I didn’t think I would be, but I am a bit excited at the prospect of Ipswich Town’s first game of the season. It’s the 47th first day of the season since I started watching Town in 1971, so I should be getting over it by now, but it seems I’m not; despite the misery of last season, despite the fact that I despise the players because they are ridiculously over-paid and choose to spend that money on ostentatious Range Rovers, tattoos and dodgy haircuts; despite the fact that Ipswich Town is a miserable club which has forbidden me to even bang a tambourine in support of the team; despite the fact that the atmosphere in Portman Road is funereal most of the time and despite the fact that my season ticket costs over £400. What the heck’s the matter with me?
So, it is in a confused state of mind that I board the 12:57 train for Ipswich. But that’s the human condition. Across the carriage a tanned man with piercing blue eyes, dressed from head to toe in hi-vis clothing shouts into his mobile phone “Hello….. hello?….can you hear me?” Pause. “I’m now on it now”. I and I imagine everyone else in the carriage assumes he means he is on the train, rather than on a rocking horse or night boat to Cairo; he doesn’t sound like he’s lying, but you never know. Directly opposite me sits a younger man with a beard, he’s wearing a back to front baseball hat, sunglasses, deck shoes and shorts which show off his pale, hairless, skinny legs. He is listening to his phone through earphones. I wouldn’t want to sit on a train looking like that, so I don’t; I am a free man.
It was a sunny day when I left home, but a tumble of dark clouds are rolling across the sky and now, emerging from the railway tunnel into Ipswich station the sky is battleship grey and about to open fire. I hurry towards the St Jude’s pub with my umbrella at the ready, not pausing to admire the banners
on the lamp posts proclaiming the partnership of Ipswich Borough Council and Ipswich Town Football Club, which make a grand addition to the streetscape. What better way to promote the town than through pride in its football club. I walk up Portman Road which the police appear to have blockaded at one end with a big white truck, probably because they can.
In the pub, the usual crowd of pre-match drinkers is there and I drink a pint of Springhead Brewery’s ‘A touch o’ the black stuff’ (£3.40) and a pint of ‘Old Growler’ (£3.60). I meet a couple there who aren’t going to the game however; he has better things to do and she loathes football, which two reasons are probably why most people don’t go. We discuss plum trees, retirement and living in France. By the time we are finished drinking and talking it is now raining heavily, so on the walk back to the ground, despite employing my umbrella, I get wet trousers. It crosses my mind that this grim, grey, soggy and oppressive afternoon might be a portent of the season to come for Ipswich Town. One has such irrational thoughts on the opening day of the season.
Inside the ground with a drained bladder I take my seat and the game begins.
- Welcome to Portman Road
There are some 2,000 Birmingham City supporters here today which is appropriate because it is Birmingham City who are the visiting team.
- Birmingham City supporters queueing in the rain
Inevitably it is they who are providing that ‘atmosphere’ supposedly redolent of British football grounds. They sing that they have Harry Redknapp, which doesn’t seem like much to be proud of given that he managed Portsmouth to virtual extinction and both Southampton and Bournemouth went bust after he left. At Portsmouth it is reported he received 10% of transfer fees and when this dropped to 5%, money amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds was deposited in a bank account in Monaco in the name of his pet dog. Redknapp was found not guilty of tax evasion. Tellingly perhaps, Redknapp is quoted in the programme as saying that if he gets the tools he will do a good job;
by tools it seems likely he means cash for transfers. He doesn’t sound like he’d want to manage Ipswich and I’m not sorry. Having celebrated their team’s manager, to the tune of ‘Roll out the barrel’ the Brummies regale us with a heartfelt rendition of another of their own compositions, ‘Shit on The Villa’; which unfortunately for me conjures a picture in my mind of blokes squatting beneath the street lamps of the Aston Expressway with their trousers round their ankles, Andrex at the ready.
Five minutes into the match and the rain stops, the clouds clear and the sun is now shining, the pitch glows an unnatural, almost luminous green. Some football breaks out. Town have a shot on goal and the locals applaud. “We forgot, We forgot, We forgot the you were here” chants the Brummies’ male voice choir, which suggests a worrying level of short term memory loss, although that might be explained by excessive pre-match alcohol intake in the Station Hotel where notices in the windows announce “Away Fans Only”.
A bit before 3.30 pm there is a break in play as a recumbent Jordan Spence receives succour from the physio. It’s time for drinks all round on the pitch whilst the ever vocal visitors from Birmingham break into a turgid rendition of “Keep right on to the end of the road” showing their continued love for music hall in this worrying age of drum n bass and Ed Sheeran. Happily Mr Spence recovers, although he continues to wear a pair of sickly green boots. The programme today contains an article about Town’s Jordan Spence entitled “Spence Force”;
a title which, being a play on the phrase “Spent Force”, doesn’t seem at all complimentary, as if saying his best days are gone. Someone really needs to tell programme editors that just because something is a pun or play on words doesn’t necessarily make it appropriate as a headline. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to future articles about Luke Chambers, Grant Ward, Cole Skuse and Teddy Bishop entitled “Torture Chambers”, “Ward of Court”, “Poor ex-Skuse” and “Bash the Bishop”.
It’s been a fairly dull first half and the silhouetted girders of the Cobbold stand roof are as beautiful as any football we’ve seen. Ipswich are playing neatly enough but not looking like scoring, despite a corner count of four to nil, and it almost seems sarcastic when a chant of ”Ipswich, Ipswich” emanates from the lower tier of the North Stand. But to their credit the home crowd is showing patience and understanding as they applaud an over-hit pass that Freddie Sears quickly sees he should give up on as soon as he starts to give chase. There is more applause as Grant Ward finishes an embryonic one-two pass and move with Dominic Iorfa by sending the ball into touch. Is this applause support or sympathy? That opening day optimism is a powerful emotion that won’t be put down.
There are only five minutes to go until half-time and following a corner, Town’s England U19 starlet Andre Dozzell slips to the ground as he turns away from the goal. It is immediately apparent he has hurt himself and the Birmingham goalkeeper David Stockdale admirably goes over to ’the boy’ Dozzell to reassure him and calls the referee to stop the game and let the physio on. Quickly the first aid crew attend and Town’s electric buggy
glides across the turf bearing a stretcher; “What the fucking hell is that” sing those musical Brummies denying any apparent knowledge of the existence of golf carts or milk floats. Feigning ignorance of such things can only serve to reinforce the impression that the West Midlands accent creates for the rest of the population of the UK that Brummies are thick bastards, whether they are or not.
The first aid team give Dozzell oxygen to alleviate shock and pain and he has to be taken from the pitch on the electric cart, but to generous applause from all around the ground, suggesting that not all the Brummies are as thick as they are pretending to be. Half-time arrives and I seek respite under the stand with the latest scores and a Traidcraft chewy cereal bar that I brought with me because Ipswich Town haven’t yet shown any inclination to provide ethically sourced snacks and refreshments. I meet a former work colleague under the stand whose wife is queuing on his behalf for coffee, she’s not a football fan and I get the impression she is here under duress, so she probably hopes she’ll miss that start of the second half.
I have a quick look through the programme hoping for something bold and original for the new season, but the layout and design is boring and offers nothing more than a sort of menu across the top of the page to make it look like it’s on a website. But it’s not on a website, it’s a paper publication. There are thick glossy pages and lots of them, but like at every other professional club it’s full of the usual platitudinous pap; there’s not even a victory for style over content this season it seems.
The second half begins and Ipswich look more positive than they did in the first and so it proves, and with just five minutes gone a low cross from Jonas Knudsen is passed into the Birmingham goal by debutant Joe Garner. Oh how I cheered and clapped and acted like a consummate fool! That misunderstood feeling of excitement, that optimism has been rewarded.
From now on Ipswich are the better team and do not look like they are going to lose. Birmingham win a few corners near the end but they have little composure or control. In the second half I take more interest in the football than I did in the first and don’t look around the ground so much, although there is a small disturbance off to my right and much masturbatory inspired gesticulating from the Brum fans towards persons unknown amongst the Town contingent. The stewards stare into the crowd trying to spot the culprits. At the end of the match this antagonism carries on with some Brummies coming into the Churchman’s stand looking to tolchock some Ipswich droogs. As a result the exit onto Portman Road is closed by police with a steward in enormous earphones
turning people back. There is much muttering and displeasure as everyone has to file through the players’ car park and leave via the practice pitch or the gates in Constantine Road. The one advantage
of this is that I get to pass the sign in the car park which thanks me for my visit, which is nice. Other exits from the stadium do not offer this courtesy, implying that if you’re one of the few who have driven to the stadium, probably in an unnecessarily large car which the club have let you park on the premises, then you’re much more welcome than if you are just one of the 18,000 who have had to cough up your hard earned cash to come in through the turnstile.
The first match of the season is over and those early clouds have rained pennies from heaven all over town; it’s been a good afternoon; the Town have won and not played too badly at all. It’s just one game admittedly, but it’s an early two fingers to those people who furiously didn’t renew their season tickets because the football was rubbish, but also an endorsement for those people who played nicely and applauded when well–intentioned passes went astray. For proper football supporters it’s not about winning, it’s about being there. Yeah, but we won too!
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 