Portman Road

Saturday, 23 April 2011

Ipswich Town 1-5 Norwich City

Aerial shot of Portman Road (Bing Maps)

Programme - £3.00

Ratings

Overall Ground Quality : 8/10

Ease of getting there : 8/10

Atmosphere : 10/10

Programme : 8/10

View of Action : 10/10

Quality of the game : 10/10

The "football" feeling : 9/10

Chances of coming here for a random game : 1/10

Legroom : 5/10

Surrounding area : 7/10

Overall : 76/100

Britannia Stand

Sir Bobby Robson Stand

Ross and the Sir Bobby Robson Statue

Cobbold Stand

'Portman Road'

South Stand

Portman Road from a distance

Ipswich Town fans taunting Norwich City fans

Britannia Stand

Sir Bobby Robson Stand

South Stand

Britannia Stand

Sir Bobby Robson Stand

South Stand

Britannia Stand

Sir Bobby Robson Stand

Portman Road at Night

Ipswich Town 1-5 Norwich City

This is a game myself (Ross) and Adrian have been looking forward to for a while. We set off at 8:45am going through Leicester before getting on the A14 which we would be on until we reached Ipswich.
Our first stop of the day was Histon who play at the Glassworld Stadium which holds 3,800. It has recently improved its facilities as well as its home of the Cambridgeshire FA who have contributed towards the transformation of the ground.
We then followed the B1049 Bridge road southbound before eventually reaching Cambridge City after struggling to find an entrance to the ground which was situated behind an office block. Cambridge City play at the City Ground which holds 2,300. In April 2008 the City Ground failed an FA ground inspection. As a consequence Cambridge City were automatically demoted from the Conference South to the Southern League Premier Division. In January 2011 the club agreed to extend the lease at the City Ground until the end of the 2012-2013 season, moving to Cricket Field Road, home of Newmarket Town for the 2013-2014 season.
Our next call was their local rivals Cambridge United who play at the Abbey Stadium which holds 9,617. The club planned to redevelop the ground (including building an all-seater stand on the North Terrace with new accommodation for the club's staff and incorporating a medium-sized hotel and new function room into the site), but after a series of financial crises, the club sold the ground in November 2004.
Our last stop before Ipswich was Bury Town who play at Ram Meadow which has a capacity of 3,500 and is situated on the edge of a pay and display car park.
We reached Holiday Inn Ipswich at 2pm which is situated off the A14 at junction 55.
When we dropped our belongings off, we then took pictures of the exterior of Portman Road then parked the car on Campion Road which is off Hawthorn Drive and walked across Gippeswyk Park towards the town centre which already had a heavy police presence at 3pm.
We then walked into the town's waterfront before walking back up the River Orwell where we sat in the scorching spring sunshine.

At 6pm we met up with Adrian's mate Stewart who is a Norwich City supporter who took Adrian to Norwich City against Scunthorpe United. We met up with a group of Stewart's friends from Football Junkie and ate at the Golden Dragon Chinese Restaurant off Grafton Way.
We then walked towards Portman Road where Stewart in his bright yellow Norwich City shirt received plenty of jeers from a sea of blue with beer flying all over the place.
After safely getting to the ground and avoiding Stewart’s yellow shirt, we found ourselves in the middle of a crowd of tractor boys chanting outside the away turnstiles.
The game saw the canaries thump the tractor boys 5-1 in a thrilling end to end game with a cracking East Anglian Derby atmosphere. Goals scored by Surman, McAuley own-goal, Jackson, Russell Martin, Pacheco and a consolation scored by Bullard.

We really enjoyed our trip to Ipswich Town which was probably one of the best games to have gone to when visiting ‘pricey Portman Road’.

Next up Dagenham and Redbridge v Plymouth Argyle.