Ipswich Town 3 Bristol Rovers 0

September 7, 2020 / martinpbrooks / 2 Comments

It’s the first Saturday in September and the weather has broken, although to be truthful it’s been looking a bit cracked for a while now. Autumn approaches. It rained overnight and whilst there are glimpses of sunshine it is straining to penetrate through the clouds and worst of all it feels cold. But on the bright side, today sees the start of the football season and mighty Ipswich Town, the vessel in which the hopes and dreams of a good many of the people of Suffolk are invested will be playing Bristol Rovers in what I refer to as the League Cup, but the football club, media and those who don’t know any better call the Carabao Cup. I didn’t used to know what Carabao was, I erroneously thought it was a wrongly spelt American name for a reindeer, but because of the League Cup, and thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that it is a domestic water buffalo from the Philippines and also a drink; not a proper drink mind, like Adnams Broadside, tea, Noilly Prat, milk, red wine, Fuller’s 1845, espresso coffee, Crémant, pineapple juice, Champagne, lime cordial, Belgian Trappist beer , hot chocolate or malt whisky but something called an ‘energy drink’. The sponsorship of football competitions is a curious thing and only adds to the feelings I have that I live as an outsider on the fringes of society, with the Milk Marketing Board being the only sponsor whose product I can honestly admit to ever having set out to purchase.

Kick-off is at three o’clock, but of course due to the Covid-19 pandemic it is not safe for a large crowd to gather and therefore no one is going to Portman Road today. Sadly, I shall be denied the joys of travelling on the trains of Greater Anglia, the pre-match pints, the quickening anticipation-filled walk down Portman Road and the click of the turnstile. Today I will not hear the moans of the home supporters nor the witless abuse of the away supporters; I will not receive the suspicious glances of luminous stewards nor feel the soft artificial fur of Bluey and Crazee as they brush past me with their out-sized heads and weird hoof-hands; I will not become engrossed in conversation nor share see-sawing emotions with Mick, ever-present Phil who never misses a game, the old dears, Ray and his grandson Harrison, or Pat from Clacton with her bag of sweets and lucky charm, the masturbating monkey.

Not thinking of what I am missing, I enjoy a light lunch of home-made spicy carrot soup with my wife Paulene whilst resisting the temptation of a beer, despite a choice of Adnams Ghostship, Adnams Ease Up IPA, Fuller’s Bengal Lancer, Chimay, Chimay Brun, Orval, Westmalle and Faro Foudroyante from my ‘beer cupboard’. We watch the Tour de France on the television, losing ourselves in the French countryside as an escape from the memory of lockdown. We talk and reminisce about holidays and trips to France. It’s a quarter past three. Flippin’ eck! The game has started and I hadn’t realised, this is what life is like without the discipline of the railway timetable to get me to the match. I leave Paulene somewhere in the Haute Garonne and find my radio, which is already tuned to BBC Radio Suffolk, because I like a laugh. I decided long ago that watching Town on the ifollow is not worth £10, particularly when I’ve already spent over £300 on a season ticket, so I settle down in an Ikea Poang chair in the back bedroom with Brenner Woolley and Mick Mills. Elvis Costello was right ” Radio is a sound salvation”.

Very quickly I learn that Aaron Drinan is pronounced Dry-nen and doesn’t rhyme with ‘linen’ as I previously thought it did, which I think is a useful start and then Mick Mills tells me that a half-chance for Bristol Rovers is the first time they have threatened Town’s goal so at least I can now be confident that we’re not losing. Brenner and Mick witter on and Brenner tells me that Tomas Holy “puts his foot through the ball”; I wait for the referee to stop the game to extricate Holy’s foot, but rather confusingly the commentary carries on with Brenner describing the ball as being passed “along the deck “and I now wonder if the game has been moved from Portman Road to an oil tanker; it’s common after all for the size of such ships to be measured in terms of football pitches. I’m still not sure of the up to date score but Brenner is hoping for a result in normal time, which implies the scores are still level and that he’s got better things to do after five o’clock than commentate on this. The absence of any crowd noise then strikes me for the first time and I am conscious of the shouts of the players echoing through the stands left cavernous and empty. Fittingly in all this blankness, Brenner at last reprises the score, it’s still nil-nil; I haven’t missed anything then. Phew.

Mick Mills is not a man to ever sound at all excited, but he feels moved to say that our left hand side has ‘come to life’ and produced two or three ‘moments’. That’s what the game is all about I think to myself and am heartened to hear Mick provide balance by wishing that the right hand side of the team could do the same. Brenner takes back control of the commentary and I learn that today Paul Lambert is wearing a big over coat, which is most unusual; I don’t think I’ve ever seen him not in a black v-neck sweater; perhaps the added security of his five year contract has led him to invest in a more extensive wardrobe, but I do worry that it’s a bit early in the year for an overcoat and surely this can only provoke more abuse from his critics on social media.

As I drift off into reverie about what is an appropriate coat for a football manager on a cool early September Saturday, Brenner announces that “Sears was not going to miss” and Town are 1-0 up. It’s twenty-eight minutes past three, I clench my left fist and softly whisper a sibilant ‘Yes’ to myself. “It was easy to get the ball down the corridor to Sears” says Mick Mills and once again I’m a bit lost trying to imagine where I’d seen any corridors at Portman Road, except beneath the stands, and worrying that if the ball was in a corridor surely it should have been a throw-in. I thank our lucky stars that our level of football is not subject to VAR.

With Town a goal up the game soon sounds like it has become a tad dull, or it could just be the commentary. Mick Mills increasingly seems like a comfortably retired man in his seventies, but the I remember that he is. Brenner meanwhile goes off piste and begins to talk about Town’s next game at home to the Arsenal Under-23 team in the now despicably compromised, credibility-lacking EFL Trophy, expressing his interest in seeing “…how good the latest crop of kids at the Emirates are”. If he’s so interested in bleedin’ Arsenal perhaps he should clear off to BBC London. Hopefully as annoyed as I am by Brenner’s concern about a club that isn’t Ipswich Town, Mick tries to break the mould by injecting a hint of excitement into the commentary and announces “That was a super pass from Dozzell” but he spoils it rather by pausing and then adding “so that was good”, as if his use of the adjective “super” was in retrospect going a bit far.

I look at my watch and find that it’s approaching half time and I think I discern from the commentary that Town have a corner. They do, and now it’s 2-0 courtesy of what Mick Mills dubs a ‘fabulous goal’ from Luke Chambers. “Luke Chambers is pretty deadly in the opposition box” says Mick leaving me to fill in the blanks that he can, on occasions, be quite deadly in his own box too. Half-time arrives and unlike at Portman Road I don’t make an undignified dash to the khasi but stay in my seat. This is no doubt in part due to not having a bladder full of the remnants of two or more pints of beer and partly because at Portman Road I am not pleasantly paralysed through sitting on a comfortable chair. For remaining seated I am rewarded by hearing Mick Mills refer to Aaron Drinan as Aaron Dry-nan although he instantly corrects himself to make Aaron’s surname rhyme with linen a la Brenner Woolley. Mick goes on to tempt fate horribly by saying that he “…cannot see Bristol Rovers coming back in to this”. I admire Mick’s forthrightness, but recent experience nevertheless leads me to offer a small prayer for him, and his opinion, despite my probable atheism. I take a brief trip downstairs to France to bring the gospel to my Christian wife that Town are winning 2-0. She asks if I am sure I have tuned into the right radio station.

The second half begins at the ridiculously late time of 4:06pm, and it’s not long before Mick Mills is telling me that the game has become a “…little but drab, a little bit boring”; if anyone should know about that it’s monotone Mick. Personally, I am finding the experience of sitting in my back bedroom listening to the wireless quite exciting and probably more interesting than if I had had to fork out a tenner or so for a match ticket plus as much again for the train fare, beer and perhaps a pie, all requirements if I was to attend in person. I am further enthralled when Brenner advises me as the ball is booted off the pitch that “…the ball is dipped in some sort of sterilizing solution when it goes in the seats over there”. I can’t help wondering why this is necessary; who normally sits in that part of the ground? What sort of unpleasant residue have they left? Why hasn’t that corner of the ground be cleaned since last March?

Moving on, Mick Mills is providing the most enjoyable moments of the commentary and, as he did in the first half, he gives praise but then tempers it. “That was a wonderful corner by Judge” he says before qualifying his statement by explaining “It was…………good”, once again suggesting that given time to think about it perhaps his initial assessment was a little too enthusiastic. It’s either that or he just doesn’t know that many adjectives. But there is no doubt that lurking beneath Mick’s inherent reticence and quietude there is a passion and he soon lets it out with the statement “There’s a lot of football in the team”. As for Brenner he can’t help but betray a certain cynicism, no doubt borne of over fifteen years commentating on the mighty Blues; “Good play from the Blues” says Brenner, before adding with perfect timing “At the moment”.

The second half is clearly not totally thrilling, but the impression received is thankfully that Town are playing within themselves and have the measure of these “Pirates”. The game plays on and I am guilty of paying more attention to Twitter than to Brenner and Mick as I seek to discover how the likes of Whitton United, Long Melford, Ipswich Wanderers, Stowmarket Town and Framlingham Town are getting on. I admit I haven’t really been paying close attention to the commentary but am nevertheless surprised at four thirty-three to hear Brenner say that Town are now 3-0 up, and although I will admit to reading Twitter I wonder how I could have missed hearing the goal go in. I am left to suppose Mick’s less than excited general delivery and Brenner’s overriding interest in the Arsenal’s “kids” could explain why neither commentator had succeeded in grabbing my attention. Fortunately, Twitter can also tell me that it was Freddie Sears who scored the third goal, in the 68^th minute as well as actually showing me the first two goals and then the third as well.

Time moves on inexorably and it’s now four forty-nine, and Brenner confirms that it’s been “all over really” since Freddie Sears scored Town’s third goal, as he stifles a yawn. Fittingly the commentary peters out a little with periods of silence punctuated with commentator clichés letting the eager listeners know that Bristol Rovers don’t have “enough left in the tank” to change the result and that Town have been “good value” for their lead. “Three-nil, Ipswich Town” says Brenner, saving up his allocation of useful verbs and adjectives for another day, perhaps when Arsenal’s “kids” might be playing. “Town, winding the clock down” says Mick. “According to my watch we’re just about there” are Brenner’s final words, as if prompting the referee to blow his whistle, which miraculously he then does.

Pleased that Town have won and pleased that I can leave Brenner and Mick alone together and return downstairs to my wife, I turn off my radio. I haven’t really had a clue what’s been going on all afternoon but I do know that Town have won a cup tie, scoring three times in the process and not conceding, even if I only noticed two of the goals and it feels as if it all happened in a far off universe, but being divorced from the proceedings the result is all that matters. Back to reality, if not normality; a glass of beer and fish and chips for tea. As Ray Davies of the Kinks told us in Autumn Almanac, “I like my football on a Saturday”.

Consumer City 1 Lockdown Town 0

June 27, 2020June 27, 2020 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

Despite the absence of football since early March, Ipswich Town Football Club has not been absent from my e-mail in-box, far from it in fact. Every week, it seems, I receive some electronic advertising missive from Portman Road in addition to the usual boring, banal weekly newsletter. Whilst the club has been slow to contact me about refunding the money I paid for that portion of the season that never has and never will happen, Bluey, Crazee and their chums are clearly chomping at the bit to try and sell me some football club related merchandise, or ‘merch’ as the hip people call it.

We live in a world of conspicuous consumption, and gift shops wherever they are, be it the Taj Mahal, le palais de Versailles or Ipswich Museum are a magnet to many. I know at least one person who I am told enjoys the ‘exit through gift shop’ element of his visits to art galleries, museums and historic monuments as much if not more than the visit to the attraction itself. I can honestly say my own life would not be as fulfilled and culturally enriched without my jigsaw of Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading The People, bought at the Louvre in Paris or my postcard of George Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières purchased at the Tate Gallery in London. In the same way, football club shops are one of the secret joys of going to football, I have never been able to resist seeking out the messy, sparsely stocked retail outlet round the back of the main stand when on an away trip; if you’re lucky it’ll be a ‘portakabin’, if not so lucky a megastore. In his utterly brilliant book ‘Saturday 3pm, 50 eternal delights of modern football’, Daniel Gray refers to club shops as “…old curiosity shops, eccentric and other worldly.” He goes on to say “Let us salute the club-crested pencil case”. For such reasons a variety of F.C. fridge magnets decorate a metal board in my study, club pennants dangle over one’s head when sat in my upstairs toilet and my wife has a cupboard full of beanie bears and miniature mascots in replica kit. It’s not that club shops tempt me with fabulous objects of desire so much as they amaze and amuse me by peddling what I can only describe as ridiculous crap.

Having not been able to browse through the assorted collection of polyester training wear, replica kit, pointless souvenirs and dubious fashion in person since ‘lockdown’, I eventually came to welcome the ceaseless trickle of Ipswich Town e-mails urging me to buy, buy, buy and the easy access it promised to the club shop website. “On-line shopping; you know you want to” the e-mail didn’t say enticingly in the voice of Nigella Lawson, but it might as well have. Further cajoled and teased by the ‘something for nothing’ bait of free postage I let my right index finger open the e-mail with a single, fateful click of the mouse.

For all Ipswich Town’s apparent inability to connect with its fan base, Marcus Evans knows his market and he knows by now that a lot of people in Suffolk are nothing if not a bit stingy and so it’s sale goods that are being pushed here, the real garbage that nobody at all wanted. Here is where you can pay homage to the consumer-society on the cheap, filling up on the season before last’s home kit, the much sought after ‘relegation special’. Only my intense dislike of tacky, itchy, nasty polyester stops me reaching for the credit card. Perhaps I will be more tempted by the ‘ITFC Stamp Tee’, a shirt reduced from £16 to a tenner; or perhaps not, having seen the bizarre blob of white on the chest in the form of a postmark. Why a postmark? What are we, a team of chuffin’ posties?

On the same page as the ‘Stamp Tee’ the Paul Lambert poster is reduced from a fiver to £ 2.50, a fair summation of the fall in the level of his stock in the eyes of many Town fans after an eleventh place finish in the Third Division. Most damning though is the 90% discount on postcards of James Norwood and Kaydon Jackson which are reduced from a modest, yet still vastly over-priced £1 to a somewhat insulting 10 pence. It’s a scale of reduction so impressive that that it is used to headline the e-mail but without telling you that it only applies to two poxy postcards that no one wants anyway, hence their appearance in the sale. If these two players’ agents had succeeded in negotiating image rights in their contracts, then this is Marcus Evans’s revenge. It did however set me wondering who buys a postcard of Kaydon Jackson. A visitor to Ipswich wanting to relay its glory to a friend or relative ‘back home’ would surely pick one of our splendid Victorian town hall or may be the remarkably pargetted Ancient House, or perhaps the Grade I Listed Unitarian Chapel, glassy, curvy Willis building or even the soaring Orwell Bridge. The only sort of friend who could possibly send you a postcard of Kaydon Jackson or James Norwood would surely be an art student trying to impress by being so ‘post-modern’.

Nothing much was grabbing my attention as something I would want to buy; Cuddly T-Rex? No; Retro colouring book? No; Piggy bank? No. I thought of who I knew who might have a birthday soon that I could palm off cheap sale goods on. The cheapest of the cheap, the least wanted of the unwanted were presumably the items marked ‘clearance’. But I couldn’t think of a friend for whom a giant Bluey the mascot badge (£3.99 down to £.200) or ITFC bunting (£3.99 down to £3.00) would define our friendship. An ITFC birthday card was out of the question being un-reduced at £3.50. One ITFC birthday card incidentally features a picture of a battered looking trophy cup engraved with the words ‘Happy Birthday’. I can only think that as Ipswich are one of just three clubs out of the one hundred and fifteen in steps one to five of the English football league pyramid not to have won a trophy or been promoted in the past 20 years (the other two are Oldham Athletic and Everton), this ‘Happy Birthday’ trophy card was inspired by a desire to show younger Town supporters what a cup even looked like.

Eventually, the seemingly limitless cornucopia of blue and white Ipswich Town branded goods before me was too much and I gave in to the pressure of consumerism, as we all do. Rationalising my decision by agreeing with myself to dispose of two grotty looking but much loved un-branded T-shirts that are probably 20 years old, I bought something described as a Button Neck Tee for £10, reduced from £16. After receiving the shirt in the post a little over a week after ordering it I went back to the website to post a review of my purchase, which under the heading of ‘Cheap’ & Cheerful went something like this: I bought this garment in the sale, reduced from £16 to £10. It arrived after just over a week. I was a little disappointed with the quality and was glad I hadn’t paid full price. The material is very thin and the finish around the collar quite poor, with an unsightly lumpy seam where the collar meets the neck. Otherwise however, I like the design and the colour, it’s a good fit and the club badge is nicely embroidered. It’ll do for hanging about in at home but I wouldn’t wear it out. Naturally enough, and not unreasonably, the club reserves the right to moderate the reviews it receives, but despite my review not including any rude words or grammatical errors it has not appeared on the website. I submitted a similar review again a week or two later and that has never appeared either. I have now posted the review for a third time and am waiting to see if Ipswich Town publish it. Very little of the merchandise on the Ipswich Town website seems to have been reviewed; apart from Ipswich Town supporters being an apathetic lot, which is true, it seems there could be another reason.

With ‘lockdown’ now being loosened, Ipswich Town are withdrawing the offer of free postage and the club shop will re-open its doors on Friday 3^rd July. I am going to miss those e-mails from Planet Blue tempting me to buy club branded doormats, duvets, rubber ducks and shoe laces, but I will keep trying to post my review of the cheap and cheerful ‘Button Neck Tee’ until the shirts are all sold and they disappear from the website altogether. With no football still to go to I need something to do on a Saturday afternoon.

Ipswich Town 0 Coventry City 1

March 9, 2020August 1, 2025 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

Last night I went to a ‘gig’ in a very small music venue in Chelmsford called the Hot Box. My friend Pete, who has never really got over being eighteen, invited me to see a ‘Psyche Rock’ band from Glasgow called Helicon, he thought I’d like them because some of their songs feature a sitar and I’m a sucker for a sitar, so he thought right. It was when sitting in the bar chatting and listening to the trains rumble overhead (Hot Box is inside two railway viaduct arches) that we couldn’t help but notice all the reproductions of classic album covers of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s that plaster the walls, and Pete spotted that for the Only Ones’ eponymous album released in 1978, my favourite year. Today I have realised how the lyrics to the Only Ones’ Another Girl, Another Planet describe my relationship with Ipswich Town “You get under my skin, I don’t find it irritating”.

Today the sky is blue with a hint of wispy cloud. I stepped out of my back door a bit earlier and it felt flippin’ freezing; so, it is cloaked in a thick woolly jumper, overcoat and muffler that I set off for the railway station having flagrantly ignored the threat of COVID-19 and kissed my wife goodbye. The train arrives on time and the twelve minute walk has left me hot and a bit sweaty; life is not always what you expect. Naturally, the sun is shining in Ipswich and behind the Station Hotel in its beer garden the scarves and shirts of Coventry City fans mimic the colour of the sky; surreally the Eton Boating Song drifts up over the pub car park and the murky waters of the River Orwell, I half expect to see Boris Johnson and his cronies burning £50 notes in front of the rough sleepers who doss down at the front of the railway station.

In Portman Road the six-wheel, slate grey Coventry City team bus arrives at the same time as me, but the bus reverses into Portman Road, turns round and is re-directed to the Constantine Road entrance. Unlike the coach driver I know exactly where I’m going and walk on through, past a man who appears to have a metal bollard stuck up his anus, and the usual pre-match panorama of people munching low-grade meat product between slabs of low grade bread product. The flags on the Cobbold Stand fly strongly in the breeze and I walk on towards St Matthews Street and St Jude’s Tavern where Mick is already a good way through a pint of Iceni Brewery Partridge Walk (£2.50). I buy a pint of the same and once sat down we discuss the end of my phased return to work after illness, our weight , today’s team selection and, after Mick reveals how he can’t stand people going on and on about their dogs, dogs. Neither of us owns a dog but I used to have two Lurchers called Alfie and Larry, until they were put down. I drink another pint of Partridge Walk whilst Mick sinks a Jamieson’s whisky and with fifteen minutes or so until kick-off we depart with the licensee wishing us luck as we don our coats.

Turnstile 5 is my portal into another world today and as usual I smile and thank the operator for letting me through. With bladders drained and hands washed Mick and I take our seats, stepping over them from the row behind so as not to inconvenience Pat from Clacton who is already ensconced at the end of the row. Of course ever-present Phil who never misses a game is here too, along with his young son Elwood and there’s a welcome return of the old dears (Doug and Sheila) who used to sit behind me but now sit in front of me; the only absentee is once again the man with the Brylcreemed hair; that’s two games on the trot he’s not been here, I fear we may have ‘lost’ him and Pat from Clacton says as much. I won’t miss him, I found his thick hair furrowed with Brylcreem somewhat distracting.

The two teams soon emerge from the shiny, blue, plastic tunnel and Crazee the mascot waves his flag like Liberty leading the people in Eugene Delacroix’s painting. “L’étendard sanglant est levé” I sing to myself, in my head, whilst wishing this game was in Ligue 1 and not League One. The sky is no longer blue, but grey and cloudy. The game begins and Ipswich are wearing their customary lovely royal blue shirts and socks with white shorts whilst our guests Coventry are in a somewhat avant garde ensemble of white shirts with a black and white chequered band across the chest, black shorts and white socks; they look as though they are either the 2-Tone Records works’ team or the Metropolitan Police, but it’s quite smart in a un-football-kit-like sort of way. The 2-Tone connection is in fact used to market the kit and in my mind I take things a step further imagining the players on the team bus all in dark suits, pencil ties and pork-pie hats before stepping off the bus in a line like Madness or skanking to The Selecta. If Ipswich Town was to go for a dress style based on that of a famous, local, popular music artist the players would have to have haircuts like a 1980’s Nik Kershaw, and indeed Frank Yallop did.

Five minutes pass and Town’s Jon Nolan falls theatrically in the penalty area, it’s a blatant dive and I express my disgust with outspread arms and disbelieving expression whilst those around me bay for a penalty. Town looked okay for a short while, but Coventry are now dominating possession and seem like they have a plan. Up in the Cobbold Stand the Coventry supporters sing Tom Hark (originally a Ska song by Elias and his Zig-Zag Ji-flutes, but not on 2-Tone) and something about ‘going up’, which my ears won’t let me decipher. The away following today is impressive, even if their annunciation is poor; we will later learn that there are 1,740 of them and in forty-nine years of coming to Portman Road I have never seen so many Coventry City supporters, but then this is the first time in forty-nine years that a Coventry team has come to Portman Road that is at the top of or even anywhere near the top of a league. These people have been very patient, their team having previously only ever been models of mediocrity, although most Town fans would kill for a bit of mediocrity right now.

As seagulls soar overhead and perch on the cross girder of the Sir Bobby Robson Stand roof, Coventry win the game’s first corner, but the ball is sent directly behind the goal line. The match looks like being one of attrition, but then Coventry score; the uninspiringly named Matt Godden turning very cleverly and shooting inside the far post. No one saw that coming, least of all Luke Chambers and his chums in the Ipswich back-four. Fifteen minutes have passed. “Super, Super Matt” sing the Coventry fans as if advertising a local launderette, but then clarifying the matter by adding “Super Matty Godden”, all to the tune of Skip to My Lou.

The Sir Bobby Robson stand, who had been in reasonable voice fall quiet and the pall of gloom that had seemingly been blown out to sea after the defeat to Fleetwood on Tuesday returns. “Fucking dog shit this” opines the roughly spoken gentleman behind me. “Fuckin’ sums it all up” he continues, as a Town player is out-jumped for the ball, “How was he beaten in the air? He’s not even trying to win the fuckin’ ball”. Pat from Clacton rolls her eyes at the coarseness of the language whilst owning up to me that she sometimes says “shit”.

On 28 minutes a ball drops over the top of the Coventry defence and Town’s Jon Nolan is on to it with just Coventry’s Slovakian goalkeeper Marko Marosi between him and glory. Nolan opts for abuse as he tamely heads the ball into the goalkeeper’s hands. “We’re gonna win the League” sing the Coventry supporters, sounding a little unsure of the words, having never sung them before this season. Half an hour has passed and the wonderfully named referee, Trevor Kettle, whistles for a foul on Town’s Teddy Bishop and then gives his yellow card its first airing of the afternoon, brandishing it in the direction of the perpetrator Liam Walsh. Town win their first corner five minutes later and Luke Woolfenden’s shot is sent wide of the goal. It’s nearly half-time and seizing their opportunity to deliver ironic humour as Town supporters head for the toilets, the Coventry fans sing “Is this a library?” Time enough remains for Nolan to be through on goal again and send his shot over the cross bar and a few rows behind me some unusually posh sounding people talk to one another very loudly ,as posh people often do, about something completely unrelated to football.

Half -time brings boos for Trevor ‘The Whistle’ Kettle as he leaves the pitch with his two side-kicks in their unpleasant yellowy-green tops and the air is one of despondency. Mick asks if I thought we should have had a penalty near the beginning when Nolan went down; I tell him I can’t remember the incident. “Well, you were very animated at the time” says Mick, and then I remember and have to explain that actually I was annoyed that Nolan had dived. I speak with Ray who bemoans the absence of decent full-backs at the club and the fact that once again the goal Town conceded came down the left hand side of the pitch.

At 16:04 the second half begins, but the blokes behind don’t return for a good few minutes; they don’t miss much and we don’t miss them. As time passes inexorably it becomes apparent that the second half is better than the first from a Town supporting perspective, we have more of the ball anyway, which makes it feel like we’re doing okay. Godden misses a good opportunity to confirm the win for Coventry, but otherwise his team doesn’t look that much better than ours, just a bit more confident due to a fortunate habit of winning rather than an unfortunate one of losing. Pat from Clacton tells me that she’s going to Yarmouth next weekend for a week of playing whist, but she’ll be back on the Friday, the day before the Portsmouth game. She won £28 last year.

An hour of football has passed and as he turns towards goal Town’s Freddie Sears is hacked down by Coventry’s Kyle Macfadzean who is consequently booked by Mr Kettle, who I imagine must have asked “Would you spell that please” as he reached for his pencil and his notebook. With the help of her compact Sony camera and its zoom lens Pat confirms that Ed Sheeran is here again today and she snaps him. I tell her that I saw on Twitter that Rick Wakeman is here too, and she gets a really good picture of him in the directors’ box, in which he’s looking right down the camera. Watch out for the Patarazzi. Pat’s sister Jill wins the guess the crowd competition on the Clacton supporters’ bus. “Oh please let them score” entreats Pat as another cross is sent into the Coventry penalty area, but the team is in need of some luck and Pat gets out the masturbating monkey charm who introduced himself at the Fleetwood game; she rubs his head but nothing happens. I learn that the monkey actually came from Cambodia, not Vietnam as I said before.

Neither Mick nor Pat from Clacton, nor I notice how many minutes of added time there are, so engrossed are we in the match and so strongly are we willing Town to score, but at 16:53 Mr Kettle whistles for the last time and it’s all over bar the booing, of which, thankfully, there isn’t as much as there was on Tuesday. Pat from Clacton and ever-present Phil and who never misses a game and Elwood make a sharp exit for their respective coach and car but Mick and I stay to applaud the team. They haven’t all played well, but we don’t doubt that they tried to, who doesn’t want to do their best except nihilists and even they probably want to be good at being nihilists. If we don’t applaud them that can only make them feel worse; we’re Supporters, it’s what we do. Something tells me the masturbating monkey would say it’s just fate.

Ipswich Town 0 Fleetwood Town 1

March 5, 2020October 2, 2021 / martinpbrooks / 1 Comment

In spite of my enigmatic mix of eternal optimism and a passion for existential misery, and never having seen Fleetwood Town before, I am not overly looking forward to tonight. It’s a bit cold and damp and there is a sad inevitability that a good number of the Portman Road crowd will be quick to moan now that Ipswich Town have embarked on a solid run of defeats made more impressive by how easily the winning goals could have been prevented. It is without any sense of excitement or anticipation therefore that I leave work and step out into the late afternoon and its quickening rain drops.

In an effort to make a clean break from the past weeks and stop myself looking like a slimmer but greying version of Brian Wilson circa 1965, I am going to get my haircut. As usual I take my custom to Francesco’s of St Matthew’s St, an establishment which was formerly by appointment to Sir Bobby Robson. The pleasant woman who cuts my hair tells me of a current Town player who always wore his Town tracksuit top when he came to get his haircut, but is seemingly no longer so keen to be recognised and now turns up in ‘mufti’, not that she uses that expression. Lighter of wallet (£15.50) and head, but enlivened by a very welcome complimentary espresso coffee, I leave Francesco’s and step into a Beatles song as I start to roam, and then I’m in town. The damp streets of down town Ipswich are largely deserted, there’s nothing doing, everything is closing, it’s like a ruin. I’m killing time until, by way of another change to the usual pre-match ritual, I will meet Mick at the Arbor House, where we will both drink a pint of Young’s London Special (£3.80), Mick will eat Chicken Risotto whilst I eat a Scotch Egg, Halloumi Chips and Sweet Potato Fries (£10), and we will conclude our meal with a pint of Lacon’s Encore (£3.60) for me and a half of Shipyard American Pale Ale (£2.50) for Mick.

At about 7:15 Mick and I leave the convivial surroundings of the Arbor House and head down the hill towards Portman Road, where I stop off at one of the blue booths to buy a programme (£3.50). I’m not sure if I get disorientated by the thought of paying £3.50 for a programme, or whether it’s just the dim, evening light but it takes me two goes to work out which window I need to go to, but at least it makes the programme seller laugh, and I laugh too ,just to make sure that he’s laughing with me and not at me.

Wishing the operator of turnstile number four a cheery thanks for letting me into the ground I make for the facilities with Mick before we take up our positions in the cheap seats between the goal and the players’ tunnel. In front of us a crew of sailors in their ‘number ones’ hang about waiting to form an unexpected and unexplained guard of honour as the two teams enter the field. If we were playing Portsmouth it might make some sense but Fleetwood’s seafarers are more likely to wear sou’westers, waders and thick jumpers smelling of fish than naval uniforms.

Tonight’s crowd is a bit sparse compared to recent weeks; ever-present Phil who never misses a game is here, obviously, and so is Pat from Clacton, but the old dears who used to sit behind me but now sit in front of me are absent , as is the bloke with the brylcreemed hair. Ray walks past with a pie, and when I ask what sort of pie it is he points to what appears to be a letter ‘C’ written on top in pastry; my guess and Ray’s is ‘C’ for chicken or perhaps, as tonight’s game is against Fleetwood, Cod, but Pat from Clacton says she thought the ‘C’ was for something else; she doesn’t say what. Ray looks aghast and tells me he’s glad he doesn’t have to sit next to her, I know what he means.

The match begins, Ipswich in classic blue and white trying to get the ball inside the white, wooden frame just in front of us to our right. It is Fleetwood Town who get first go with the ball however, although visually they are disappointing wearing an insipid all pale yellow kit rather than their first kit which is red with white sleeves ,like Arsenal’s. Ipswich’s sartorial superiority sadly doesn’t seem to count for much however, and they struggle to do the things that usually help us to distinguish football from other sports such as Eton Fives, Discus and Dominoes. The likes of Luke ‘Garbo’ Garbutt, Andre Dozzell and Janoi Donacien all try to cross the ball to a centre forward who I can only guess we haven’t actually signed yet, but Fleetwood’s gigantic number six Harry Souttar simply bats everything away with his head or an extended leg; if Harry Souttar was a fish he’d be a whale shark, which in case you didn’t know is the world’s largest cartilaginous fish.

There is some excitement after a quarter of an hour when Fleetwood have to make an early substitution with Ched Evans, whose name makes me think of Shed Seven, replacing Callum Connolly. Meanwhile Mick is staring into the Cobbold stand trying to count the Fleetwood supporters, but the back of the stand is too shadowy to make it possible to tell the difference between people and seats and people who look like seats. We console ourselves with the knowledge that the attendance, including the size of the ‘Cod Army’, as Fleetwood supporters are known, will be announced later. Soon the Sir Bobby Robson stand are chanting “ Evans, Evans, you’re a cunt” but Pat from Clacton and I can’t decide if they are singing to Ched or Marcus; we eventually settle on it being a catch all for anyone called Evans, tough as this is on choirmaster Evan Evans (known as Evans the Song) in ‘Ivor The Engine’.

Twenty eight minutes pass and Fleetwood win a corner. It’s about now that I notice that the Fleetwood Town players bear the message ‘BES Utilities’ on the fronts of their shirts and I allow myself to ignore the difference in spelling and wonder if the former ‘Happy Monday’ has diversified into gas, water and sewerage. Neither team has really had a shot on goal worthy of the name and whilst Ipswich are playing pretty atrociously, Fleetwood are doing their bit too to ensure that value for money is kept to a minimum; credit where credit is due. Whereas in many football matches what is usually described as ‘the deadlock’ is ‘broken’ by a flamboyant, audacious, cheeky, or simply consummate piece of skill , Ipswich have now almost perfected the complete opposite. With forty minutes gone Ched Evans plays a one-two with someone or other not far from the half way line, which allows the spritely 31 year old to trundle past Luke Chambers, take the ball a bit too wide for a shot and then surprise us all by kicking the ball against and over the out-stretched leg of Tomas Holy and into the Ipswich goal. As Town fans shake their heads the ecstatic Cod Army joyously leap about like salmon in the Cobbold Stand. “You’re not famous anymore” they chant, as if that goal was responsible, whilst also challenging the song’s validity by the very fact that they’re singing it. All fame is everlasting – discuss.

As often happens, half time soon follows an opponent’s goal to allow us to reflect, seethe or just spend a penny depending on our individual needs. I begin my well-earned break with a look at the programme, which leads me to regret the absence from the Fleetwood team tonight of Harrison Biggins and Barry Baggley, although Billy Crellin is on the bench and though I don’t know it yet, we are destined to see him and hear his name. I also enjoy two photos of Fleetwood manager Joey Barton, one in which he looks as if he may have just lobbed a brick at someone and another in which his chin juts out menacingly from beneath a baseball cap as he gives the evil eye to a person or persons safely out of shot.

Having spoken again with Ray as we passed one another heading from and to the toilet, the digital clock display on the Sir Bobby Robson stand strikes 2049 and the second half begins. Town’s losing position gives rise to the usual unwelcome commentary and advice from assorted coaches in the stands;“Look at all that fuckin’space”, “ We’ve got no one at the back”, “Second ball!”. When Janoi Donacien misses the ball a legion of half-wits jeer because I assume they all have World Cup winning medals or at least play for Brazil and are perfect in every way and always have been. Pat from Clacton is rightfully annoyed, “You shouldn’t boo your own players” she tells me and I agree and tell her that’s what the opposition are for.

Town are better this half, although they still can’t get past Harry Souttar and when they do Ched Evans clears off the line, or goalkeeper Alex Cairns makes a fine save; I try to think of another player whose surname is the same as the name of an Australian city, but I can’t; Derek Darwin sounds plausible but is pure fiction. The crowd is announced as 15,678 of whom 88 are from Fleetwood and many of the home crowd turn and applaud them for their effort including me, Mick looks on slightly bemused. He has a point, such applause is a bit patronising; plucky little Fleetwood etcetera, but it might just be people trying to be nice in a world tainted by Donald Trump and Priti Patel .

Nearly half an hour remains and a chorus of “Come of You Blues” rings around the ground and then dwindles away. “Yellows, Yellows” shout the Fleetwood eighty-eight and I am impressed by their volume, which I can only attribute to a diet of Fisherman’s Friend lozenges for coughs and sore throats, which are manufactured by Lofthouse of Fleetwood and taste disgusting. My father was seemingly addicted to the things, although regrettably they couldn’t stop him spending the last ten years of his life mostly hitched up to an oxygen machine.

As the game descends into its final twenty minutes, Pat from Clacton shows me her purse full of ‘lucky’ charms, which she has collected from around the world, but it seems none of them works anymore although apparently some of them used to. She’s particularly fond of one from Vietnam , which is in the form of a masturbating monkey. Pat seemed surprised she hadn’t shown me him before, but I tell her I think I would have remembered.

I am more or less resigned to another defeat now and Pat from Clacton is too, but unlike on a Saturday she doesn’t even have a jacket potato to look forward to when she gets home, but, she tells me, she will have a Nespresso latte. The unhappiness of sections of the crowd is growing, chants of “We want Evans Out” can be heard and this time I think it is Marcus they mean and not Ched or ‘Evans the Song’. In the corner of the Sir Bobby Robson Stand five banners appear all bearing a word beginning with the letter U and then N. At first I wonder if Antonio Guterres is in the house but the banners read “Unambitious”, “Underfunded”, “Underpants”, “Underachieving” and “Unacceptable” although the middle one is a bit twisted so I might have got that wrong.

Somewhat inevitably, Ipswich do not score an equaliser and the game ends amongst much rancour and general displeasure. The atmosphere will later be described rather predictably as ‘toxic’, a word which used to be reserved for clouds of gas, but is now applied almost exclusively to the air we breathe at Portman Road. Mick and I stay to applaud the teams off, because, although I can’t speak for Mick , I didn’t not enjoy the game any more than I usually do when we lose, and I also have some time to kill before the next train home.

Ipswich Town 4 Burton Albion 1

February 17, 2020March 1, 2023 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

It’s been an unfortunate fortnight for the ‘Super Blues’ with three consecutive defeats to ‘promotion rivals’ followed by an anaesthetising goalless draw away to ‘relegation threatened’ Wimbledon. The three consecutive defeats were heralded somewhere, I can’t recall where, as being the first time Ipswich had lost three consecutive matches in the third division in sixty-four years, which sounds terrible until your brain engages and you realise that until this season Ipswich haven’t been in the third division at any time in the last sixty-four years and the club would have done well to lose matches consecutively or otherwise in a division in which it was not playing.

Inspired by the downturn in Town’s fortunes and the puerile whinging of alleged fans on social media, who seem unable to come to terms with their team not winning every game by several clear goals, I am looking forward to today’s fixture against the Albion of Burton a town from the top-drawer of provinciality which was famed for its beer brewing until it became associated with the name Coors. It is a suitably grey and wintry day for a meeting between two clubs struggling to find love and form. I am at times swept along by a buffeting wind as I walk to the railway station, which is deserted but for two other would-be passengers cowering from the gathering storm in the waiting room. The train is on time and quite full as if people have stayed on board rather than alight into the grim, blustery weather outside. Appearances can be deceptive however, and at Colchester most passengers disembark to be replaced by a handful of others sporting blue and white knitwear, although some of these unexpectedly get off at Manningtree suggesting that for them the lure of Brantham Athletic may be greater than that of Ipswich Town. Other passengers boarding at Colchester include screaming toddlers and a woman wearing huge quantities of an overpowering perfume; feeling sick from the smell and seeking peace and quiet I move to the other end of the railway carriage. My move is not wholly successful as behind me I now have a group of youths who take turns to make bleating noises after they see some sheep in a field.

Arrival in Ipswich is a blessed relief and the streets seem quiet, almost as if there is no match today; I imagine that perhaps I am the only person still going to the game, a version of Charlton Heston, the Omega Fan. Turning into Portman Road however, my fears prove groundless as all human life is here with people stood impassively by the turnstile blocks and operatives in day-glo jackets sheltering from the wind and nascent drizzle, whilst other early-arrivers patronise the junk-food vendors whose bright trailers almost look inviting on such a grisly afternoon. I walk on towards St Jude’s Tavern pausing only to admire the frontage of the ‘EU Supermarket’, which leads me to dream of a world in which both Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage lie dead in a ditch in a cold embrace.

Mick is already seated at a small table when I enter St Jude’s Tavern and he quickly treats me to a pint of Leigh-On Sea brewery’s Crowstone Dark IPA (£3.60), a tasty beer suitable apparently for vegans. We talk of Munich, Marseille, pensions, aortas, Nieupoort in Belgium, jazz festivals and buying football tickets on-line; Mick also gives me a Christmas present, which he had intermittently forgotten about until today when he fully remembered it. Two Burton Albion supporters sit on the next table and I wish them luck as they leave, although they seem more pessimistic than most Ipswich supporters and their pessimism seems well-founded as they step out into pouring rain. They head off to join the other 175 Burtonians who we will discover occupying the away supporters section in the Cobbold Stand today. The Crowstone Dark IPA has sadly run out, so before we depart I consume a pint of Mr Bee’s Sun Ray (£3.40) whilst Mick downs a Jameson’s whisky (£3.00).

Down Portman Road and onto the lower tier of the Sir Alf Ramsey stand, Mick and I edge past Pat from Clacton and take our seats just as the two teams emerge from the shiny polythene tunnel. The usual PA announcer would seem have been substituted with an over-excitable character whose delivery and unnecessary enthusiasm smack of even lower league football or a school sports day. Ever-present Phil who never misses a game has come prepared for the weather and is hidden beneath a large water-proof hood.

Burton kick-off towards the Sir Bobby Robson stand wearing primrose yellow with black sleeves. From the very start Ipswich look keen and within a couple of minutes Kayden Jackson breaks forward on the left and sends the ball across the front of the goal. Will Keane arrives with perfect timing to not hit the ball directly at the goal and consequently have his fractionally delayed shot blocked by a Burton defender when a goal had looked the more probable outcome. A collective groan of disappointment rises up from the stand tinged with a hint of resignation. Inevitably, Ipswich’s profligacy is swiftly punished and two minutes later Burton’s Jamie Murphy sweeps the ball casually beyond Town ‘keeper Thomas Holy having met minimal resistance from the Ipswich defence, which seems to have forgotten to post anyone on the right hand side. Ipswich are a bit unlucky but at the same time not very good, which doesn’t make for a winning combination. “Never mind” I tell Pat from Clacton “at least we’ve got plenty of time left to score some goals of our own”.

Behind me two blokes discuss Will Keane. “E’s quality wiv ve ball at ‘is feet” is the conclusion; one with which I think I more or less concur despite recent evidence to the contrary. The game proceeds with Ipswich squandering chances with abandon as little Alan Judge thrillingly and spectacularly kicks the ball against the cross bar, and Kayden Jackson and Will Keane just miss or have shots saved. Burton get forward every now and then also and the Ipswich defence doesn’t always look composed, “E ought to ‘ave stuck his foot froo ve ball” is the opinion of the expert behind me on one occasion as Burton win a corner. Meanwhile I admire the surfer dude look of Burton’s number four Ryan Edwards and their number two John Brayford; they both sport the sort of beards and unkempt hair that would stand them in good stead at an audition for Jesus Christ Superstar. Where is Ipswich’s midfield Messiah?

Despite the failure to score there is thankfully no sense of resentment amongst the crowd, Town are playing well enough and I detect a collective faith and belief that Town will score. At a bit before three-thirty with fine rain falling and occasionally blowing in beneath the roof of the stand that faith is rewarded as little Alan Judge’s shot from close range is deflected up high in to the goal. For some unexplained reason little Judgey then proceeds to take off one his pink boots and throw it across the pitch, whilst his team mates attempt to mob him. In some parts of the world shoe throwing is an insult, but it doesn’t appear that little Judgey has thrown his pink boot at any one in particular, although it did travel in the general direction of Paul Lambert and ‘the bench’. The smoothly shaven-headed referee Mr Breakspear speaks to little Judgey, but unlike the openly provocative act of taking your shirt off, which could result in expressing an unwelcome opinion on your vest, boot removal is apparently not a bookable offence, if indeed it is an offence at all in the western football world. Little Judgey could have written something on his sock mind, although perhaps not much as I doubt his feet are very big.

Half-time is now on the murky horizon and Thomas Holy boots the ball the length of the pitch; Kayden Jackson reacts quickest to latch on to it and then send it past Burton’s all-green attired ‘keeper Kieran O’Hara, who ,with a bit of make-up and some tights might have a side line advertising tins of sweetcorn. Not a goal of great beauty or technical difficulty and barely one that could be described as being from ‘open play’, but certainly one of outstanding simplicity and one which leaves us all happy when the time comes to visit the facilities beneath the stand after the Kojak look-alike blows for half-time.

After urinating and chatting to Ray, but not at the same time, I am ready for the second half and so it seems are Ipswich as with no more than six minutes played Kayden Jackson has scored again, this time with his head. Mystifyingly this third goal is the cue for a tribute to Harry Belafonte and Boney M from the Sir Bobby Robson stand, although the lyrics of Mary’s Boy Child are altered a little to celebrate ‘The Norwich’ running away and eternal fighting rather than the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Not much more than ten minutes later and incredibly Ipswich score for a fourth time with little Alan Judge’s shot dribbling into the goal. Ipswich goals are like buses, none for ages then four come at once.

There is still half an hour to go and with the game as good as won Pat from Clacton tells me about how much she enjoyed the ‘Sounds of the 70’s Live’ show at the Princes Theatre in Clacton featuring Johnny Walker and how she is looking forward to The Roy Orbison Story next week; Pat’s seen it before, but the bloke from Birmingham who sings is very good. The game today has been so good Pat hasn’t once thought about the jacket potato she is having for tea. The crowd of 19,922 is announced and Pat and I check who’s won the guess the crowd competition on the Clacton supporters bus; it’s a bloke Pat used to work with at Paxman’s Diesels in Colchester; we’re both disappointed that Woody the dog hasn’t won again.

As the game rolls on empty crisp packets blow across the pitch like tiny sparkling tumbleweeds beneath the beams of the floodlights, which shine out of the leaden sky above the Sir Bobby Robson Stand. Football matches on winter afternoons are beautiful occasions especially when you’re winning 4-1. On loan Josh Earl dashes up and down the left flank beneath his face mask, which ever-present Phil says make him look like the Phantom of the Opera and Luke Woolfenden’s newly bleached-blond hair gives a hint of ‘Scandi’ to the back three. Substitutions come and go and Pat from Clacton hopes that Cole Skuse scores so that she can win the competition for last goalscorer; the chances are against it seeing as Skuse has previously scored just twice in 267 appearances for Town, but Pat has been on a winning streak this week, having already ‘scooped’ £4 playing whist, which has gone towards her cruise fund, so we have high hopes.

As with all the best things in life, the game is soon over and with no more goals scored Pat from Clacton’s cruise fund is temporarily becalmed, but it’s been a blast and the weather has not been as bad as expected, being just grey enough to add a dramatic backdrop but nothing more. Interestingly it’s the first time Town have won a third division game 4-1 since the last time they did it.