You don’t have to be mad to support Ipswich, but it helps!
On Friday, I bought my train ticket to go to see Ipswich play Leicester at Portman Road, so if I had decided not to go because of the weather it would have cost me £23.55. I could afford that and knew that as I walked along the Ball’s Pond Road to Dalston Kingsland station, the weather didn’t look at all promising.
- Snow in the Ball’s Pond Road
I did get as far as the cash-point on the corner, but immediately returned home and then went to a pub where I had some lunch and some cider.
At about two, I thought that I’d go as snow often makes for good entertainment. So I retraced my steps to the station, bought a paper and then found that the station was closed. So I had to taske the alternative route, via Dalston Junction, Whitechapel and Mile End, where I got the Central Line for Stratford, to get the fast train to Ipswich.
The Olympic stadium looked good in the snow.
- Olympic Stadium in the Snow
But at least the Olympics are in August not the winter!
I actually fell asleep on the train to Ipswich, but that had nothing to do with missing the first twelve minutes or so of the match. The move has been tiring and I just needed the sleep. I completely missed the first goal and only heard the roar of the crowd as the second went in.
I just managed to see the third through the snow, but as most of the action for that goal happened just in front of me.
The second half was much of the same, as 16,728 souls peered through the snow.
Football in the Snow
But all thanks go to the referee, who resisted all efforts by the Leicester players to abandon the match. And of course to the ground staff, who kept the game going.
I had a wait at the station for a train back to London, but when it arrived it was new, warm and comfortable and arrived at its destination without gaining any more delays. It was then a tube to Liverpool Street and a taxi from the station to home. The only bad information I received on the journey home was from the charming policewoman at Liverpool Street, who said that the taxis weren’t running. But they were.
Interestingly, her colleague was in a uniform which said Politie, so he could have been Dutch. Are we that short of police these days that we have to borrow them from other countries? I made a mistake in not taking a picture.
But I suppose, when Ipswich fans talk over a drink in a few years time, I will be able so say “I was there!”
Isn’t life wonderful.
Bet of the Month
Ipswich is a close town and rumours get around quickly.
The football team has been terible recently and it is not the team I saw at Middlesbrough or Sheffield United.
So what has gone wrong?
I’ve heard several theories and although, I have my own, I’m keeping it quiet.
But let’s assume Roy Keane doesn’t last the week! Ipswich is an honourable man, and Marcus Evans, the owner, doesn’t seem to be a man to act in haste.
So what would happen if a new manager came in. There are after all some good candidates tending their gardens or walking the dog at the moment. There are a lot of good players at Ipswich Town and they probably need rearranging and remotivating more than anything else. So a good man-manager, like Bobby Robson or Alf Ramsey should have no problem creating a team, without too much trouble. The team is almost a bit like a car with contaminated fuel. And then there are the njured players, who should return soon.
So how about two bets if Keane goes; beat Chelsea in the FA Cup and make the playoffs. The odds for the latter are only five-to-one now, so perhaps the professionals have already helped themselves.
Spammer Responsible for a third of all Spam in Court
I like this story from The Register. Here’s the first few paragraphs.
A Russian who allegedly at one time ran a network of compromised machines responsible for a third of global spam appeared in federal court in Wisconsin on Friday to deny the charges.
Oleg Y Nikolaenko, 23, a resident of Moscow, faces charges that he forged email spam messages in violation of the US CAN-SPAM Act, following his arrest in Las Vegas’ Bellagio Hotel last month.
Prosecutors allege that the Russian was responsible for pumping out a staggering 10 billion spam messages per day, touting penis pills and counterfeit goods using the infamous Mega-D botnet network.
I wonder how many spam e-mails we’re going to see from Russia selling tickets, hotels and flights to the World Cup in 2018? Probably none, as Putin has given Sepp Blatter his word!
Who Are West Brom’s Sponsor?
I’m just watching West Brom play Newcastle and their sponsor appears to be 247 999, arranged in two rows of three digits. Looking closely, you can just see 0800 in smaller numbers above them.
I thought it was probably some new on-line gambling company and it was only when I checked that I found it was the free phone number for Homeserve, who as far as I know are a perfectly legitimate company.
Bonkers FIFA
I can understand giving the World Cup to Russia for 2018, but to give it to Qatar for 2022, is probably one of the stupidest decisions they have made in recent years, amongst a whole basketfull.
I’ve been to Russia to support Ipswich and although it was a day trip, it was a pleasureable experience. Especially as Ipswich won in the Olympic Stadium, where Seb Coe and Steve Ovett won their gold medals.
My only worry about Russia is that the Russian police are not noted for being friendly. Even a few thousand Ipswich supporters, who are not noted for trouble, were treated with strong suspicion. When I went to Belarus to support England, other England fans, I said that Minsk was a really pleasureable experience compared to an earlier visit to Moscow, where the police were overly aggressive.
But that is a problem, they will have to overcome, just as they’ll have to come to terms with black players, who often don’t get the best of reception from the crowds in Russia.
When I heard Qatar had won, I thought it was a joke.
The games will be played in very high temperatures, drinking by fans will be a problem and the population of Qatar is only 1.6 million, so it must be the smallest country ever to stage a World Cup. So if they fulfil their promise of building 12 stadia, they would just about be big enough to hold the whole population of the country.
I suspect that it will be the first World Cup that will be played in an alternative venue or it might well be the least successful in terms of visitor numbers. After all, some of the cheaper options for travel and accommodation, will just not be available.
I suspect too, that we’ve not heard the last of these two World Cup bids, when a few investigative journalists get their noses into the story.
I also can’t get it out of my mind, that for 2022, the United States was one of the bidders and I suspect that their bid was strong. So did the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan mean that no-one would vote for England or the United States.
This article from the Brisbane Times is a good summary of the farce. Like England, Australia got just one vote.
This paragraph from the article quotes Henry Winter of the Daily Telegraph.
But prominent English football analyst Henry Winter, while lamenting his country’s loss, wrote in London’s Daily Telegraph that Qatar’s win was “the real scandal” and that FIFA credibility was battered by its decisions.
“Yet the real scandal in FIFA-ville was the decision to award the 2022 tournament to Qatar, a soulless, featureless, air-conditioned, cramped place with so little connection to football it required hired hands like Pep Guardiola. It was as if FIFA were saying ‘to hell with the fans’. Qatar 2022 will be a joyless experience for supporters,” Winter said.
“FIFA’s credibility was battered yesterday, not by any allegations of corruption but by the cynical game of collusion and vote-trading that patently went on in Fifa House. All the fish are soiled.”
We’ve not heard the last of this scandal.
One-Nil Flattered West Brom
That is how the BBC summed up Ipswich’s remarkable victory at Portman Road tonight.
Did I wish I had gone? Not really, as I wouldn’t have been able to get home!
Beckham Plays it Straight!
My late wife always reckoned that Seb Coe’s speech in Singapore to win the 2012 Olympics for London was one of the best speeches she’d ever heard and she’d heard a lot as a barrister for some really hopeless causes.
Today, David Beckham has given a wonderfully crafted press conference in Zurich, as England try to win the World Cup for 2018. If we don’t win, we won’t be able to blame him! But then he’s got too much London and Essex in his DNA not to give it his best shot.
They even asked him whether he had an invite to the Royal Wedding! That’s the main reason of course why we won’t win. Prince William and Kate Middleton won’t be inviting Sep Blatter!
Have the BBC Shot Themselves in the Foot?
Panorama tonight reports that members of FIFA have taken bribes in the past. I would not know if they have, but then the records of the worlds’ top sporting bodies on corruption is generally not as snow white as it should be.
But I would not like to be the man from the BBC negotiating the next set of TV rights for the World Cup. I suspect that the matches won’t be shown on the BBC.
Crying in Their Beer
As an Ipswich suppoter, I hate to say it, but Norwich City have given me one of my best football moments.
It was the 18th February 1967 and C and myself went for a drink in a Greenall Whitley pub, called something like the Royal Oak on the East Lancashire Road (A580) by St. Helens. C wasn’t into football much, although she used to go to Barnet as a child with her father. But she was so amused at a table full of disgruntled Manchester United fans, crying in their beer, after Norwich had beaten them 2-1 in the fourth round of the FA Cup.
She actually remembered this incident a few months before she died. I’ll never forget it!
A Second Visit to Carrow Road
I’d only been to Carrow Road once before and that was with my late youngest son to see Norwich City play the team he supported as a twelve-year-old, Liverpool.
The ground then was fairly ramshackle and you can see now that it has been completely modernised.
Carrow Road, Norwich
What the flags were about, I don’t know!
I will say little about the football, except that Ipswich self-destructed and I don’t believe they’ll do any better until someone takes charge of the defence. Damien Delaney may have scored but he needs someone to help him out. We need Gareth McCauley back in the team as soon as possible to put some sense and backbone there.
The Anonymous Widower 