It’s a beautiful walk to the railway station today. Meteorologically speaking winter began only yesterday, but today is a fine winter’s day, cold, bright and clear with a pale blue sky. Across the bare, brown, damp fields seagulls float on the gentlest breeze and in the distance a sparrowhawk hovers, there is a smudge of blue-grey cloud on the horizon.
At the railway station I meet up with a friend whose partner’s parents had, for his birthday, bought him a ‘bundle’ of six tickets for matches at Portman Road between now and the end of the season. Today’s match is the first of ‘the bundle’. A good few people board the train to Ipswich and some of them might even be going to the match like us. It’s still bright and clear as the train pulls into Ipswich pleasingly ahead of schedule. The plaza in front of the station makes for an attractive welcome to Ipswich and crossing the bridge over the river towards the town the cold and clear blue sky lend the town a feel of Scandinavia, I imagine we’re off to watch Malmo FF or GIF Sundsvall or perhaps this is an unseen episode of The Bridge.
In Portman Road it’s not yet one-thirty, a line of blokes in hi-vis jackets, one of them mysteriously manoeuvring a wheelie bin, insert metal bollards to close the road off from traffic.
Already some people are here waiting for the turnstiles to open, a woman has parked her shopping back in one entrance as if to reserve her place at the head of any possible queue. Seemingly oblivious of his hi-vis coat, a steward inside the ground looks like he is
trying to hide behind the metal gates. The search dog is here searching for whatever it is that ‘the authorities’ fear people might smuggle into a mid-table, second division football fixture. There is a cameraman filming people who are just standing about, waiting. 
My accomplice heads for the ticket office to ‘upgrade’ his tickets. Because his partner’s father is over 65 the bundle of tickets he bought turn out to be for an over 65 too, but my accomplice, who I will call Roly because I always liked that poodle in Eastenders and it is his name, is only forty. Predictably upgrading the tickets is not simple and ‘the system’ won’t allow it today. A complimentary ticket is issued for today’s game but the guy in the ticket office takes the other five tickets and tells Roly to phone on Monday to sort it out. Like a fool Roly agrees to this and doesn’t even get a receipt. Roly has a bad feeling about this.
St Jude’s Tavern is host to the usual selection of ageing Town supporters and some slightly younger ones. We drink pints of today’s Match Day Special, which is Cliff Quay Anchor bitter (£2.00 a pint) and then my accomplice has another pint of Anchor, whilst I have a pint of Shortts Farm Skiffle (£3.40). Roly gives me a tenner he has owed me since the end of October, I feel guilty for having had to remind him about it. Because I am older than him I feel somehow like I’ve bullied him out his school dinner money. We discuss Ipswich Town and reminisce about fat players and their regrettable absence from modern professional football. Roly suggests that Ipswich’s last fat player was Ryan Stevenson, who in 2012 was signed from Hearts of Midlothian, played just eleven times, but scored the goal of the season. I had forgotten all about him, but then I’m not some sort of football nerd.
We head off to Portman Road a little bit earlier than I would usually depart because Roly wishes to buy a burger and in the car park behind the Sir Bobby Robson stand he does. His cheeseburger costs £4.00 and whilst he stands and folds it into his face I tell him of the food stand behind the Tribune Nord at Nice where the food is prepared by a short order cook and the burgers come with salad.
Back in Portman Road a man buys a programme from one of the kiosks which looks like it would make a good Tardis. There are short queues at the turnstiles. A group of Nottingham Forest fans are having their picture taken in front of the statue of Sir Bobby Robson; I like to see away fans enjoying their day out and it’s satisfying to think that Ipswich has something people want to be photographed in front of. Inside the ground a man in a red coat sells Golden Goal tickets almost apologetically and people queue for last minute ‘match essentials’.
Bored with my usual seat and the quiet brooding people who populate the seats around it, today I decide once again to sit next to the man called Phil who never misses a game. Phil’s seat is near the front of the stand in a row, which apart from Phil and a couple at the far end is completely empty. Phil has a bit of a cough today and is wrapped up well against the chill of the afternoon. The view of the intricacies of the match isn’t the best from here but the stands tower above us and there is a sense of occasion and almost of being a part of it. Bluey the mascot walks past just a few feet away pitchside, and if I
were to shout abuse at him he would probably hear me, but of course I don’t, even though he looks more like a baby’s soft toy than a mascot to rally the people of Ipswich into raucous support of their team.
After the usual pleasantries, Nottingham kick-off the match. The scene looks like a basic Subbuteo set with one team in red and one in blue; sitting almost behind the Nottingham Forest goal I wish I could move their goalkeeper with a long stick. It’s a full fifty seconds before Ipswich get a touch of the ball, but when they do have it they make much more efficient use of it than Nottingham and after only seven minutes Ipswich score. Formerly beloved of Ipswich supporters for his goal scoring prowess, 34 year old Daryl Murphy very kindly commits a foul and the free-kick ultimately results in the satisfyingly alliterative but on-loan Callum Connolly scoring.
Twenty minutes pass and it’s not a bad game, probably because Ipswich are winning, but as ever the crowd aren’t really in celebratory mood. There are a few muffled chants rolling down the pitch from the lower tier of the stand formerly known as the North Stand but the majority are quiet. The 1,224 Nottingham Forest fans aren’t much noisier and I wonder if this a symptom of clubs whose best days were thirty five years ago, have the supporters just lost heart in the intervening years?
Nottingham Forest dominate possession and nearly score and then at about half past three they do score, from a precisely flighted free-kick by the wooden sounding Kieran Dowell; the beautiful game lives in its careful geometry. Eight minutes later and there is more beauty as Ipswich move the ball swiftly from one end of the field to the other and into the Nottingham goal off the head of Dominic Iorfa. In the outfall from the goal a steward approaches me and asks me to stop taking photographs, I ask why and he tells me I am not allowed to, which seems odd given all the mobile phones people are taking pictures with all around the ground. Phil is surprised, he thought the steward would caution me for being too noisy; I have been blowing a sort of sound-a-like klaxon which I bought last May from the club shop of Racing Club Lens in France. Feeling like a plane spotter in North Korea and pondering over the location of the local Gulag I then witness another beautiful goal as Nottingham equalise for a second time, this time with a volley from an acute angle by a man whose name sounds like that of an erstwhile pub chain spoken in a West Midlands accent, Tyler Walker.
Half-time soon follows and I speak with the steward and his supervisor. Photography in Premier League, Football League and Scottish League grounds is restricted to licence holders who pay for the rights to it, so in theory individuals are not permitted to take photographs with their mobile phones unless licenced, but obviously they do. The supervisor admitted that the club would not stop people taking photos with mobile phones; I was using a camera with an automatic zoom lens. Apparently Norwich City stop people taking pictures with mobile phones; it’s nice to know that Norwich City are even more mean-spirited and small-minded than Ipswich. This is all about the protection of intellectual property, but you have to ask where is the harm in individuals taking photographs at a football match. Football is supposedly the people’s game; the football authorities in their greed are simply selling us back our own game; it’s a very good reason to not watch the professional leagues at all. The revolution will not be televised.
Darkness falls and although the floodlights have been on since kick-off their glow is now visible against the night sky. Ipswich score only eight minutes into the new half as Martyn Waghorn robs a Nottingham defender and strikes the ball across the goalkeeper into the net and fourteen minutes later the Nottingham defence takes on the properties of the lace for which the city was once known and through one of the holes Bersant Celina scores from close range. Nottingham Forest do not score. Phil and I discuss whether the Nottingham Forest number 24 David Vaughan is Archie Gemmill, mainly because he has a receding hairline. The crowd make a little noise intermittently, but not much and despite a late rattling of the Ipswich cross bar by a Daryl Murphy header, which is then cleared off the goal line, it’s a fairly comfortable win for Ipswich.
The sun is long gone from the winter sky and it’s now quite cold as referee, Darren Bond, blows his whistle for the final time and having applauded the team sixteen thousand, eight hundred and eight of us disperse into the December night. It’s been a lovely winter’s day, the team I support has won, I’ve seen six beautiful goals, but I cannot be happy.
It takes me a few seconds to twig that this is an attempt at a pun based on the song title “Twist and Shout”. Within seconds I come up with my own vastly superior choice of pun title: “Tristan’s Handy”, which actually means something, clearly relates to the player’s name and raises the tone by referencing a work of Irish literature, with which Mick McCarthy as former manager of the Eire national team will surely be familiar (that’s Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne…just in case).
who have the appearance of a Last of the Summer Wine tribute act. Inside the ground the public address system is playing Bon Jovi, I head for the toilet to drain my bladder, but there is no escape from the dreadful, anthemic, 1980’s hair-rock, which is possibly being fed in through the cistern. Now in my seat I feel doubly relieved as the strains of Bon Jovi recede, the teams enter the field to a particularly bloated rendition of ‘My Way’ (Bobby Robson’s favourite song apparently) and it’s time for the game to begin; it is two minutes past three, we’re late.
The Fulham goalkeeper wanders about to keep awake and in the manner of a grizzly bear, rubs his back on the pole that secures the goal net; he is wearing a vivid all red kit the colour of a nationalised, 1970’s Eastern Counties bus.
is a bit confusing as it sounds as if there are two teams, ordinary common or garden Fulham FC and then another team called Super Fulham FC. Unimpressed by such boastfulnesss, Ipswich manage their first shot on target. Then, for a second time in the space of a few minutes the Fulham physio is called on to attend to their evidently rather needy number 10 after he blocks a shot Ipswich’s from Martyn Wagstaff (Waggy).
when Amiens played Gazelec Ajaccio in French Ligue 2. Happily Aboubakar doesn’t score today and in fact he doesn’t look very good.
advertising The 
but with a beady eye on the burger van adjacent to him and any discarded junk food; it’s a good place for a scavenger to hang out. On the Cobbold Stand the club crest and the union flag fly together in the strong breeze and in the street below a
Brentford fan is either playing aeroplanes or is being frisked as he queues to enter the ground. Inside the ground the lack of custom at the “matchday essentials” kiosk suggests it’s not really selling essentials at all.
we do not see it re-illuminated all afternoon. The Brentford fans chant “Come on Brentford, Come on Brentford” which seems a bit superfluous because their team are doing fine, they just haven’t scored, and it seems that that sentence fragment is missing the word ‘yet’ on the end.
Do many football supporters often require the services of a jack-up barge specialist? Is this a good place to advertise? What is a jack-up barge? I conclude that there are many things in this world of which I have no understanding. God bless Google and their tax dodging ways, they will explain.
makes me laugh out loud as I recall his Texan accent from a trailer I saw for his new BT TV epic serial; but with his bushy grey beard he just looks a bit of a twat too.
This bus soon fills up and then we’re off and then we’re there; it’s not far. A young lad in the seat behind me is incredulous as the bus draws up outside the stadium and he sees the car park and crowds beyond. “Cor! That’s really good for League Two” he says with the enthusiasm of youth. “Yeah, but it’s all glory hunters today innit” replies his slightly older and more worldly wise friend and indeed the older boy is right. Having struggled by on gates on three thousand for most of the season , there are more than twice as many here today (6,565 is the official figure) as Colchester have a chance of making the play-offs, along with about half the other teams in the division.
four long queues into the South Stand, standing behind a fat man with a very growly voice. At the back of the stand on the way from the bus stops a man in uniform with a little green Land Rover is recruiting for the Army. It seems a bit unfair to try and recruit from Col U fans who it seems are already an endangered species without actively putting them in harm’s way. I don’t suppose we will be hearing “Billy don’t be a hero” played over the public address system this evening.
people unfamiliar with the etiquette that demands you sound off at football. It’s not a bad game though and Col U are looking the better team and with a half hour gone that provokes one spectator, presumably anxious about a play-off place and therefore frustrated that the U’s haven’t scored yet, to break ranks and shout critically “we’re going backwards”. In England the concept of just keeping possession of the ball is still one that a lot of people struggle with.
“Layer Road” is all of a quiver now and a few people are on their feet whilst the stewards gather at one end of the stand to quell any over-excitement. 
Fifteen minutes later and the voice from the public address system still sounds unfeasibly excited as he announces that the fourth official has indicated there will be at least 2 minutes of added on time to be played before it’s time for a cuppa.
it’s good to know that we’re not supporting that dreadful Le Pen woman in tomorrow’s French presidential election.
leaving a row of empty seats in front of me along with a pile of empty sweet wrappers but taking with them the promise of tooth decay, obesity and type two diabetes.
and souvenir seller aren’t busy and a car park attendant
sits down on the job. Up round the bend in St Jude’s Tavern the usual football Saturday clientele are there, mostly world weary , white haired and balding, one of them shouts “McCarthy Out” as he gets up to go. After two pints of very tasty Earl Soham Victoria Bitter (£3.20 a pint) and a chat with a friend called Mick which covers football, politics, street-drinkers and getting old, I get up and go too. The season finale beckons like a bin bag that must be put out for the morning refuse collection.
two policeman look on; I like to think they have individually welcomed everyone on that bus to Ipswich and wished them a pleasant stay. Northern voices chant about going somewhere and not knowing or caring how they are going to get there; the somewhere it transpires is the Premier League. They should be careful what they wish for. Three Star Wars storm troopers walk past.
two men with buckets and mops walk along the front of the stand towards a sign that says Exit & Toilets. Sheffield press the Ipswich goal in the manner of the wolf in the story of the the Three Little Pigs and cause few problems for the Ipswich defence and fewer for goalkeeper Bartosz Bialkowski. Ipswich in turn cause even fewer problems for the Wednesday defence and goalkeeper, but aren’t playing too badly in the context of the season as a whole. A beach ball that looks like an oversized football 
almost makes it onto the pitch, but a steward takes up the challenge of chasing it along the pitchside and then having caught it squeezing it between himself and the perimeter wall to deflate it. It takes 25 minutes for the Ipswich drums in the Sir Bobby Robson Stand to strike up, but they could only have been passing through as they soon stop and are not heard again. The Wednesday fans are enjoying themselves indulging in some schadenfreude as to Joy Division’s tune they sing “Leeds, Leeds are falling apart, again”. At about twenty to four Ipswich’s Cole Skuse, who will be played by George Clooney in the film of the season, is cautioned for some arm grabbing by referee Mr Coote whose surname makes up a fine threesome with his two lugubrious sounding assistants Mr Lugg and Mr Blunden.
in his opening paragraph by saying “I am not going to repeat the reasons or mitigating circumstances for a disappointing season”. Oh go on ‘Milney’, please do. Elsewhere good luck is wished to the club’s PR manager Jade Cole, who is departing Portman Road after ten years. From her picture she looks like she must have been about twelve when she got the job. Did she jump or was she 
pushed? She didn’t do much of a job with that 500% season ticket price rise for the Under 11’s or the overnight change in the qualifying age for concessions from 60 to 65 did she? But with policies like that may be her position had become untenable? Doing PR for President Assad might be easier.
beer on one landing on the stairs in the Sir Alf Ramsey Stand and the instruction that alcoholic drinks are not allowed in view of the pitch
on the next is symbolic of the sense of promise followed by disappointment that prevails at Portman Road. Just to compound that, as the match ends and as the half-hearted Suffolk boos are booed the stadium announcer tells us that the Town players will come back out from the dressing room to do an end of season lap of honour around the ground, but then adds that of course it is an offence punishable by death for supporters to enter onto the pitch. Thinking back, he may not have mentioned punishment by death, but nevertheless it’s as if those who run Ipswich Town can’t just concentrate on the positive things, they have to put you in your place as well; miserable bastards, sucking the life and the love from the game.
trippingovertheball 