All For The Love Of Town by Karl Fuller

On what would have fittingly been his 79th birthday yesterday, Town notched up a fourth successive victory and in the main, put in a performance that would have been met approvingly by the late, great Sir Bobby Robson.

True, Paul Jewell’s men had to ride their luck a little, particularly early doors and most notably when Arran Lee-Barrett was lucky to escape a red card, but then again, it is fair to say that these kind of decisions against us have far outweighed those for us this season and in the end, few could argue with the result.

And so we are coming to the end of a cluster of games against West Ham, Coventry, Portsmouth, Middlesbrough, Cardiff and Brighton for the second time this season that has so far seen us yield twenty-six points out of a possible thirty from these games.  When you consider that we have taken just fourteen points from the other sixty-three in the other twenty-one games played, it is a shame we cannot play just these six sides all season – far nicer than having to play Forest, Watford and Reading for example, that’s for sure!

But there are of course seventeen other sides to play twice and here is where our downfall has occurred this season and put us in the position we currently find ourselves in, the position of sixteenth place and on forty points.

Eleven points off the play-offs, twelve points off the relegation zone.  Now ask yourself this.  Overall this season, would you have taken where we are at this stage had this been offered at the beginning of the season?  Not many of us would have I feel and those that have not been happy along the way have been dubbed as ‘PJ Outers’.

The one criticsim I have following yesterday’s win over Cardiff was the question being bandied as to ‘where are the PJ outers now?’

To be fair to these ‘outers’, they were only concerned about our great club, how it seemed to be in decline and wanted a change for the better.  Now things are seemingly on the up, it’s not fair to try and single them out for voicing their concerns before the last four games and I’m sure many of them are now happier with the way things are going – for now.

It’s all about differing opinions is supporting your club.  But ultimately, it’s for the same wish that is to have ITFC heading for better times and maybe, just maybe, the first steps towards these times have been trodden over the past four games.

We know there is a very long way to go, with or without Paul Jewell.  But my support, your support, my opinions your opinions, are all for the love of Town. And no doubt, so are those of the so-called ‘PJ Outers’ – some of which are passionate fans, some indeed are life-long fans and probably longer so than those dissing them.  So they voiced their opinions – good luck to them  I say.  Whose to say they are wrong?

For now though, let’s enjoy the four out of four wins and hope for more to come between now and the end of the season.

The Positive ITFC News You’ve Been waiting For by Karl Fuller

After today’s 2-2 draw against Blackpool in what was unusually these days, an excellent Ipswich performance, Town fans could be forgiven for feeling just as down in the dumps this evening as they were after the Birmingham defeat in midweek.

Both games saw better performances and probably a situation where four points would have been just reward for our efforts rather than the solitary one point.  But for better defending and officiating, then we might just have been looking at more from these two games.

Each season, as a marker to where we are on course to be, I often look at the next opposition, see what we did against them last season and if it was just a draw then, or a defeat, then I am in hope that if we win this next game, we are better off than the same game last term and then we just have to match the same results thereafter to ensure we don’t become significantly worse off than last season to have high hopes of avoiding relegation.

Well my friends, looking at our 26 games so far this season and comparing them to last, we are only ONE point worse off than in the same matches against the same opposition last  season!

Now I hear you say that for example, QPR are not in our league this year but West Ham are and they were not last year.  So how do I accommodate these fixtures in my line of thought?

Simple!  As QPR finished top of our league last season and West Ham finished bottom of the Premier League, they swap places with each other and this theory continues from here looking at respective finishing places last season, Norwich become Blackpool (so we gained a point in this fixture today) and Swansea swap with Birmingham.

Similarly looking at those relegated from the Championship last May, and at those Promoted from League One, Scunthorpe were replaced by Brighton, Sheffield United by Southampton and Preston by Peterborough.

The following list of games played so far show how the two seasons compare overall:

Match	Opposition	H/A	2010-2011	2011-2012	Variance
1	Bristol City	A	3	3	0
2	Hull City	H	1	0	-1
3	Southampton	H	3	0	-3
4	Peterborough	A	0	0	0
5	Leeds	H	3	3	0
6	Blackpool	A	0	0	0
7	Coventry	H	0	3	3
8	Middlesbrough	A	3	1	-2
9	West Ham	A	0	3	3
10	Brighton	H	3	3	0
11	Cardiff	A	3	1	-2
12	Portsmouth	H	0	3	3
13	Crystal Palace	H	3	0	-3
14	Millwall	A	0	0	0
15	Doncaster	H	3	0	-3
16	Notts Forest	A	0	0	0
17	Reading	H	0	0	0
18	Burnley	A	3	0	-3
19	Watford	H	0	0	0
20	Barnsley	A	1	3	2
21	Derby	H	0	3	3
22	Leicester	A	0	1	1
23	Reading	A	0	0	0
24	Notts Forest	H	0	0	0
25	Birmingham	A	0	0	0
26	Blackpool	H	0	1	1
					-1

And so there we have it.  Last season we finished some 19 points off relegation and tonight, we are destined to be only one point worse than that come May.  That’s of course if we do no worse in each of the last 20 games this season than what we did in them last time and you have to admit, there was not much to shout about last season was there?  So even if there is not much to shout about again this time around, we’ll be ok.  Let’s just hope that there is not less to shout about.  Now how did we fare against Leeds last season……

 

Jewell – Should he stay or should he go now? by Karl Fuller

Following today’s woeful performance by my beloved Ipswich Town against Nottingham Forest, I sit and write this with perhaps the biggest conundrum in my 33 years as a Town fan and that is in respect of our Manager Paul Jewell.  Do I think we should sack him or back him?

Reading around the various social network sites and forums this evening, trying to digest the moods of many wonderful Town supporters, it is very difficult to know whether the majority are hoping for the metaphorical axe to fall on Jewell’s head, or wished for it to be kept a cut-above – for the time being.

Today’s game mirrored what has been witnessed before in the last few weeks at a very charitable Portman Road these days.  The same script pretty much written on each occasion, but the guise of the visiting team dressed in different colours and presented under a different name.

No disrespect meant, but Doncaster, Reading (that’s top five Reading), Watford and now Nottingham Forest have all visited the Road and all looked poor outfits on the day, but each have left with the full three points on offer.  The common theme here is that on each occasion, Town have looked marginally poorer!

Any number of words can be used to describe these four home defeats.  But the most disappointing of words that can only sum up today is ‘predictable’.

I had a Forest fan contact me on Twitter yesterday wishing me a Happy New Year  – after today, and I told him not to worry about the poor run his side were on with no goals since….well, since putting three past Ipswich some eight games ago.  I told him how charitable we would be as proved that last time our two sides met and sure enough, Forest only had to wait around five minutes to score their first goal in forever (I’m sure that’s how it probably felt to their fans).

The fact they went on to score three goals for only the second time this season (both times against Town) was largely down to us I have to say rather than through their own efforts.  But ultimately, you can’t say they didn’t deserve their win if only for the fact they defended better than us when needed to.

And when you saw the spine of our side containing Lee-Barrett, Delaney, Ingimarsson, Leadbitter and JET compared to say the one in our last home game that saw a victory against Derby which contained Lee-Barrett, Sonko, Collins, Andrews, Chopra and Scotland, you could forsee a sinking ship even before it set sail at 3.00pm.

Although to be fair, JET had one of his best games at Portman Road thus far this season, should we really have been going up against a struggling Forest side with just the one up top and one who has scored just two goals all season?  And no disrespect to Andy Drury, but why?  What must Josh Carson have been thinking about what he has to do to get a start?  Is it too much to ask to play with two out and out wingers at home in Carson and Lee Martin?

It makes you feel even more for Colin Healy who was substituted after twenty-odd minutes against Doncaster when Town were 2-0 down and yet today, all eleven were deemed good enough to continue after yet another sluggish start.

And so back to the debate that has filled our topics of conversation this evening.  Do we sack or back Jewell?  The only small dose of positivity that I can come up with tonight is that my gut feeling is to stick with him until the end of the season.  I do not want us to be a sacking club and I feel that just twenty-four games at Portman Road in his one-year tenure so far is not quite enough.

However, what is enough are the twelve defeats and conceding of forty-three goals in those twenty-four games and more importantly, the unacceptable performances.  It’s not like it’s the odd game here or there is it?  I haven’t even mentioned the home game against Norwich last year or away at Swansea or Leicester and the 7-0 drubbing at Peterborough this term.  But all these games thrown into the mix does not make a happy cocktail of results or performances and they need to stop now!

I am very worried about the next four months and fear a relegation battle.  Our over reliance on loan players is back-firing, we have leaned too heavily towards experience over-looking the need to inject youth and pace into the side and where is the next home-grown regular starter coming from?

Roy Keane is so often criticised for letting Jordan Rhodes go, but like Connor Wickham, Rhodes would have left eventually if his career had of developed at Ipswich as it has at Huddersfield.  For me, Keane’s big mistake was getting rid of Bryan Klug.

So I hear the reasons why many want Jewell out and also the questioning of Simon Clegg’s role at the club – one can be swayed either way on the ‘sack him or back him’ debate.  For now, this is Jewell’s team and his way of trying to sort out the mess that Keane made of his time here, whether Jewell’s way will succeed, only time will tell.  Its how much time Marcus Evans will allow that is the underlying factor of the whole debate.

ITFC Fans Memorable Match #3 SOUTHAMPTON HOME by Antony Humphries

Tuesday 16 February 1982 – Ipswich Town 5 v 2 Southampton – League Division One – Attendance: 20264

When my good friend and fellow town supporter Karl Fuller asked me on my thoughts of my most memorable Ipswich Town match, it gave me the chance to reminisce over 30 years of watching my beloved Ipswich Town.  In that time, I reckon I have seen it all -unbelievable highs and sinking to the depths of despair, Ipswich till I die.

With over thousands of games to choose from, which one would I pick?  The ’78 FA Cup win, those fantastic European nights under the floodlights at Portman Road in the early 80′s, promotion at the old Manor Ground, Oxford where I was caught jumping up and down on a dug out by the cameras of Anglia television, the lifelong dream of watching Town at the old Wembley Stadium in 2000 or even that epic semi-final second home leg against Bolton? 

Even one of the many away days at the grounds of the 92 clubs or the game when my son realised my childhood ambition of leading the team out on the hallowed turf of Portman Road as a matchday mascot in a home game against West Brom a couple of seasons back?

In the end, there was one game that just keeps coming back to me time and time again.  A game from a different generation and even though it was over 30 years ago, I remember it as if it was yesterday!  Thank you Sir Bobby and the boys of 81 for those amazing memories.  Forget your modern day Manchester United and Barcelona, what a football team that team of 81 was and it was a privilege and an honour to witness those times at a packed Portman Road.  The days when the atmosphere was at fever pitch.

The game was a night game on 16^th February 1982 against Southampton - the Alan Brazil show!  The game where he scored all 5 town goals, a night of wave after wave of non-stop attacking football.  The boys of 81 at their very best, doing what they did best - entertain - but typical Ipswich even missed a penalty.  This game said a lot about this side, the skill, ability, team spirit and camaraderie.  Brazil was fouled for the penalty even though it gave him the chance to score a double hat-trick, he gave the opportunity to the real star of the night Eric Gates, a game when little Eric was simply unplayable.

Yes this game was something very special in my years of supporting Ipswich Town from being a young lad standing on my milk crate barely able to see over the front wall of the old Churchmans end to my dream of being a father taking my own son to support our football club Ipswich Town.

 

ITFC Fans Memorable Match #2 WEST BROM HOME by Gary Witham

Saturday 6 November 1976 – Ipswich Town 7 v 0 West Bromwich Albion – League Division One – Attendance: 25373

My most memorable Town game was in 1976 and we had just bought Paul Mariner from Plymouth for £225k.  My hero was Kevin Beattie but after the performance, Mariner took his place. 

The atmosphere was fantastic along with the team performance.  Mariner certainly stole the show yet Trevor Whymark got 4 of the goals.  The game speaks for itself really it had everything and the celebrations after the game will live long in my memory.  Aahh,   those were the days….

ITFC Fans Memorable Match #1 HELSINGBORG AWAY by Karl Fuller

Thursday 1 November 2001 – Helsingborg IF 1 v 3 Ipswich Town – UEFA Cup 2nd Round 2nd Leg – Attendance: 10000

Over the years, I have watched literally hundreds and hundreds of games of football and there are of course many that stick in the memory for many good reasons.  This could be because your team has won a cup or a game that could have sealed a league title win or simply because you have beaten your arch rivals. 

Over a 33-year period, I have really enjoyed following teams at both professional and non-league level and the clubs I have followed have given me lots of pleasure but unfortunately, nowhere nears as much as pain!  When asked to think about ‘my most memorable game’ I kind of wanted to keep away from the obvious i.e. Ipswich winning the play-off final in 2000, Clacton winning the first division knockout cup the season before last or any beatings of local rivals. 

Football fans put in an enormous amount of time, effort and money to watch their side more often fail than succeed.  So I want to recall the time that required the most money, time and effort that I had to part with to see anIpswichgame and I will take you back to November 2001…..blimey, was it really ten years ago? 

By the turn of the Millennium, I had spent too long without seeing much success atIpswich.  I was too young to go on my own in the Sir Bobby Robson era and only went when the old man took me which needless to say was not the 1978 FA Cup Final or any of those great European nights and I wondered after 22 years at that time if I would see these sort of occasions in my lifetime. 

Then like buses, two of these occasions came along very quickly in football terms.  Having watched Ipswich win at Wembley, my next ambition was to see a European game at Portman Road and not only did this occur in the 2001/02 season as Ipswich returned to UEFA Cup action but I also found my self travelling abroad too for an away fixture (which incidentally was to be repeated the following season too).  The good days were back (not for long sadly). 

Having negotiated the first round safely, Ipswich were drawn against Helsingborgs IF of Sweden and I knew straight away how I fancied a trip to Scandinavia to see if Swedish girls were really as good as we were all led to believe (they were!) and so I found myself having to FLY to watch Ipswich which to this day still remains the only time I have done so. 

I left my house in Clacton at 4.00am to pick up my three companions to drive to Stansted and when we arrived in the terminal just over an hour later, the whole place was full ofIpswichfans and that was a great sight to behold.  We thought there would be the one check-in queue but there was about five as planes were taking fans to all sorts of places includingCopenhagen, Helsingborg, Gothenburg and our own destination,Malmo.  Now one of our travelling party had booked late and was on a separate flight toMalmoand we told him we were catching the ferry from Helsingborg to Helsingor inDenmarkand then catching a train toCopenhagento kill the many hours we had spare before the game. 

When we arrived in Helsingborg after a short coach trip from Malmo, we had a change of plan and looked for the nearest public house and the first Hotel nearby we saw had a flag hanging out the window which red ‘Clacton-on-Sea Tractor Boys’.  Fellow Clactonites were in town!  We soon found a superb place calledHarrysBarand the next seven hours in there flew with hundred ofIpswichfans happily drinking and singing and not a bit of trouble in sight.  The walls were adorned with flags from all over the place inEnglandas Town fans had travelled from far and wide. 

As for the game, after drawing the first-leg atPortman Roadand going behind in this game, it did not look good until Herman Hreidarsson equalised and Marcus Stewart scored twice.  A 17 year-old Darren Bent came off the bench for his debut and Town won 3-1.  After the game we had a mad dash back to our coach to take us back to Malmo airport – but we went to the wrong coach park (it was dark) and luckily just found our coach in time as it was leaving and when I finally arrived home back in Clacton, the clock still said 4.00am and I fell into bed thinking the batteries had packed up.  But then I knew it had taken me 24 hours exactly to set out to watch my team and to get home again. 

Finally, as for our friend, he still went through the rigmarole of going to Copenhagen to look for us in some pub, couldn’t find us, so delighted himself perusing the local porn shops.  Happy days indeed…….

Guest ITFC Bloggers invite

The Fuller Flavour is now inviting ‘Guest Bloggers’ to come aboard and write about your favourite Football Club.

It doesn’t matter what you want to write about as long as it is ITFC related.

Want to join in?  Let me know at fuller48@sky.com