post, this time it is saved. Akpom needs Jack Clarke to teach him how to the curl his shots around the ‘keeper and inside the far post. Ipswich have another corner for what it’s worth. “Come On Leicester” implore the visiting fans, who presumably wouldn’t mind having to stay late to watch penalty kicks.

I’m getting ready to get up as the final minute lands from eternity and as if Portman Road has been strangely blessed something rather wonderful happens as from the mundane surroundings of the centre circle Nunez looks up and lobs the ball high into the night air towards Norwich Road. The ball comes down off the underside of the Leicester City cross bar and into the goal net with Stolarczyk not being able to work out its trajectory before his team are 3-1 down. It’s a magnificent goal, one of those that might have people questioning one another as to whether they would have been happy to pay a tenner just to see that and then go home.

Anyone who does arrive very late only in time to see that goal, gets to see six minutes of added on time as well, but despite some end-to-end action there are no more goals and ultimately Ipswich are relatively comfortably through to the third round of the League Cup. If Mick McCarthy were dead, he’d be turning in his grave.

Ipswich Town 2 Sunderland 1

August 23, 2026September 7, 2026 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

A little strangely perhaps, the 2026-27 football season seems to me to have been a long time coming. Obviously, I hope, I don’t mean that in the context of the whole of time, because everything has been a long time coming if that’s our measure, but just since the end of the 2025-26 football season. As a result, this means I am both looking forward to this afternoon’s fixture versus Sunderland and not looking forward to it. Being mostly human (apart from a bit of bovine tissue in a couple of heart valves), I have adapted quite easily to the football-free regime of June, July and most of August, and having done so I’m buggered if I can now be bothered to change back, but of course I will.

The last time Ipswich Town played Sunderland at Portman Road on the opening day of the season was seven years ago, a one-all draw courtesy of a late defensive error by captain and all round “man’s man” Luke Chambers. Less than a week later I was in hospital in an induced coma (see ‘mostly human’ above), so I will prefer to recall the time before that, in August 1981. Remarkably, I vaguely remember that match from forty-five years ago and how disappointed I was that Town hadn’t won, despite having come back twice from two goals down to draw 3-3. But I was young, Town were the UEFA Cup holders and after finishing university, life had barely hinted at trying to run off in directions I didn’t want it to. In August 1981 I was about to start work or at least search for a permanent job; now at last I am about to retire.

This morning is fraught with concerns about getting into Portman Road using the new mobile phone-based ticket system. Foreseeing queues, I arrange with Gary to meet him on the train that leaves a whole hour earlier than the one we usually catch and after an unusually late breakfast I am soon changing my mind about whether or not to take a jumper and a light coat because the wind is in the north and there could be showers. At the local railway station, I resume my acquaintance with the fellow Town supporter who lives down the road from me but who I otherwise never see. We talk of the currently unknowable prospects for the new season and it’s a conversation which gets more or less repeated when Gary joins us at the next station stop along with his nephew and his nephew’s wife. Our conversation rattles along with the train, and I almost forget to look for polar bears as we pass through Wherstead; I do however remember to look, just in time to disappointingly not spot a single one. I hope it’s not a portent of future disappointment.

Ipswich is glorious, sunny and busy when we get there, and with the exception of the man who lives down the road from me, whom I wish ‘bon match’ as I bid him farewell, we all head off up Princes Street towards the Arb, where weirdly people are once again queuing at the bar instead of swarming around it like people did in pubs back in 1981 and probably even in 2019. Gary gets the drinks in whilst I claim the only vacant table and chairs in the already busy beer garden. Time passes amidst shared tales of organising tickets online and passing oneself off as an away supporter. I learn that Gary’s nephew has a ‘dream car’ and so does his wife, which I find surprises me as I don’t, although I’d quite like an open-top bus.

Because Gary’s nephew and his nephew’s wife have to meet someone at the ground at 2pm they leave shortly after I get a second round of drinks comprising just a pint of Estrella for Gary and one of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride for me (£10 something with Camra discount). Gary and I speculate as to when most people will leave for the match and by the time we finish doing so most people seem to have left. We question whether by leaving early we will not just join a queue and perhaps we should leave late to hopefully arrive after everyone else has gone into the stadium. But being cautious by nature we leave at about twenty past two.

At twenty-seven minutes to three I join a queue the back of which is within touching distance of Russell Road, which must be about 100 metres from the turnstiles. I am soon joined by Pat from Clacton who seems a bit puffed after walking from where the Clacton supporters’ bus is parked on Sir Alf Ramsey Way. Our queue is static, so we soon switch to one which is moving and looking ahead I see that there are minimal queues for the actual turnstiles, the delay is with everyone being checked for weapons, explosives and scrap metal. Fortunately, our queue seems to be leading to a couple of the more enlightened employees of Achilleus Security who are able to tell at a glance that whilst many of us are old enough to have been members of the Angry Brigade, the Baader Meinhoff gang, the Red Army Faction, Black September, the Weathermen, the Brigate Rosse, the Symbionese Liberation Army or even in a few cases the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front (revisionist bastards), we are mostly only interested in football this afternoon, so just a cursory wave of their ‘wand’ and a smile is all that is needed to send us on our way towards the turnstiles. There is a blockage at my favoured turnstile 62 so I move to turnstile 60 and am amazed and impressed that the sorcery that is a football season ticket on a telephone (whoever heard of such a thing?) actually works. I run through the turnstile before it can change its mind, shouting “I’m in!” and waving my arms with excitement.

When I reach my seat next to Fiona and just behind ever-present Phil who never misses a game, and his son Elwood, it is four minutes to three. The man from Stowmarket (Paul) arrives soon afterwards and soon after that the excitable young stadium announcer, who now has the sort of haircut which suggests National Service might have been re-introduced, reads out the team and like a Frenchman at the Stade Marie-Marvingt in Le Mans or the Stade Felix Bolleart in Lens I bellow their surnames as they appear on the scoreboard.

The teams arrive amidst shooting balls of flame and the smell of sulphur affirming the Premier League’s deal with Satan, and once the roasted and badly singed seagulls have been collected up the game begins. It is Sunderland who get first go with the ball, which they try and aim mainly in the direction of the former Spiritualist church on Anglesea Road. Sunderland are sporting an un-necessary and rather boring looking change kit of all pink with black shoulders. The pink shirts look completely plain, but no doubt close-up it is possible to see that the fabric is woven with patterns depicting lumps of coal, ship rivets and Giro cheques to celebrate the north-east’s rich industrial heritage.

Ipswich Town are of course wearing our signature blue shirts and white shorts and within four minutes Leif Davis is blocking a shot from a big Dutch bloke called Brobbey, and Sunderland have the game’s first corner. But within sixty-seconds Town’s Enciso also has a shot blocked as it leaves his foot and Emersonn has a header comfortably saved by the diving Sunderland goalkeeper, whose name is Roefs. I need the action to slow down so that I can begin to get to grips with who is in the Town team. As I say to Fiona, it’s almost like coming to support a different club, with only four of last season’s players in today’s team.

I quickly decide I like that Town’s new team is mostly peopled with players from abroad, because if the Premier League has taught us anything it is that as a general rule Englishmen are not as good at football as South Americans, Africans and people from the Schengen Area, but at least we have our sovereignty, whatever that is. Sunderland it seems are having the majority of possession, possibly because they have not needed to sign a whole new team over the summer. I wonder to myself why Town’s Issa Diop appears to be wearing puttees and realise I have previously seen Sunderland’s Enzo Le Fee and Thomas Meunier playing in France for Lorient and Paris St Germain.

It’s the twenty-fourth minute and Enciso intercepts a poor pass, runs past the poor passer, runs easily past another bloke in pink and finally squares the ball well enough for Emersonn to be able to roll it into the empty goal and Town lead one-nil. Happiness ensues and Town’s first twenty-four minutes in the Premier League this season already seem better than the whole of the 2024/25 season in the Premier League. “Ipswich Town, Ipswich Town FC, the finest football team the world has ever seen” we all sing to the tune of The Wild Rover, as we collectively raid our folk memories.

Five minutes later and fortunately for Town one of the pinks heads the ball more or less straight at Town keeper Scherpen. “How many more games have we got left” asks Pat from Clacton anxiously. Five minutes later and Sunderland have another corner, but in the Sir Bobby Robson supporters chant “Ole, Ole, Ole” whilst they still feel able to do so. Six minutes later and Sunderland claim the season’s first yellow card at Portman Road for number five Ballard, which consequently makes me think of JG Ballard, his novel ‘High Rise’ and Ipswich’s Cumberland Towers. The bloke next to me is clearly hallucinating almost as much as I am as he then says to the bloke behind me “Imagine if we do get into Europe”. We must have inhaled something in the smoke from those balls of flame.

There are six minutes until half-time, and Sunderland have a free-kick following a foul by Issa Diop. Unexpectedly, a tall bloke in pink with bleached hair by the name Angulo steps up to curl the ball into the top left had corner of the Town goal just beyond the very outstretched figure of Scherpen, and the score is one all. To add to the disappointment, although celebrating the event as one might expect, the Sunderland supporters fail to break into a version of Brotherhood of Man’s 1977 number one record “Angelo”.

The now even first half trails off into the past with a Sunderland corner and an additional two-minutes, but the mood is still positive with Town having scored a goal and despite a bit less possession than Sunderland no evidence that the away team are more likely to score than the Town are. With the half-time whistle I remain where I am because Ray is still in hospital and his grandson Harrison and son Michael have moved seats.

The football returns at three minutes past four and most of the ensuing half suggests that another opening day draw might be the outcome as although Sunderland have the ball much of the time they don’t do very much with it and Town are tidy with Enciso playing a starring role and looking a better player than he did two years ago. Angulo is the second Sunderland player to be booked, for being obtuse perhaps and O’Nien the third; Sunderland are the first to make substitutions and Town win two corners before making substitutions of their own in the sixty-sixth minute.

Five minutes later, Enciso is sitting on the ground looking like he might have felt a twinge or an ache and he is replaced by Jack Clarke or as the excitable young stadium announcer calls him “Jack! Clarke!”. Town take a little while to adjust to the loss of Enciso and in the lull Pat from Clacton shares with us that today she is wearing a new pair of ‘Ipswich Town’ blue and white knickers. I check with her that they are definitely new, and not old, and ask if they’re comfortable. Apparently, they are. Pat goes on to say they’re sort of “silky” and I tell her I hope she doesn’t slide off her seat.

More substitutions follow for Town, with Abdoul Outtara and Eggy replacing Nunez and Daizen Maeda with less than fifteen minutes remaining, after another Town corner. The simmering noise of the crowd seems to ask if there is going to be a winning goal and helps erase memories of talk of Pat’s pants. The excitable young stadium announcer then tells that we are 29,669 and after Sunderland take the game’s final useless corner I tell myself that there’s little prospect of another goal.

The final minute of normal time arrives and as thoughts turn to the train home, Town’s Sasa Lukic intercepts another loose Sunderland pass and sets off Jack! Clarke! to run at the Sunderland defence. With his characteristic style Clarke! drops a shoulder and then curls the ball into the far side of the goal net with a low shot. Town are winning two-one and subject to surviving four minutes of added on time will make almost everyone who isn’t about to make a long journey up the A1 deliriously happy.

The four minutes are easily survived, there’s even some hope of a third Town goal, but it’s probably best we keep that in the bank for a day when it will make a difference. Pat from Clacton and Fiona are quickly away, Pat particularly so in her new, silky, free-moving pants, but I hang about to applaud and maximise my time spent learning what this new team look like. The new season might have felt like it’s been a while coming, but on the albeit slim evidence of today’s showing it’s been worth the wait.

Ipswich Town 3 Queens Park Rangers 0

May 3, 2026August 25, 2026 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

I was awake before my alarm went off this morning, which was a good thing because being awoken by an alarm clock on a Saturday morning is plainly wrong. What was not a good thing however was that I had thought it necessary to set my alarm because the evil media moguls of Sky tv had decreed that Ipswich Town will begin their last match of the season, against Queens Park Rangers at just half an hour past noon and I am therefore having to catch a train to Ipswich before the clocks have struck ten o’clock. Having noted that the weather forecast from the met office predicted temperatures of almost 20 degrees centigrade today I decided to wear a lighter pair of trousers. Feeling in the pocket of these “cargo pants”, which I probably hadn’t warn since late last summer, I discover the receipt for a cheap bottle of champagne. I take it as a portent of celebrations yet to come.

At the railway station I wait with a man called Gareth who introduces me to Sally who is also going to the match. “How do you feel about the match?” asks Gareth. “Relaxed” I reply. Gareth and Sally laugh as if that can’t possibly be so. But it is. I always want Town to win, but if they don’t, then they don’t. I don’t want to get ill over it. I have no idea if the train arrives on time but I’m soon talking to Gary as we speed towards the promised land, Ipswich. Our only disappointment is that as we descend the hill through Wherstead a train passes in the opposite direction obscuring our potential view of the polar bears, but I still manage to see one. In Ipswich, the sun is shining as we walk to the Arb stopping only to purchase a programme from one of the kiosks that look like they should also sell ice creams. I explain to Gary that I am, exceptionally, buying a programme (£4.00) today because it will potentially be an auspicious occasion, although if Town don’t win I will likely be left with a programme I don’t really want, although the front cover does feature a picture in profile of Darnell Furlong staring moodily off into the distance.

Inside the Arb there is a queue for the bar and not wishing to cause a scene I reluctantly join it. Queues at the bar in pubs? The world has gone mad. Happily, the queue moves quickly, and I am soon looking for Gary in the beer garden whilst holding a tray on which sit a pint of Estrella Galicia for Gary and two pints of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride, one for me and one for Mick, who has texted me to say he will be arriving late. Our conversation today soon establishes that our lives are currently quite boring and uneventful although Mick is considering going to Venice by rail and is exploring the possibility of getting a ferry to Bilbao and then a train across southern France into Italy, perhaps stopping in Marseille to take in a match at the Velodrome. Two more pints of Suffolk Pride, a pint and half of Estrella and two whiskies later we are alone in the beer garden because all the other drinkers left a good ten minutes ago or more and we are ready to depart for Portman Road too.

There are no queues at the back of the Sir Alf Ramsey stand when I arrive and I even manage to use the side access normally reserved for people with disabilities, before accessing the stand through the illustrious turnstile sixty-two. I am venting spent Suffolk Pride when the excitable young stadium announcer announces the team and imagining I am in a pissoir, like a Frenchman at the Stade Jean Bouin or Stade Abbe des Champs I bawl the surnames of the few players whose squad numbers I can remember, or whose first names are long enough for me to work out which surname they belong to before the announcer finishes saying them. Up in the stand Pat from Clacton, Fiona, the man from Stowmarket (Paul), ever-present Phil who never misses a game, and his son Elwood are of course already here.

Eventually, with huddles having huddled, bursts of flame having died down and plumes of smoke having settled, the game begins with the Park Rangers of the Queen getting first go with the ball in their strikingly metrosexual livery of black and pinked halved shirts and black shorts. The Rangers try to point the ball in the direction of Norwich Road and local twentieth century public housing landmark Cumberland Towers. The Town are as ever in our signature blue shirts and white shorts and the teams wear Halos on their shirt fronts, instead of above their heads.

Inside two minutes Leif Davis is bearing down on Joe Walsh in the Rangers goal, but his low shot is saved by the former Eagles guitarist at the expense of a corner and an early rendition from me and as many as half a dozen others of ‘Come on You Blues’. As usual our shouts fall on stoney ground and the ball is cleared. But the Town are relentless, assaulting the Rangers goal with wave after wave of running at them with the ball down both flanks and through the middle. Within another two minutes Town lead, George Hirst kicking the ball over the goal line from improbably close range after slick passing finds Leif Davis crossing the ball low into the deepest recesses of the goal mouth. “E-I, E-I, E-I, O, Up the Football League we go!” fills the void, although in truth we can’t actually go any further up the Football league because Coventry have already bagged first position.

Behind me a bloke sings loudly and out of tune, like an international footballer rendering his national anthem as a tv camera looks up his nostrils. “Ipswich Town, Ipswich Town FC, the finest football team the world has ever seen” we bellow with tearful sincerity to the tune of The Wild Rover. This is how the match was meant to begin; it was how it began in Town supporters’ dreams and those dreams are becoming a reality. The onslaught continues with what seems like a season’s worth of attacking intent and desire rolled into one as if making up for lost time. It’s the tenth minute when more joyful running and passing leaves Jaden Philogene in front of goal and a jink and a twist later to avoid a Park Ranger he’s rolling the ball into the Rangers’ goal from about six metres away. Two-nil to Ipswich Town and that’s it; I reckon we’ve won.

With the game won, the excitement subsides a little and Town allow the Rangers a little more of the ball. Up in the Cobbold Stand, the Rangers’ supporters make the attacks that their team is unable to conjure by chanting “Football in a library, do-do-do”. I cope with the insult by thinking of tv’s Crossroads and inwardly laughing to myself that their number twenty-three is called Bennie, even if the spelling is wrong. The Rangers fans respond with “Two-nil and you still don’t sing”. The first half is half over and the bloke next to me says “It’s all about game management now”. I think to myself that our game management in the first ten minutes was pretty flippin’ good. Back on the pitch George Hirst goes to stamp on a balloon but it escapes from beneath his boot and he stamps on fresh air, which looks decidedly uncool. To escape further embarrassment and to punish the balloon George proceeds to pick it up and crushes it with his bare hands.

Town are managing the game well enough now that with six minutes to go until half-time the blokes behind me and a few from further along the row feel confident enough to repair to the bar for an early half-time beer. Within two minutes the Rangers win their first corner, but the ball is easily gathered by Christian Walton because generally, as Fiona remarks, corners are equally ineffectual for all teams. The words “Hot Sausage Company” scroll across the face of the Sir Bobby Robson stand in yellow on a vivid red background and we learn that five minutes of time are to be taken from our futures to make up for players lying prone on the turf during the previous forty-five minutes.

Unusually, the stolen five minutes provide some excitement as Town are awarded a free-kick just outside the Rangers’ penalty area and referee Mr Gavin Ward gets carried away marking out a line ten yards from the ball, applying his white spray with aplomb like a cross between Banksy and Jackson Pollock. From the free-kick a corner ensues, presenting the last time this season in which the Churchman’s ultras will chant “Come on You Blues” and share the disappointment of not scoring again.

With the half-time whistle I go for the final time, until August that is, to the front of the stand to speak with Ray, his son Michael and grandson Harrison and in passing to Dave the steward before venting more spent Suffolk Pride and returning to my seat in time for the re-start of the football at twenty-three minutes to two.

The second half is not unexpectedly different to the first, football mostly being a game of two halves. Rangers have made two substitutions, one having the unusual first name of Tylon to rhyme with Skylon and Nylon, and the players have evidently received a reminder from their French coach Monsieur Stephan about the need to try and score les buts. As a result, an early Town shot at Walsh becomes an isolated incident as Rangers proceed to soon win a corner and a free-kick and their supporters become optimistic enough to chant “Come on you R’s” with genuine enthusiasm. It seems that Monsieur Stephan has successfully injected a bit of va-va-voom and even “Je ne sais quoi” into his players. I am particularly impressed by Ranger’s number ten Ilias Chair, although he is quite small, more of a footstool or a pouffe than a chair really.

Despite the Rangers’ improved showing I don’t get the impression anyone is getting over-anxious. “Another goal would knock the stuffing out of them” says Fiona, and I agree with her, my only quibble with her analysis being that it makes QPR sound a bit too much like cuddly toys and I wouldn’t want to see the Portman Road pitch festooned with kapok.

With an hour gone the Rangers’ fans launch a final attempt to goad the home supporters with a chant of “Football in a library”. But their efforts fall on deaf ears, which is hardly surprising given the age of some of us in the Sir Alf Ramsey stand. Two minutes later and the traditional ‘half an hour left’ substitutions are made by a thoughtful looking Keiran McKenna as Philogene and Burns are replaced by Clarke and McAteer. Almost instantly, Town win a couple of predictably disappointing corners but it’s enough to re- invigorate the home crowd, who are soon back to chanting “E-I, E-I, E-I, O, Up the Football League we go” in the simple style of a class of primary school children. Twenty-one minutes of normal time remain when Jack Clarke shoots wide of the goal. A minute later and Nunez and Hirst depart for the bench to be replaced by Azon and Mehmeti in the well-rehearsed fashion. Across the illuminated centre of the Sir Bobby Robson stand the spirit of optimism is echoed in the words “The future of flat roofing today”.

Another goal would be good, and I sense some frustration that it hasn’t been scored yet as everyone yearns to see the game ‘put to bed’, perhaps with a milky cup of Horlicks or Cocoa. Leif Davis getting booked barely registers in the scheme of things now and the longed-for goal almost comes as Jack Clarke is fouled and from the free-kick the ball is headed across the face of the Rangers’ goal. Eleven minutes of normal time remain, and Rangers’ Smyth makes his mark on the game by having his name taken by Mr Ward for a foul on Darnell Furlong. Eight minutes of normal time remain, and the Sir Bobby Robson standers are now confident enough to test out a chant of “We are going up, We are going up”, which almost seems to be the signal for a parade of stewards and police in what look like uniforms that can easily be wiped clean to surround the pitch.

Seven minutes remain, and Christian Walton is forced into a flying save to keep out a shot from one or other of the Park Rangers and it’s as if the surrounding of the pitch by people dressed in black and day-glo orange might have been distracting. But three minutes later play is at the desired end of the ground again as Jack Taylor storms towards goal, the ball is blocked but runs to Kasey McAteer who guides it into the net and Town lead three-nil.

Now the game is truly over and promotion is secured, again. It doesn’t really matter that Dan Neil replaces Jack Taylor, that we number 29,636 today or that four minutes of added on time will be added on. With the final whistle, within seconds a swarm of supporters cover the pitch and Town are definitively promoted to what is called the Premier League. The last time I saw this many people on the pitch at a match versus QPR they were fighting each other.

Very few people leave to catch trains or buses today. I was going to, but against my better judgement I hang about pointlessly looking on at people milling about the pitch whilst the excitable young stadium announcer tells them that there will be no presentation of the runners-up trophy until the pitch is completely cleared. I am wasting my life away here. The game ended at twenty past two and its three o’clock by the time the presentation of the trophy is made but there are too many other people on the pitch to see that and then the team don’t parade it around the pitch, they just hang about near the halfway line enduring very loud music. A blast of Status Quo at getting on for two-thirty is the final straw and I head for the railway station and home to find that I must have already drunk that bottle of champagne for which I found the receipt.

Ipswich Town 1 Millwall 1

March 22, 2026March 22, 2026 / martinpbrooks / 1 Comment

Yesterday was the Spring equinox, when the tilt of the Earth is neither towards or away from the Sun and the northern and southern hemispheres receive equal sunlight; it was also the start of astronomical Spring. With balance and optimism agogo, it is a shame therefore that the stupid EFL and stupid Sky tv decree that today’s game versus Millwall is a 12:30 kick off and the day will therefore have no worthwhile morning or afternoon that isn’t occupied by being at the pub or by football.

After a hearty breakfast that includes two hot cross buns but is otherwise a secular affair, the condemned man (that’s me) takes to the train beneath a clear blue sky. The train has only five carriages today and I text Gary so that he is not stranded expectantly at the wrong end of the platform when the train pulls in at the next station stop, where he will board. The train is quite full because the previous train, which was bound for Norwich never appeared, lost in a pagan ritual to welcome Spring somewhere near Witham, but our journey is pleasant enough and we get to see a polar bear without having to pay the entrance money for Jimmy’s Farm.

Today, we elect to take the seemingly convoluted and arguably less scenic route to ‘the Arb’ via Portman Road, across Civic Drive and past the fantastical spiral underground car park, sadly one of only a few elements of Ipswich’s Greyfriars to St Matthews psychedelic, 1960’s wonderland to remain intact. Arriving at our destination I am back to being first through the door at the Arb as Gary trails behind me, and we are soon transporting a pint of Lager 43 for Gary and pints of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride for me and Mick (£14 something with Camra discount) out into the beer garden, where we decide unanimously to sit at a table in the full sun. We have barely sat down before Mick arrives. Gary has ordered a sausage sandwich which soon arrives too, but without any sauces, and he has to return indoors to ask for his preferred brown sauce, which is then brought to him in a stainless-steel dish; not a plastic sachet in sight. Later, Gary will have a sesame seed left on his bottom lip, but he will wipe it off just as I am about to tell him so.

Our conversation today soon establishes that our lives are currently quite dull, Gary having the wildest times of the three of us, being on jury service, but like the good citizen that he is he won’t talk about it, although being from Essex and not having had the benefit of a classical education courtesy of Suffolk County Council like Mick and me, he never once uses the term sub judice. Time travels on and Mick buys more Suffolk Pride for me, a pint of Estrella Galicia for Gary and a whisky for himself before Gary buys Mick a half of Suffolk Pride and another pint of Suffolk Pride for me.

I have no real clue what time it is when we get up to leave for Portman Road, but I imagine it to be gone twenty to three, which would be rather late for a twelve-thirty kick-off. As one we visit the gents before departing, and it is just about possible there are a couple of people following on, meaning that somewhat exceptionally we are not the last to leave. As we cross Civic Drive on our way to the ground Mick reveals how when walking down a supermarket aisle the other day he was struck by how much processed ‘crap’ was sold to people under the auspices of ‘food’, and how pretty much no one cares as long as it makes a profit. Once in Portman Road, Mick and Gary head for what I still think of as the Pioneer Stand and I head for ‘Churchmans’ as we bid one another adieu until Easter Monday somewhere near Sir Alf’s statue.

Passage into the Sir Alf Ramsey stand is quick and painless today and I stand very briefly behind one other person before being checked for weaponry, explosives and scrap metal. Entry to the stadium is through the commemorative turnstile number sixty-two, and after tripping William the Conqueror-like up the steps into the lower tier of the stand I soon find myself shuffling past Pat from Clacton and Fiona, a couple of rows behind ever-present Phil who never misses a game. Absent today are Phil’s son Elwood and the man from Stowmarket (Paul), who I think really comes from Stowupland. I have rocked up too late to see the excitable young stadium announcer reading out the team but as much as I enjoy pretending to be a Frenchman at the Stade Roazhon by bawling out the players’ surnames I can’t say it has overly reduced my enjoyment of the day so far.

When the time comes, it is Millwall who get first go with the ball, which they are attempting to send in the direction of the goal at the far end of the ground from me and my fellow ultras. Town are in their natural colours of blue and white whilst due to a colour clash Millwall sport off-white shirts and shorts with what looks like green trim; it’s a look that suggests the kit was left too long in the boil wash. Portman Road is noisy today, with an atmosphere a bit like that for a Norwich match but without the bile, and Norfolk variants of the Habsburg chin. After five minutes, Dan Neil shoots wide of the Millwall goal and then Millwall win a corner. Up in the Cobbold stand even the gangways look full in the away ‘end’, as if those crafty, lawless cockneys have somehow managed to sneak in ticketless fans in the pockets of their fashionable short coats or disguised as sharp haircuts.

Ipswich dominate and shots rain in on the Millwall goal. The Millwall goalkeeper Patterson ‘spills’ a shot from Ben Johnson and Dan Neil has a shot blocked before Ivan Azon volleys goalwards from reasonably close range and Patterson makes a remarkable reflex save to divert it over the cross bar for a corner. From the corner I am struck by the enormity of Millwall’s centre halves Cooper and Taylor and by Cooper’s mullet haircut, which suggest either that he would rather be playing Aussie Rules Football or that he has travelled forward through time to be here from circa1984.

On the pitch, Ipswich begin to dominate and by the eleventh minute the noise subsides. Every time Millwall concede a free-kick their supporters chant something about being “fucked by the FA” as they weave another repeated pattern into their rich tapestry of self-pity and conspiracy theories. Ipswich dominate. “We can do all this and then they’ll breakaway and score” says Pat from Clacton with the understandable pessimism of someone living in the constituency for which Nigel Farage is member of parliament. In the sixteenth minute, Millwall’s Josh Coburn is the first player to be booked by referee Mr Michael Salisbury, who I like to think is heir to the former high street chain of handbag shops.

The half is half over and in a rare Millwall interlude, their number four shoots wide of the Town goal. Above the goal, the electronic advertising hoarding mysteriously reads “The UK’s leading Hydrogen Water” and all around the ground people stop and think, “Ooh, I’d better stop for some Hydrogen Water on the way home”. Ipswich otherwise continue to dominate, winning corners roughly every two minutes until in the forty-first minute Jack Clarke embarks of a short, characteristically stuttering run somewhere near the far edge of the Millwall penalty area before shooting low into the near corner of the goal, and Town lead one-nil.

The goal is no more than Town deserve and probably a lot less, but it’s enough to inspire a miserable sounding rendition of “When the Town go marching in” and a minute’s worth of time is conjured up and added on to the forty-five we’ve already lived.

With half-time, I quickly depart to dispense more spent Suffolk Pride and as I stand along with many other men, all with our penises in our hands, urinating, I wonder at our interesting juxtaposition to the posters above the urinals that introduce us to Ipswich Town’s ‘safeguarding’ team. Relieved but confused, I leave the toilet to talk to Dave the steward and then Ray, his son Michael and grandson Harrison at the front of the stand. Ray tells me how he is going to have to have an operation in the next month or so which will involve a bone graft with bone taken from his leg that he apparently doesn’t need. Harrison, who is in a wheelchair, has told Ray he can have the bones from his legs because he never uses them.

The second half begins at twenty-eight minutes to two and within two minutes Millwall have a corner. Three minutes later Millwall have equalised as Darnell Furlong lies pleading on the turf, knocked over by some muscular, proxy docker before a low cross is diverted into the net between Town’s two centre backs from close range by the previously booked Josh Coburn. “The future of flat roofing” read the illuminated advertising hoardings on the Sir Bobby Robson stands. Four minutes later, and from a corner Millwall have the ball in the Town goal net again but foul play is suspected and Town are awarded a free kick.

Millwall are stronger this half, more capable of winning the ball back and getting forward with it themselves. Town aren’t without their moments however and as the first hour of play recedes into history three corners are won from shots on goal, with the last ending with a knot of players collapsing to the ground as if the edges of the Millwall six-yard box had been laced with trip wires. Pat from Clacton meanwhile tells Fiona and me about the flocks of what she thinks were Canada Geese that she saw from her hotel whilst on her whist-playing holiday in Great Yarmouth. What is more, Pat shows us the photos to prove it too.

The sixty-seventh minute is later than when Keiran McKenna usually unleashes his first batch of substitutes, but today this is when Jaden Philogene and Jack Taylor replace Casey McAteer and Dan Neil, although in my head I can’t not hear the excitable young stadium announcer barking “Jack Clarke” as two very separate and distinct words as the change occurs. It takes Fiona to convince me that he actually said “Jack Taylor” and not “Jack” “Clarke”.

As the succession of minutes beginning with the number seven pass by, Millwall are winning more corners and now George Hirst and Chuba Akpom replace Ivan Azon and Anis Mehmeti. Pat from Clacton unfolds the two pieces of paper that show the scores she has drawn in the ‘predict the score’ competition on the Clacton supporters’ bus; 3-2 seems a bit unlikely, but 2-1 to Ipswich has us now all rooting for another Town goal twice as hard as before.

Heading down the final descent towards ninety minutes we are told that there are 29,129 of us here today and satisfyingly such crowds are now so commonplace at Portman Road that people no longer applaud themselves for their own existence. Four minutes of the standard ninety remain and Millwall’s Derek Mazou-Sacko replaces Billy Mitchell, a player who sounds more like a character from Eastenders. Within seconds Derek Mazou-Sacko clatters Jack Clarke and as a result his name makes an interesting entry in Mr Salisbury’s notebook. Clarke is quickly substituted, replaced by Eggy before he comes to any more harm.

The final minute has the match leaving the impression that Millwall are more of an attacking force than they have been as Walton makes an excellent reaction save from close range and then the rebound is smacked into the underside of the cross bar by Ivanovic when it looked certain that Millwall would score. Two more Millwall corners follow and yet another in the four minutes of added on time but despite the presence of the towering Cooper and Taylor Town defend these successfully before Mr Salisbury’s whistle delivers a curdled cocktail of both relief and lingering disappointment.

Fiona and Pat from Clacton are swiftly away with a brief farewell and “See you on Easter Monday” but I hang on to applaud both teams off for providing a very entertaining match. As ever I had high hopes for a win, but as ever in the Second Division strength has matched artistry. I should have known that on the day of the Spring equinox the two teams level on points would receive equal sunlight.