Paparazzi

ITFC v Doncaster 12th April 2014

Pre-match at The Thomas Wolsey

Ghost Ship

With just four games left of the regular season we're still in with a chance of nicking a playoff spot.

It was the weekend of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, where ninety six fans died during the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.

Today's match was preceded by a minutes silence. John Wark along with a Town fan carried an Ipswich shirt on to the pitch inscribed with, 'Never forgotten' and the number 96 in the middle of it. All Premier & Football League games in the country kicked off at 3.07pm, six minutes later than normal to mark the time that the semi-final was abandoned, plus a minutes silence.

On paper this was the easiest of our last five matches and like the majority of Town fans I was expecting and hoping for a comfortable win.

A disappointing first half finished goalless and so Mick McCarthy went for an attacking look after the break, swapping Paul Anderson and Stephen Hunt for strikers Sylvan Ebanks-Blake and Frank Nouble.

Within two minutes of the restart Daryl Murphy headed in a Tyrone Mings (in for the injured Aaron Cresswell) cross, to give Town the lead and therefore hopefully open the floodgates. That didn't happen though, the longer the match stayed at one-nil, the more I sensed that Donny, still not guaranteed their place in the championship for next season might sneak an equaliser. They did, courtesy of a penalty, needlessly given away by Mings following a push on Mark Duffy. Ex Scummer Chris Brown put away the resultant spot kick with just seven minutes remaining.

Captain, Luke Chambers came to Ipswich's rescue three minutes later when he ran in at the far post to blast a deflected ball past Rover's keeper Sam Johnstone. When the the ninety minutes were up we had to endure a further six minutes of injury time, before finally collecting three more valuable points.

Post-match at The Plough

Ipswich 2-1 Doncaster

Murphy 47                     Brown (pen) 83

Chambers 87

Att: 19,496

The playlist

Paparazzi by Lady Gaga - I read Josh Edward's re-tweet during the midweek victory at Huddersfield - @tomitfc: I'm you biggest fan I'll follow you until you love me, Daryll.........Daryll Murphy. I didn't really get it until Max played me the song on Thursday night. It therefore seemed the only choice, seeings how I can't get the tune out of my head, plus Murphy scored his thirteenth league goal today.