Why do we support Ipswich?

I'd take dobbins three legged cousin, wonky, over our current strikers

 

We havent got any strikers!

 

It was the game after Keane was sacked and yes Priskin was a Keane signing

 

Be careful what you wish for. Stranger things have happened and Bluey is probably itching for a run out after all that time out of work.

 

Longtime lurker...first time poster. I've been meaning to post here for a long time now, but a little thing called my 2 year-old daughter takes up most of my free time right now. But I figured it was time to talk about and admit my love for ITFC, for all of no one to see.

My path to becoming a Town follower/fan is probably the most disjointed and strange of anyone here. I'm an American, born and bred (though don't hold that against me), but I honestly never saw a football match, or even a football, during my childhood. I grew up in a small, small town in the southern US, where American football and baseball are the sports that people play/watch. The nearest MLS football team is an 8-9 hr car drive from my hometown, but the MLS wasn't nearly as popular when I was growing up as it is now.

I got the chance to visit Ipswich for a week back in 2006, though I still knew nothing about football or ITFC at that time. I was in the UK doing research for my Master's thesis, and spent a week in Ipswich to visit an ex-girlfriend I'd had when in uni. I found the atmosphere of Ipswich to be quite nice.

Now, I live/work in China (been here for 14 years). I still had no interest/knowledge about football until 2018. A German friend of mine invited me and another American to go out to a sports bar to watch some of the World Cup matches that year. Basically, our purpose was to go there to heckle some of the British fans who were in the bar. We bought/wore the kits for every opponent England faced in the competition...and England always won. So we finally got smart and wore England's kit for the Croatian match and, well...don't hold that against me either.

Anyways, that sparked an interest in me for football, so I decided to start following it a little more. I needed a team to support though. I don't like supporting the "popular" teams, so I didn't want any team from the Premier League or the Bundesliga (despite the recommendations of my German friend) or any other big European league. I also had no desire to support an MLS team, as I said before that there isn't really a "hometown" team for me to latch on to. So I finally settled on Ipswich Town, due to the aforementioned ex-girlfriend and the nice experience I had there. It also fit nicely with my favorite baseball and American football teams, which are both historic franchises that have recently fallen on hard times (mostly due to financial decisions of their owners/managers).

But living in China makes it nearly impossible to follow ITFC. With the time differences, the weekend matches are usually on at 11 p.m. Beijing time, while the midweek matches are around 2-3 in the morning. And that's not even factoring in the difficulty in finding the matches TO watch. Chinese sports channels will usually broadcast 1-2 Premier League matches each week, but nothing from the Championship or below (and iFollow isn't an option, as I don't have any Western payment methods, and iFollow doesn't accept Chinese payment methods). I've only managed to watch one match, and that was from back in the 2018-2019 season (it was our FA Cup loss to Accrington Stanley, as I found one Chinese website that was showing all of the FA Cup matches that year). I catch what videos I can from Youtube or Facebook but even that is a struggle with recent VPN bans/restrictions here.

So that's me and my Ipswich Town fandom in a nutshell. I'm hoping for some improvement from the team (like all of us), with an ultimate goal of actually getting to eventually watch an Ipswich Premier League match broadcast on TV here (and wishful thinking, possibly getting to visit Portman Road sometime in the distant future).

Oh, and in closing I would like to thank all of you here for the "commentary" you provide for all of the matches. Since I'm limited with how I can follow the matches, I'm usually here on match days (nights for me), reading your comments to know how things is going...or not going...before reading the match reports the following day. But your commentary is much more colorful than any of those reports.


NaY

 

Welcome to the forum and what an interesting and brilliant journey you have on how you supported Ipswich Town! I just hope you don't regret the decision too much!

It's a shame that you cannot see the matches - and you have to rely on us lot for some of your information haha! As a long-suffering Cincinnati Bengals fan for the NFL, I can certainly relate to picking poorly-run sides that don't experience much recent success!

Please post more

 

Welcome NaY,we are on the whole a friendly bunch.I hope you spent enough time in the UK to get your head around some of our weird sense of humour (and different spelling).

COYB!!

 

Warm welcome NaY. I enjoyed your journey, wonder where in China. We will try to share some of the matchday excitement on here with you, it might be colourful, frustrated, elated, wild when we actually score but we are all good mates on here and respect others opinions.

 

Welcome NaY, (look at that, you already have a nickname )

Hope you can find some method to see Ipswich matches. iFollow is obviously the site we use, I get to to see all matches (or replays if I can't watch live) except FA Cup matches on iFollow because I'm in San Diego, shame you have trouble getting access to the site.

We'll do our best to keep you up to date on all things Ipswich. There is another site called TWTD (Those Were The Days) that reports on us if you can get that in China.


Anyway, welcome to the forum

 

I can’t imagine what it must be like to follow Town over the last few years without the context of following a successful side! Then again I suppose anyone born in the last 25 years will be in the same boat. It’s not always this bad. It’s probably a blessing that you can’t watch that often!

 

3,000 Town faithful at Charlton tonight,they deserve better!

 

Who would follow town after a performance like that

 

What really bugs me is the opposition we are being outclassed by. It’s not as though the sides in recent weeks have been at the height of their own powers.

 

Wow...certainly didn't expect to find another Bengals' fan here. They are my NFL team as well, regardless of how terrible they've been for the past 30 or so years that I've followed them. I've stuck with them through all the bad times, so I'd like to think that's an experience that'll help me stay true in my support for Ipswich!

I found out about TWTD from you guys here a while back, and check there as well for news/updates. However, I tried to create an account for the site in case I ever wanted to join in discussions there, but ran into some trouble and just gave up.

And thanks to everyone for the warm welcome. I've been lurking here for a while now, and it's the friendly environment here that led me to decide to join the forum discussions in what limited capacity I'm able.

NaY

 

Us lot !!!!

 

This article mirrors my own early experiences of following Town and the Stoke game mentioned is,I’m sure,one of the first games I attended,also as a seven year old.

https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/sport/ipswich-town/world-cup-winners-come-to-portman-road-8946834

 

Yes I remember my first game with my uncle putting me on an upturned milk crate. I remember it was against Chelsea but I couldn’t tell you the result. We were at the front and it can’t have been a very big wall to see over so I must have been pretty small!

 

Great read Bigal. When Mike Bacon was only 7 and watching on his crate with his Mum - good on her! - I was a 23 yr old trying to get to as many games possible as a student down South, and my parents didnt watch football! I was lucky to have good neighbours and family friends who either went with me by train from Halesworth, or later, drove me to the ground with their keen sons. That era of Bobby Robson will live with me for ever! Can young KM do it again?

Lets hope so!

 

Oh,such memories……

https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/sport/ipswich-town/the-night-itfc-beat-real-madrid-8996922

 

Bale’s got five European Cup medals. I haven’t even got one. Greedy bastard.