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…….
