December 24 2009

Crystal Palace

Crystal Palace against Ipswich Town conjures up, with unerring regularity, goals (sadly for us in both ends) but these matches never fail to entertain, writes Simon Pophale.

Having said that, this Boxing Day clash will now be a stinker!! Yet, an interesting stat is that when it comes to the festive fixture list, we have played Ipswich Town six times since our very first meeting back in the 1938/39 season.

This was when Ipswich were elected into the league at the expense of Gillingham and we handed out a 3-0 caning which set the tone for our early meetings in the 1930’s and 40’s.

When football activities resumed after World War Two, the remainder of the 1940’s saw us play four, win two and draw two up until the start of the 1950’s where Ipswich finally broke their Selhurst Park duck and managed a 1-3 victory.

The rest of this decade saw Ipswich only take one more win, which was in the 1956/57 season with the same score line. All of the other Division Three (South) fixtures saw the same run of two wins and two draws.

This was Ipswich’s championship winning year and the re-organisation of the league a season later saw us in Division Four and Ipswich in Division Two, one of the few times there have been two divisions separating us.

We bridged this divide by ascending into the Second Division in the 1964/65 season.

After Ipswich had reached the top flight for the first time in the 1960/61 season and achieved the games biggest prize - the League Championship the following season. By the time we met for the game on October 7th, Ipswich were in disarray.

Relegation and the loss of Sir Alf Ramsey some seasons before saw Ipswich at a low ebb but they still managed a 1-1 draw. The following season we won by the popular 3-1 score line.

Ipswich became Second Division Champions in the 1967/68 season and they managed to overcome us in the two preceding seasons at Selhurst (0-2 and 1-3) before we joined them in the First Division in the 1969/70 season.

We had the best of Ipswich in the 1970’s at home. We never suffered a defeat and the pinnacle of these matches came in the 1979/80 season where we beat Ipswich 4-1 with the performance being capped by a memorable goal from Jim Cannon, who started and finished the entire move, volleying home past Paul Cooper which saw us hit the summit of the league pyramid for the only time.

Ipswich went on to win the UEFA Cup a season later while we “enjoyed” the ignominy of relegation. Ipswich also won at Selhurst that season 1-2 and we would not meet again until the 1986/87 season, following Ipswich dropping into the Second Division.

One of the most entertaining matches at Selhurst came in the 1986/87 season with a 3-3 draw and it came as no surprise as both sides finished in the top 6, Ipswich one place above us in fifth.

The next two seasons saw one win apiece (1-2 for Ipswich in 1987/88 while we beat them 2-0 in our promotion season), this left a small break in matches until Ipswich won promotion to the Premiership in 1991/92 and they came to Selhurst for one of our most poignant matches of that inaugural season.

We won the match 3-1 in April 1993 but it was the events immediately following this, which this match will be more remembered for. The players did a lap of honour around the pitch and Oldham, who had to beat Liverpool and Aston Villa away from home to have a hope of staying up.

Needless to say that the “Manchester Miracle” came off as Oldham won both matches which set up a grandstand finish, with Oldham getting the point to keep them up and send us down, as we lost at Arsenal.

Our return to the Premiership saw us beat Ipswich 3-0 (mind you, most teams did that season...) but we both suffered relegation at the end of the 1995/96 season. After a couple of mindnumbing draws in the following seasons, the goals started to flow in the 1998/99 and 99/00 seasons with us netting a 3-2 win and a 2-2 draw.

Our recent record is poor against Ipswich at home. We have only one win since the 2002/03 season, which was a 2-0 win in February 2007 with goals from Leon Cort and Paul Ifill, with only 10 men.

One of the most entertaining matches was the 3-4 defeat back in October 2003 when we quickly went 2-0 up with goals from Andy Johnson and Dougie Freedman, only for Richard Naylor to pull one back and then Ipswich pulled level before half-time when Naylor nicked a close range second.

The shenanigans continued in the second half when Pablo Counago scored with only 12 minutes left to put Ipswich in the lead, before the irrepressible Freedman bagged a penalty with 2 minutes to go, to ensure that it ended honours even. However in the last minute a long ball saw Shefki Kuqi lob a winner to end the goal fest and our hopes of a point.

We will want to get revenge for the 1-4 defeat last season. The goals from Owen Garvan, David Norris, Kevin Lisbie and a Clint Hill own goal saw us well beaten, our solitary response coming from Alan Lee.

With Ipswich similarly looking to dish out a beating following our win at Portman Road in August, let’s hope the home hoodoo can be broken.