Outtara

Ipswich Town 1 AFC Bournemouth 2

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In spite of age and experience, I still can’t quite get to grips with AFC Bournemouth being in the First Division.  Forty-five years ago, in October of 1981 when Ipswich Town were the current UEFA Cup holders, I saw Bournemouth play out a one-all draw with Northampton Town at Dean Court in a fourth division fixture, although I’m not entirely sure how I came to be there.  But despite subsequently seeing Bournemouth play Ipswich in the second division and then two years ago in the top division, I somehow can only ever think of Bournemouth as belonging in the lower leagues along with the likes of Colchester United, Walsall and Exeter City.  Perhaps it’s because as an Ipswich Town supporter things have never again lived up to that UEFA Cup winning season, and a bit like Oskar Matzerath in Gunther Grass’s novel The Tin Drum I have decided never to grow any older and therefore remain forever stuck in 1981.

Today however, I am confronted with the unpleasantness of reality as Ipswich meet Bournemouth in what to me is still the First Division but to nearly everyone else is something called the Premier League.  It began as a bright morning but has quickly clouded over and after a breakfast of bacon, tomato and scrambled egg on toast, a couple of Welsh cakes, tea and an espresso coffee I find myself talking to Gareth on the railway station platform as we await the 12:04 to Ipswich.  Gary joins us at the next station stop and we talk of our hopes and expectations for the day but not very optimistically.  To make matters worse we’re sat on the wrong side of the train for a decent view of any polar bears, although Gary makes a spectacle of himself by standing up to get a better look as we sail through Wherstead.  Gareth looks a bit bewildered and perhaps doesn’t appreciate the wonder of having polar bears as part of the pre-match ritual; but it’s not like we support Svarlbard Swifts is it?

Ipswich is looking gloriously grey as we alight from the train, as it should in November, and we head for the ‘Arb’, first enjoying the absence of traffic on the Princes Street bridge, which is temporarily closed to vehicles whilst a pedestrian ramp down to the riverbank is built. The Arb is busy, but Gary joins the queue for the bar whilst I make for the beer garden, where I encounter Mick who goes inside to tell Gary what he’s drinking as I nab a table in the shelter that backs onto High Street. Mick returns and soon Gary is with us carrying a tray of two pints of Mauldon’s Silver Adder and one of Estrella Galicia. We talk of Russell Brand, American mid-term elections and the much hoped-for demise of Donald J Trump and his acolytes, the attitudes and nature of ‘Generation Z’, and our dystopian future of cyber-attacks, power outages, owning a torch and the stockpiling of dried and tinned food and bottles of water.  We decide that tinned peas are okay, but tinned potatoes probably aren’t.  At some point I buy another round of drinks (Estrella Galicia, Earl Soham Brewery Sir Roger’s Porter and a Jameson’s whisky – £15 something with Camra discount) before we realise that as usual everyone else has already left for Portman Road.  When we decide it’s decent to do so, we do too.

Portman Road is oddly clear of queues today, although these seem to have been replaced with metal barriers and would-be lollipop ladies whose lollipops announce the numbers of seating blocks and turnstiles in the Cobbold Stand.  There are still queues for the Sir Alf Ramsey, but I carefully select the fastest moving one and being found innocent of concealing explosives, scrap metal and weapons I’m on my way through turnstile 61 because the queue was moving faster than the queue for turnstile 62. Relieved of spent Silver Adder I find myself observing the now customary pre-match minute’s silence for nearly being Remembrance Day stood on the steps up into the stand.  With the silence over, I suffer an impatient member of Gen Z tugging at me to get up the steps. I tell her as patronisingly and as nicely as I can to “Just hold on and calm down”.

The game begins and Bournemouth get first go with the ball, which they are mostly kicking in the direction of the Sir Bobby Robson stand and Broomhill Park far beyond, just along from Brook’s Hall where Ipswich Town played back in the 1880’s.  Sartorially, Bournemouth are looking like West Germany (it’s still 1981 remember), clad in white shirts and black shorts, which is another pointless change of kit given that their signature colours are red and black.  More happily, Town quickly win the ball and are immediately surging forward as Daizen Maeda pushes and runs past some Bournemouth bod but has his cross cleared.  Up in the Cobbold Stand the Bournemouth followers chant indecipherably but Julio Enciso is in hectares of space in the middle of the pitch and a low cross from Maeda somehow evades the attempted back heel of Emmerson and passes all the way across the face of the Bournemouth goal, and we’ve barely had four minutes yet.

Then the roof falls in, and Christian Walton seemingly thinking we can see out the match with only him ever touching the ball, fails to evade the on-rushing Francisco Evanilson de Lima Barbosa who nicks the ball off his boot and rolls it into an empty goal.  You might have thought Walton would have spotted a bloke with a name that long coming at him, but no.  Town’s lively beginning and hopes of a storming home win have lasted less than five minutes, and another bright start has turned suddenly grey and cloudy.  On the bright side however, Walton atones as much as he can two minutes later after the usual dodgy defending down the left allows a low cross and what looks like a certain goal.  Also, weak sunlight is now dancing softly across the Cobbold Stand, which as a thing of beauty is apparently a joy forever.

Eleven minutes have departed and Jaden Philogene has a low shot easily saved and the Bournemouth fans are singing “Is this a library?”  to which the pithy reply from the bloke behind me, who is clearly familiar with the toy-sized collection of stands AFC Bournemouth call home is “No it’s a Subbuteo stadium”.  “No noise from the Tractor Boys” continue the gloating Bournemouth fans causing me to reflect on there having been a crowd of just 5,241 at Dean Court when I visited in October 1981 and given that a fair number of those are probably dead by now, where the heck have this gobby lot sprung from?

Eighteen minutes are up and Bournemouth claim the game’s first corner kick. Ripples of blue sky appear in the cloud above the Sir Bobby Robson Stand but chants of “Come on Ipswich, Come on Ipswich” betray a sense of growing frustration that Town are not getting anywhere very quickly against unspectacular but quietly capable opponents.  Half-time is less than ten minutes away, Bournemouth have a second corner and Pat from Clacton has time to tell me she’s remembered to wear both her blue and white earrings and her blue pants today. Not to be outdone, I reveal that I am wearing ITFC socks, one pair from a pack of three my work colleagues gave me when I retired.  Meanwhile Fiona’s young niece Maisie is attending her first match today and she is brandishing what I at first thought might be an Ipswich Town branded ferret, but it turns out it is a meerkat. Faced with this cornucopia of Ipswich favours I am finding it hard to believe we’re still losing.

Only five minutes to half time now and there are more pleading chants of “Come On Ipswich, Come On Ipswich”. Bournemouth however earn another corner before an out break of silliness in the middle of the pitch end with the short, bald referee Mr Simon Hooper showing off his yellow card to both Town’s Julio Enciso and the eighteenth-century economist and philosopher Adam Smith, who had overzealously expounded his theory of rational self-interest and kicked Julio, who didn’t like it. The free-kick is to Ipswich but as ever comes to nothing and neither does one in the final minute of the half after Emmerson is given a bang on the head by some clumsy Bournemouthian defender or other.  A minute of added on time does nothing to improve matters either.

Half-time is an opportunity to share thoughts on the game so far with the man from Stowmarket (Paul), reflect on how the bloke on the AFC Bournemouth club badge looks oddly like Brian Eno did in the 1970’s, and drain off more spent Silver Adder and Sir Roger’s Porter.  The football resumes at two minutes past three after the excitable young stadium announcer has announced with almost a note of surprise, “It’s I-i-i-pswi-i-ch T-o-o-w-w-n!” as if he had been half-expecting a different team to emerge from the tunnel for the second half.  By three minutes past three we wish there had been as Town are trailing 2-0 with Leif Davis inexplicably backing towards goal in mid-air and deflecting a cross-cum-shot into the net.  All around there is a palpable feeling that we have been transported back in time to Town’s last brief, miserable visit to the Premier League. The ripples of blue sky are gone, replaced by grey mist and gloom.

Bournemouth soon claim another corner kick, and it sounds as if their supporters are chanting “Cloudy, cloudy, what’s the score?” before Emmerson is replaced by Zian Flemming and Jaden Philogene makes way for the man the excitable young stadium announcer calls “Jack! Clarke!”.  Bournemouth have another corner and with about a half an hour left to play Pat from Clacton reveals that she has already started to think about the baked potato she is going to eat when she gets home.  The sixty-third minute brings muted joy as Town at last win their first corner of the match, for what it’s worth, and ever-present Phil who never misses a game turns around to tell me I’ve been very quiet today.  I tell him it’s a hangover from the minute’s silence, but also Town haven’t had enough corners.

Sixty-four minutes are up and one short, stocky winger, Maeda, is replaced by a slightly stockier one, Fatawu. Meanwhile, continuing to test out their latest comedy material the Bournemouth supporters carry on asking “Is this a library?” and everyone very quietly ignores them. But then, with a bit less than twenty minutes of normal time remaining Abdoul Outtara gets kicked in the penalty area (Ooer missus) and after the usual delaying tactics from the opposition, Town have a penalty kick.  Jack! Clarke! is as reliable as ever and kicks the ball to the right as the goalkeeper helpfully dives to the left and the deficit is reduced to a single goal. Everyone who had been concentrating on reading now clears their throat and shouts whilst carefully inserting their bookmarks so as not to lose their place.

The remaining fifteen minutes of original allotted time are joined by another nine that are added on and Town spend most of them in the Bournemouth half, with ‘The Cherries’ as they are known colloquially, adding only one more to their tally of corner kicks and mostly employing the dubious defensive tactic of bumping into Ipswich players and then lying down on the ground.  Julio Enciso takes a couple of the resulting free kicks, the first of which is athletically tipped over the cross bar by the goalkeeper, whilst the second bends around the defensive wall but the wrong side of the goalpost.  Almost finally, the excitable young stadium announcer very soberly tells us that today we number 29,396; thanking us “so much” for our support but sensibly today not using the word “incredible”.

Sadly, the final whistle comes all too soon and the score remains unaltered.  Defeats are of course inevitable, but this one is galling because the goals were of our own making, not so much goals as hapless blunders, like spilling your beer down your front or walking into a lamp post.  But then, perhaps it was the only way  a fourth division team was going to beat the UEFA Cup holders.

Ipswich Town Reserves 2 Arsenal Reserves 4

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Arsenal fans seem to get everywhere, like those tiny black insects that you find in picture frames, or like ants in your pantry.  I shared a house in Brighton with one called John, an Arsenal fan that is, not an ant, I also used to travel home from work on the train with one called Alan, I still work with one called Felicia, I used to work with two others both called Chris, a friend went out with one called Ellie, I had a lodger called Mark who was one and my mother worked with one called Yvonne.  As if that wasn’t enough, Osama Bin Laden, Ronnie Biggs and John Lydon were/are also followers.  This evening they will be everywhere at Portman Road because Ipswich Town are playing Arsenal in what is nominally the Football League Cup but is likely to be more like a throw-back to the days of the Football Combination with both teams fielding what are effectively reserve teams mostly made up of players who didn’t start in the team last weekend and won’t start in the team next weekend.

I leave home a smidgeon over three hours before kick-off and meet Gary on the train to talk of having not gone to the Chappel beer festival last week because of the rain and how a woman told Gary she didn’t like him when she first met him and he was able to truthfully tell her he didn’t like her either. The descent into Ipswich then reveals three polar bears all doing passable impressions of furry hearth rugs. Ipswich is bathed in soft early evening, late summer sunlight when we arrive and make for ‘the Arb’ heading up Princes Street, Museum Street and High Street against a background of cumulous clouds and several Grade II listed nineteenth century buildings.  Ipswich is the best I tell Gary, it just needs the gene pool pepping up.  

At the Arb I ‘get’, as modern parlance dictates, a pint of Estrella Galicia for Gary and one of Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride for me (£10 something with Camra discount). We repair to the beer garden to wait for Mick who ‘gets’ more beer when he arrives and a portion of “mini fish and chips”, which looks very good and makes me a tad jealous and regretful that I ate Toad in the Hole at lunchtime and then vowed not to eat again and only drink beer.

Some forgettable conversation and another round of drinks later it is gone seven-thirty and hopefully with no other Town supporters showing such cool by not leaving earlier we at last make our way to Portman Road.  Selecting the queue that looks like it’s shuffling fastest we make our way towards men of Asian descent with wands, and the turnstiles but are ushered to a side entrance like three Mr Benns where magically my mobile phone is interrogated by a man with a cross between a taser and one of those ‘guns’ you scan your shopping with at Sainsbury’s. A quick stop to drain off excess spent Suffolk Pride and we’re ascending the umpteen flights of metal stairs to the top tier of the Sir Alf Ramsey Stand.

Arriving at our seats, the queues to be checked for explosives, scrap metal and weapons outside have resulted in us missing the first three minutes and twenty-eight seconds of the match but to our relief the scoreboard still says nil-nil and I check with the bloke who is going to be next to me for the rest of the evening, who isn’t Mick, that we haven’t missed anything.  He reassures me that we haven’t and makes a witty remark, which I quickly forget. I don’t know who got first go with the ball tonight but unusually for the first half the Town are kicking towards the London Road Baptist church end of the ground. Both teams are in their signature home kits; Ipswich beautiful in blue and white, Arsenal with their red shirts and white sleeves looking like Rotherham United in go-faster Adidas stripes . “You know who we are” chant the Arsenal fans and I guess they probably know who we are too or otherwise they would never have found their way to the right football ground. We are of course the team who beat Arsenal in the only Cup final the two teams have ever met in.

Seven minutes are nearly up and some bloke in red with white sleeves with a stupidly high number on his shirt (fifty-six) jinks past a slightly ponderous Cedric Kipre and Arsenal lead one nil.  “Bugger” I say under my breath.  “We are the Champions, the Champions of England” chant the Arsenal fans.  It’s a chant which in its attempt to boast fails almost as one that goes “By far the finest team, Norwich has ever seen”.  We all know that the real words to the song are “We are the Champions, Champions of Europe”, which sadly for Arsenal they are not.  They (Ipswich) were doing alright until you got here” jokes (I think) the bloke next to me who isn’t Mick. He could well be right.

“He shudda gone down there” says a depressingly worldly-wise pre-pubescent voice behind me as Nunez is clipped lightly when traversing the centre circle.  Fourteen minutes are nearly up. “Come to see the Arsenal, You’ve only come to see the Arsenal” chant the visiting fans and I reflect on how hard it would probably be for Town fans to inject sufficient sarcasm into a chant of “Yes, yes, of course we have”, but I wish they’d have a go.  A minute later and Arsenal score a second goal as Town give the ball away and their number twenty passes the ball into the net.

It is the nineteenth minute, and Town have their first shot at the Arsenal goal courtesy of a bloke called Florentino whose signing for the Town must have passed me by; I felt I had to admit to Mick that I hadn’t heard of him before, but found that nor had Mick.  “ITFC!” shouts the worldly-wise kid behind us and the clock ticks forward to the point where Gary exclaims “We’re kicking the wrong way” and a woman walks up the gangway next to us who I think looks a bit like the late Tony Hancock.

With the twenty-sixth minute, possibly the highlight of the first half for the Town is Outtara overlapping down the left, crossing the ball, Flemming touching it back and Nunez shooting over the bar to general applause. Six minutes later and the Arsenal fans in the Cobbold Stand still can’t stop telling us that they are the champions, the champions of ….England!  It’s a chant whose repetitiveness inspires Town to gain two corners in quick succession before the Arsenal fans begin to enquire “Is this a library?”, a question which I always understood was ‘invented’ at the famously dull Emirates Stadium.  In front of us, a man who looks a bit like the late Jimmy Savile might have looked with short hair leaves his seat in anticipation of the half-time break and behind us a woman complains loudly about people standing in the gangway, which as far as I am aware never happens in the Suffolk County library Northgate Street.  It’s an incident that has me suggesting to Mick that people should be strapped into their seats like on a fun-fair ride. “Ah, I knew there was a fascist in you somewhere” says Mick.

The half ends with the Arsenal fans’ most ironic chant of the evening as they sing “Bus stop in Norwich, you’re just a bus stop in Norwich” when Arsenal literally is a tube stop on the Northern Line.  A minute of added on time is announced with an air of excitement, which it inevitably fails to live up to and half time arrives.

The football resumes at four minutes past nine and at six minutes past nine Town are losing by three goals, although Mick and I blame this on a sudden distracting explosion of white light from the advertising hoardings around the pitch. It reminds me, with a bit of artistic license, of the lighting at the Brighton Centre in 1981 when I saw The Who perform ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’.  Coincidentally, but perhaps not, Roger Daltrey is an Arsenal fan.

Despite the early disappointment, Town rally as Anis Mehmeti is put through on goal but fails to shoot, although Arsenal are then awarded their first corner and two minutes before the match enters its final third a fourth goal results from a shot from the edge of the Town penalty area, which strikes the inside of one post and pings across to the corner of the net behind the other.  It’s another good goal and I reflect that it’s a bit like watching Paris St Germain, except of course that they’re not the champions of England.

With an hour passed into history, now is the time for substitutions, and Chuba Akpom and Jack Clarke replace Jaden Philogene and Zian Flemming.  The results are instant as Clarke typically jinks past some bloke in a fake Rotherham shirt, squares the ball and Mehmeti passes it into the Arsenal net like a hot knife through butter, which has already been out of the fridge for several minutes. Easy.  Flushed with success, Gary O’Neill soon makes more substitutions with Davis and Eggy replacing Outtara and McAteer.  Nothing much happens at first, but with ten minutes left Town trash Arsenal in the corner count by three to one, unless I missed some, but then Arsenal get one back before tonights attendance is announced as being 28,566 and seemingly the greatest excitement of the evening for some home supporters is the sight of Arsenal fans in the ‘home’ stands revealing themselves as such and being ejected from the ground.

Finally, a sensible two minutes of added time turn up and another break down the right and a squared ball for Town finds Chuba Akpom, who pirouettes and scores into the corner of the Arsenal net with a smidgeon of help from an Arsenal player’s back.  There’s barely time for the scoreboard to catch up with the present and the game is over, with Ipswich yet again out of the League Cup, but not to lower league opposition as so often used to happen under Mick McCarthy, but to the champions of England, or at least their reserves.