London (Part 1)
It's just before three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon and we're engaging in a traditional English weekend ritual - a football match. We're in South London, at Selhurst Park, the endearingly haphazard home of Crystal Palace, who are enjoying an unprecedented run of consecutive seasons in the top division of the league.
They may be an admirable club, with deep roots in the multicultural local community, but we haven't actually come here to see Crystal Palace; we're here to support the visitors: my team, Ipswich Town. My bittersweet love affair with Ipswich goes back half a century now, long before they acquired their modern nickname of Tractor Boys. If you've got an evening to spare I'll happily sit in a pub and regale you with tales of the great players and amazing matches I saw in my early days as a supporter, but suffice it to say that we were, in the 1970s and early '80s, one of the best teams in Europe.
The last two decades have not been so kind to us, however, and for several years the club dropped as low as the third tier of English football. Then something astonishing happened. With American money behind the club and a new, young manager, the Ipswich tractor cranked through the gears and this season we've climbed to the heights of the Premier League. This has brought its own problems, though, with soaring demand for tickets making it virtually impossible for casual supporters who live abroad, like me, to get into home matches.
Which brings us on this sunny March afternoon to Crystal Palace, where my friend George has kindly managed to get us seats to watch Ipswich play the team he's supported all his life in a Premier League game. It's probably just as well he's managed it now, because it's beginning to look as if we're not capable of clinging on to our position in the top division for very long. But maybe today will see us turn the corner. Optimism is ever the opium of the football fan.
Unlike the endless waits on bleak terraces which were the downside of Ipswich's days at the top - it was essential to arrive an hour or two early to find a good spot to stand - 21st-century football means a pre-match beer in the fanzone behind the stand before taking our seats just before kick-off. Palace even brew their own, and it's not half bad! We then work our way up to the stand, where we're immediately rumbled as away fans, possibly because of the replica Ipswich shirts we're conspicuously failing to hide under our coats. We sheepishly admit that neither of us is Tim, who is apparently the usual occupant of our seats, and that we are, indeed, Tractor People.
Not that we need worry. Our neighbours are vociferous when it comes to encouraging (and berating) their own team, but sympathetic to our plight at the wrong end of the league table. Palace is a great place to watch football. It's not the kind of soulless bowl many top clubs play in nowadays. The stands may not match all that prettily (one dates back to 1924 and another even contains a supermarket), but there's genuine noise and atmosphere. And that - the sound of 30,000 people bellowing on their team - is really what makes football worth going to see. If what you want to see is instant analysis and all the perfect angles you can watch it on TV.
The game itself starts rather frantically, with first Palace and then Ipswich nearly scoring. It then settles down into a pattern in which neither team are playing very well. The Palace fans, who've become used to seeing their team win in recent weeks, are not best pleased at this and the supporters around us begin to let the players all about their feelings with the spleen and wit unique to football supporters around the world. Meanwhile, the Ipswich following in the far corner refuses to stop singing, even though the team itself gives them little inspiration to carry on. At half time, we agree with the Palace fans around us that both teams probably deserve to lose.
In the second half, Palace threaten more but still contrive to frustrate their fans, while their agile former England goalkeeper ensures that any hopes Ipswich might have of getting the ball in the net remain mere fantasy football. But just when it looks as if the first Ipswich game I've managed to get to in seven years is going to end, like the last one I saw, without a single goal, a Palace player skips into the penalty area and slips the ball neatly over our goalkeeper. Ipswich, predictably, have no answer to this setback, and ten minutes later the jubilant Palace fans around us are celebrating another win, which they hope will help bring them European football next season.
I can't help remembering how, in the great days at Ipswich, we used to take playing in European competitions almost for granted. But that was more than half a lifetime ago now, and I can only wish my friend's welcoming, genuine community club well in their attempt. As for Ipswich, it may be a long time before we see them in the Premier League again, let alone Europe. Hope, though, is a hard drug to kick."