sport news Sir Bobby Robson's old club Ipswich are slugging it out with a horde of fallen ... trends now
The top of League One is heavy with history and Ipswich cherish their past better than most, with Sir Alf Ramsey, Sir Bobby Robson and Kevin Beattie, three club legends cast in bronze to greet visitors to Portman Road.
It makes for an inviting stroll, along the back of the Cobbold Stand, decorated with images of glorious times, to an end of the ground named in honour of Sir Bobby, and where some of his wisest words can be found writ large: ‘What is a club? It’s the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging.’
The quote was pitched perfectly as 29,072, Ipswich’s biggest crowd of the season, pulsated to the rhythm of another thrilling game in the third tier of English football against Sheffield Wednesday, who arrived as league leaders.
Ipswich is a club revived, with a busy pre-match fan zone testament to re-engagement and a run to the last eight of the FA Youth Cup, beating Liverpool along the way, a timely reminder of days when they lured some of the best young players in the country to this corner of Suffolk.
Cameron Humphreys, 19, from down the road in Colchester, has established himself in Kieran McKenna’s midfield this season, although the fightback from 2-0 down against Wednesday was inspired by a brilliant free-kick curled into the top corner by Nathan Broadhead, a £1.5million signing from Everton.
Ipswich and Sheffield Wednesday played out a 2-2 thriller in League One on Saturday
The equaliser came from another free-kick from another player costing more than a million, left back Leif Davis, signed from Leeds last summer. The new owners have shown ambition. McKenna is a gifted young coach. Support is fierce. Expectations soar and the football is enjoyable, and yet it guarantees nothing.
Ipswich were roared on but Wednesday regrouped to deny them a winner and McKenna was left to rue Conor Chaplin’s penalty, mysteriously awarded for an off-the-ball clash when the game was
