 [Blog] Proud to Be a Town FanWritten by Newingtonblue on Wednesday, 22nd Jun 2011 12:45 I received this email from a great mate of mine who is married to a Japanese girl and they wanted to express their gratitude and remind us of what a great club we follow. This blog has been submitted by Newingtonblue. To view more from this author click here. We're all usually pretty quick to condemn our clubs for turning us into 'customers' and 'reference numbers' and forgetting that we're actually people, so it's nice to report a story for a change of club going out of their way to be human. Unfortunately, it's your club that remembered there's people sitting on those seats, not mine. But that's for later! When the earthquake hit Japan we lost track of a couple of Kaoru's friends who live in Sendai. They had been due to come and visit us but we feared the worst when we couldn't raise them on the phone, email, Facebook or any other messaging service you can think of. Several days after, we received a one line email from my wife's friend Sanae - sent during a few minutes' connection - saying that they were OK, still coming to London and could we find them a real English football league match to go to! Both Sanae and her husband Toru are big European football fans and take any chance they can get to see a game. He's particularly a fan of Liverpool and already had tickets for the game against Man City, so I started trying to think of a plan to do something special.
Spurs, my usual waste of £50 a weekend, had the Champions League game against Real coming up and while the absurdity of the ticketing scheme had prevented me from getting a ticket (despite being a member for decades), I had hoped I could get Toru into the ground to have a look round. I emailed the club and finally got a response saying that despite the exceptional circumstances of the earthquake they would not be able to help due to the preparation work at the ground for the game. Presumably, the club thought that despite surviving one of the biggest seismic shocks in the history of the planet and a Tsunami travelling at a kilometre every four seconds, our friends might be terrified by a falling Champions League banner or a YTS apprentice on a wobbly ladder putting up an Amstel ad. Oh well. Back to the drawing board.
Scouring the fixtures, I saw that Ipswich were at home to Middlesbrough. I enjoy our adventures at Portman Road and going there with you always reminds me of why I started going to football 35 years ago. Toru is also a big fan of Barcelona, so I thought the connection with Sir Bobby and the proper English league ground atmosphere would make a change from the over-hyped polished pomp of the Sky Sports Premier. On the off-chance, I called the club and spoke to their Press department to see if there was anything I could do to make the visit a bit more special for him. What I wasn't prepared for was the enthusiasm I was greeted with.
Camilla Haycock, the press officer, immediately swept into action and proposed all sorts of good ideas such as signed programmes, photos in the office and a general plethora of handshaking. She even stopped the print run of the programme to put their names in and suggested welcome messages on the scoreboard. All of this with an efficiency, courtesy and warmth that I felt had been lost from the game decades ago. Having helped organise good seats for us, we emailed details back and forth but even then, we didn't say anything to our pals as sometimes people aren't able to do the things they say they are going to do. So we just left it to fate.
When we got to the ground and after a nod to the statue, we went to the club offices, half expecting there to be nothing there or for no one to know what was happening. We couldn't be more wrong. Camilla was there to greet us in person and had two copies of the programme signed by all the players to present to them. As promised, she had written a welcome to them in the programme and, as we sat down, their names appeared on the scoreboard to their amazement. Our friends were stunned and Sanae was in tears. After the emotion of the previous few weeks, losing so many friends, seeing their town destroyed and nearly losing each other, such a genuine display of warmth by complete strangers was almost too much for her.
As for the game, the team couldn't have laid on a more exciting match if they'd tried and the only thing missing was Jimmy Bullard's late swerving freekick nestling in the back of the net rather than coming back off the post. A riveting 3-3, great appreciation and nodding of approval for the Portman Pie, pictures in the dug-out after the game and a pint of Suffolk cider guaranteeing happy sleeping Japanese friends all the way home to London. Thumbs up all round. It's not often that something happens to rekindle a childhood love affair, but for that night, I loved the game of football again. Thanks to your club for that, I hope it carries me through the dreaded moaning and groaning of the summer transfer window and gives me something to think about every time I hear a player complaining that they can't survive on £100k per week! Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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