A day in Suffolk in the pouring rain and another defeat - but did the Northern R's succeed in their quest for a pub doing food and football on a Saturday lunchtime in Ipswich?
1 – The Match
Mediocre Championship fair. QPR are really struggling for goals away from home, Ipswich have a group of out of form strikers including Kevin Lisbie, Pablo Counago and Jon Stead. Before half time QPR went close a couple of times with Rowlands having a header well saved by Wright and Parejo seeing a free kick palmed out as well. Cerny made a couple of saves as well but was much busier after the break when QPR weren’t nearly as good as they had been in the first. It had 0-0 written all over it until Magilton sent on Stead from the bench and he made the most of two defensive lapses to score two headers from two set pieces. In the final ten minutes Ipswich could have had at least two more but Counago didn’t have his shooting boots with him and overall 2-0 was just about a fair reflection of the game.
6/10
2 - QPR Performance
Rangers were the better team in the first half but poor after half time and once again went through 90 minutes away from home without scoring a goal. Things could have been different had Martin Rowlands buried a header midway through the first half from an excellent Daniel Parejo cross but Richard Wright made a fine save, and repeated the trick with a Parejo free kick before the break. Not too bad overall but clearly lacking any kind of a presence up front. The result could have been very different had Parejo’s whipped corner or Lee Cook’s deflected shot gone in just before Ipswich took the lead, then again the R’s clearly gave up after the second Stead goal and the score could have been much worse for Ainsworth’s team had Counago not missed three sitters in the last ten minutes.
5/10
3 – QPR Support
Rangers travelled in decent numbers as they always do to this part of the world, although at about 1500 I’d estimate that this is our lowest following here for some time. The noise was very decent to start with, buoyed by Ipswich’s insistence on playing ‘Singing the Blues’ before the match which always gets things going in the away end. After ten of 15 minutes though things quietened down and with no goal, or threat of one, to liven us up again it stayed pretty subdued for the rest of the match.
6/10
4 – The Ground
Portman Road remains one of my favourite away grounds, although the actual away end is really looking and feeling its age. The seats are cramped, the stand dank, dark and dirty and the tickets overpriced – sounds very much like Loftus Road! However the view of the pitch is pretty good and normally it makes for a decent atmosphere in the away end, although that didn’t quite happen on Saturday. With two impressive, two tiered structures behind both goals and two older, multi tiered side stands everybody is close to the pitch and it’s a really terrific ground to watch football in.
8/10
5 - Atmosphere
Pretty poor, but then it always is here. I’m assured that Ipswich fans in the north stand do make some noise but it’s totally inaudible in the away end and Portman Road remains one of the quietest grounds we visit all season. Normally that’s countered with a noisy following from W12 however that wasn’t the case on Saturday – whether it was the dreadful weather, the fact that QPR just can’t score on the road at the moment, or something else, the QPR fans were not in good voice at all apart from the first ten minutes of the game.
4/10
6 - The Journey
Refund request already in the post. We booked our trains down from Sheffield in good time, some six weeks ago, intending to arrive at Ipswich at half eleven with changes at Doncaster and Peterborough. It was only when my friend Steve went to Sheffield station on Friday and attempted to book the same trains that it came to light that the service were booked on from Peterborough in fact no longer existed – it was running half an hour earlier and was a bus. Under the new journey plan, which presumably the rail companies would have told us about when we arrived at Peterborough, we wouldn’t arrive in Ipswich until nearly 2pm. When we discovered this we caught early trains from Doncaster and Peterborough, arguing with conductors the whole way about the validity of our tickets – as far as I’m concerned if you do as they say and book early and they then cancel the trains you’ve booked on without telling you the argument about whether you’re allowed on a certain train or not is a redundant one. Anyway all this meant an extra change and so at about half 10 we arrived in Norwich, and went straight back out again arriving in Ipswich at the scheduled time. Young Clive slept the whole way, waking only briefly for the three changes of train. Of course we had to repeat the steps all the way home although we were pretty much pickled by the time we crawled through Thetford and don’t remember much of the trip as a result – there was a missing shoe at Ely, some drunk Sheffield Wednesday fans at Doncaster and some sound advice for Steve’s lad Ellis at Meadowhall, then there are some scenes missing, then there was pizza, and I woke up at three in the morning on the floor in my living room under my coat.
4/10
7 - Pre Match
The quest for the Holy Grail continues – a pub in Ipswich that does food and shows he lunchtime match. This is our fifth or sixth attempt to find such a place and I’m starting to believe that one doesn’t actually exist. This year we decided to head for a place we’d seen out of a bus window on our last visit – which I shall not name as it was home fans only and I don’t want you lot descending on it next season. Anyway last year it had advertised a menu and Sky Sports. Sounded ideal. We arrived at noon to the welcome site of Sky Sports on a big television and a real, open, roaring log fire. It looked perfect as we stepped in out of the cold. Infuriatingly though food was no longer on offer so we surveyed our options and ended up in a nearby Yates’ Wine Lodge for a bite to eat. My good God it was horrific. Every bit as bad as the slop we’d been served in Swansea and worse. It’s criminal that these places get away with serving food this bad – that might not be an exaggeration, it might actually be criminal. Paul’s lasagne fresh from the microwave looked to be the best of the three meals served, Tracy’s horrific fried breakfast easily the worst and my cardboard burger somewhere in between – the fried eggs in the all day breakfast looked like they had been removed from a dead animal by a taxidermist. Absolutely vile. After that it was back to the Irish place where the beer was reasonably priced, the fire was warm and the football was on. Next season we intend to eat at a restaurant or café in the town centre and then head there afterwards – it was a super little place, although again it was no away fans so I can’t recommend it.
6/10
8 – Police/Stewards
Overkill alert. Clearly with a London team coming up to Ipswich there is going to be a presence, more so with the antics of a group of QPR fans at Manningtree last season, but QPR fans almost got a policeman each on Saturday. Every single pub in the town had a no away fans sign up, and my younger brother was stopped by a police officer and questioned at the turnstile purely on the basis that he is a) tall and b) young – not drunk, no criminal record, never been in trouble before, not arriving in a gang, not dressed in ‘known hooligan brands’, not causing any problems, not carrying any weapons or anything that could be used as a weapon, no drugs. Nothing. Just a young, tall lad at the football and therefore apparently worthy of being pulled aside and questioned on where he’d been and what he’d had to drink. Then at the train station afterwards an orderly queue of QPR fans quietly buying beer for the train home were kicked out and the bar closed. Again no hint of trouble, nobody stealing anything, just a queue of customers. This then created a situation where there was a crowd of disgruntled people on the platform instead of a lot of contented people sitting down in the buffet. That’s just creating work for yourself.
3/10
Total – 42/80