As usual there was the “to renew or not renew” debate when the season ticket forms dropped through the letterbox in March, entertainment and expectation wise it had been a poor season, but in the end we decided to move from the upper tier to the lower tier of the North Stand (sorry Sir Bobby) and in the process save almost £100 each on our season tickets. We exchanged our seats and had a trial run at the Middlesbrough game before we committed to the move, the atmosphere down there is a lot more lively, more like an away game and you get to sit down at half-time!
After a week of rioting in England which led to lot’s of games being postponed including the mid-week friendly international v Holland at Wembley and todays Tottenham v Everton match it was good to have a game to watch.
We went down to the game with Kevin, who used to sit with me and the boys in the North stand upper during the Burley/Royal era, but now due to an illness he has to sit in the disabled area in the lower North with his carer Tracey (aka his wife!!).
It was like going back to school on the first day of term after the summer holidays, lots of maintenance done around the place including all the floors and the yellow lines marking the stairs being re-painted. To make it complete there were notices posted around the place from the headmistress, sorry I meant “The Chair” of the Ipswich Town Supporters Club advising a minority group of supporters to “either grow up or stay away” , I bet she’s a bundle of fun!! Kev however has lost none of his sense of humour and agreed to have his picture taken with “Bluey” before the kick-off which made us all laugh!
We found our new seats and exchanged a few hellos and hand shakes with the people around us. The talk before kick-off apart from Liz’s comments was about the lack of a bookie’s (Ladbrokes pulling out at short notice due to a lack of profits!). One of the blokes near to us decided to open a book on the size of the crowd at a £1 a go which Sharon duly took part in, when she gave her guesstimate of 18,975 she was politely asked if she could name them all as it was to the nearest 100! (The gate was actually 18,116 so no money came her way).
On the pitch it was back to earth with a bang at Portman Road today, after our winning start at Bristol (we’ll ignore the mid-week 2-1 loss at home to Northampton in the Carling Cup where PJ made nine changes and that I didn’t bother to go to!). How did we lose that one? After a really positive first half where we created lots of chances the team just didn’t turn up for the second half and were punished by Matty Fryatt’s solo goal, I had predicted a 2-0 win for Town.
Let’s hope that we get the right response from the team in Tuesday night’s game versus newly promoted Southampton who have had two wins so far and look like formidable opponents.
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