Oddly on the way I didn't see any fellow travelling 'Orns. They were at the ground. Hundreds of them. But on my journey from Buckinghamshire to Suffolk I did not see one scarf, flag, or car sticker travelling in the same direction as me. It was as if I was driving in some sort of twilight zone. I got so concerned that I stopped to check the ticket to ensure I'd got the right time and day and then put on 5Live to make sure the game hadn't been postponed due to some torrential downpour solely affecting East Anglia.
Talking of which, Ian Holloway mostly defintely wins the award for the worst pundit ever heard on radio. His insights into Portsmouth Everton mainly involved the hairstyles of the players and anecdotes about his wife. He was awful. I have a feeling he'll go the same way as Alan Pardew because he sounded like he could quite easily say something that might be acceptable in the dressing room but not in front of the mic. One can only hope.
If you are planning to go to Portman Road my advice would be leave early, and then a bit earlier still. The traffic queues approaching the ground start before you've even got to the town. As always, once you can see the ground, there are hundreds of parking spaces available, but only if you are shopping in the adjoining retail outlets. In the end I parked a couple of miles away, half over a yellow line and luckily got away with it.
The approach to Portman Road is one of the nicer I've been to. A bit like Villa Park it sits on the side of a park which prior to kick off was full of kids playing football. I can't think of anything more appropriate, or more likely to really give kids the football bug then allowing them to actually play the game before and after they've seen the real thing. But Ipswich go one further and have a training pitch bolted onto the side of the main stand, where they appear to run coaching sessions before kick-off. A quite brilliant idea.
It was a nice idea too to commission statues of Sirs Alf Ramsey and Bobby Robson outside the ground. Alas, the sculptor got muddled half way through doing Sir Bobby's face and has given him a very Rodney Marsh-esque expression which I can never recall seeing on the former England manager.
Portman Road is an old fashioned ground and we were in one of the most old fashioned bits. A stand a bit like our East one that was impossible to succesfully navigate. You felt like you could easily end up somewhere you weren't meant to. I loved it. True, we were very squashed in but felt close to the pitch even though we were in the upper tier and our side on position provided a good view. The Ipswich fans were so passive they might have been supporting the Tibetan National side. Only a small group of about 4 tweenagers tried to out chant us and even then the police went and had a word with them to restore calm. The Football Grounds Guide page about Ipswich did mention that the police presence tended to be over the top and so it proved with four officers watching over our section of the ground for the entire game.
For a nil-nil the game was extremely entertaining. End to end stuff with Ipswich probably just shading the amount of chances on goal. As ever we were very good in possession but frustratingly tried to be a bit too clever every time we attacked. Don Cowie, Priskin and even Tommy Smith seemed to favour holding the ball up even when we appeared to be facing fewer defenders than we had attackers.
The defence, for a change, took the plaudits in this game. Mariappa was outstanding both when playing on the right and after DeMerit went off and he covered in the centre. Scott Loach had his best game for a long while making some stunning saves, especially in the second half when a few times Ipswich looked like they were one on one with him. I was just waiting for the roar (if indeed the Portman Road faithful do manage a roar when their team scores) but Loach flung himself around the area to deny them.
It was a relief we rode out the final four minutes without conceding a penalty. The referee had an okay game, despite looking like Neil Warnock from a distance. He was slightly too lenient with the yellow card but was one of the better ones.
All in all a good afternoon out. Apart from the driving hassles Ipswich is definitely an away day to be recommended. Shame we didn't sneak all three points, but at least we got one and maintain our six point gap over the relegation places. With just seven games to go, and a game in hand over most of the bottom six I'm beginning to think we'll be okay.
