There has been considerable discussion recently about the relative merits of today’s club and team compared with the club and teams in what I will call 'the golden era' of Sir Bobby Robson, which I was fortunate enough to have experienced.

I have read with interest what various contributors have said on this subject but had no intention of joining the debate personally until having a conversation recently with a neighbour who lives round the corner from me, in the village where I live.

He is the brother of a member of one of the golden era teams in the mid to late seventies. And what he said made me consider the debate in greater detail.

“Did well again Saturday,” said the brother after the Peterborough match. I readily agreed. Then he said, “But it's upset my brother a bit”. “Why is that”? I said. “People are coming up to him in the street and saying this is the best team we’ve ever had!”. His brother had replied to such comments, “So they’d beat Real Madrid, like we did, would they?”

I think the reposte put an end to the debate. We have a team which has improved beyond recognition but they have won promotion from League One and are a long way from playing Real Madrid, let alone beating them, or from winning the FA Cup or a European trophy.

Although football styles have changed and I am as delighted as anyone at the way our current team play and at the results this has brought, culminating in a richly deserved promotion, this does not compare with the golden era achievements and my neighbour’s brother was justifiably indignant at the suggestion that it might. The golden era teams were certainly better.

But this debate is around club as well as teams. Indeed, for much of the Marcus Evans era, it was the club, probably more than any of the teams, which caused so much angst and dissatisfaction among supporters – not just because investment in players and facilities was at a low ebb but also because there was a very small team at the top, headed by a man who refused to engage with supporters generally and, I believe, even the Supporters’ Club. The performances of club and team in the modern era are inextricably linked.

Poor performances by the teams were blamed, almost certainly correctly, on the club. Paul Lambert, whilst mostly loyal to his employer, did remark that there was so much which needed changing at the club.

This was relatively recently but how did we, the supporters, view
'the club' in the golden era? It is difficult to compare as so much has changed and that must always be considered. However, the club owners, the Cobbold dynasty, whilst quirky, eccentric and benign, were not known for their interaction with supporters and, of course, they had no social media to get across their messages. Even if they had it, I doubt they would have used it.

Even the great Sir Bobby had a mixed relationship with fans. Perhaps he remembered the early days of his reign, when fans called for his head, when, much later, he labelled the Town crowd as 'zombies' for being too quiet.

You can’t imagine Kieran McKenna ever coming out with something similar. We rightly loved Sir Bobby for what he achieved on the pitch, not for his close relationship with the support.

I have never lived in Ipswich and so I don’t really know how the players of the golden era when out and about interacted with supporters but I doubt that they went to the lengths that our current squad go to in order to engage with their support.

For example, I’ve read Alan Brazil’s autobiography and, whilst he enjoyed his time at the club, I don’t recall him saying much, if anything, about the support – our current squad go out of their way to acknowledge the backing they’ve had. Whilst I am sure they have been told it is part of their job to do so, they all do it with great ease and apparent willingness.

This does work both ways of course. Even in much of the golden era our support, away from home in particular, was relatively quiet and compared with today, smaller in numbers.

In my view a reason for this is that in the golden era there was, unfortunately, a far greater risk of being involved in violence than now, and Town fans have seldom warranted the description of being 'hard'. It's a reputation we’re rightly proud of but in those days it put people off away games, I’m certain. There were far fewer opportunities for players to show appreciation to their support at away games.

It is too simplistic to say that times have changed and social media has made communication between club and fans easier and better than it was. Evans had social media, as did the people the put in charge of running his club, including its managers.

I am not a lover of many things American but I shall always be grateful to the individuals associated with, or appointed by, our current owners for the way they run our club.

Let’s remember that before things were turned round on the pitch they were determined to engage with the community and support and they’ve been good as their word. The club now is better than the club then - even allowing for all the changes that 40 years-plus have brought.

Therefore in summary, the golden era teams were undoubtedly better than the current team but the club, which so many have acknowledged we now 'have back', is better than any previous one, including that of the golden era.

So to refer to my title, the final score is Then 1, Now 1 but, with this regime in charge of our club, we can dream that we are on the way to having a 2-0 score in favour of Now.

It's good to be able to dream again.

Europablue added 08:13 - May 7 Thanks for that. It was a great read!
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ElephantintheRoom added 06:53 - May 8 Interesting read from a different perspective. I can’t claim to be the brother of a player but I do recall a club where the players largely grew up with the club and what might be labelled a ‘Cobbold Philosophy’ that made them somewhat unique. I remember seeing youth players including a certain future Town manager drinking in The Falcon - everybody left them alone - much the same with first teamers if you saw one shopping in the Co-op. I can’t get overly enthusiastic about franchise football and the club I used to support is long gone - to see players bought in August being usurped in January strikes me as absurd - but people seem to like it (when not calling for McKenna’s head after a 0-0 draw) To an outsider Ipswich now appear to be little more than a poor man’s Chelsea - and that strikes me as rather sad.

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armchaircritic59 added 17:48 - May 8 ElephantintheRoom, an interesting reply to the above article, which, while I don't agree with it, is well made and I respect it, we all have our opinions, no rights or wrongs in this matter I'm 68, I saw my first match the season after we won the First Division Championship. My late Uncle was quite heavily involved with the club at that time. Some of the players of the era quite often used his home as a "bolt hole" to get away from it all, a few miles outside Ipswich in a villiage. I used to see them there when I visited with my parents at the time. I don't think anyone who was around at the time will forget what the Cobbolds did for the club, they are an idelible part of our history, and of course, some of the stories are "legendary" ! It all finally came to end with the resignation of Patrick Cobbold as Chairman in April 1991. 32 years later the world has changed and football with it, whether we like it or not. Very few successful clubs are run by families, let alone local ones. It's the way of the world. In my view we are very lucky to have our present owners, who have been very open about how the club is financed and some of the interviews given by Mark Ashton have been amazingly informative, something you just never would have seen in the past. One day, another era will dawn, that's for sure. Non of us know who or when that will be, but the current owners have made it clear, they're here long term. I have a mantra, " remember and respect the past, live for today and plan for the future" I apply that to football as well as life in general. Apologies for the length, just hope it stimulates a bit of (friendly) debate!

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Churchman added 08:10 - May 10 Thank for this thought provoking blog. I too am old enough to remember the Robson years. Firstly, of course the Robson teams were better than the current one, as was Burley’s and of course Ramsey’s. They competed at a higher level. If we had a time turner and those teams played the current one, they might struggle - diet, fitness, weight of the ball, kit, pitches, size of players. A different time. In terms of how football was, it’s hard to believe how coverage has changed. No live club games bar one. Two games on Match of the Day another two on Match of the Week plus the odd highlight on Sportsnight. Sometimes a few comments from the manager, more often just a view from Brian Moore or Jimmy Hill. Panels came in in the 70s for the World Cup. Coverage in the papers? Limited in the locals, but there was the Green Un. Other than that, it was down to whatever was in the Daily Express etc. not much. Or for a kid, Shoot, of course. You never really heard from players bar Cup Final day, nobody heard from CEOs (there weren’t any), owners or Directors. You saw their names sometimes in connection with events (e.g. Clough’s 44 days at Leeds), but by and large these were hidden figures. My first impression of ITFC as an eight year old was of a neat and tidy ground. A cathedral that I fell in love with at first sight. It wasn’t that, but in a child’s eye, it’s how it felt. In later years when we went to Highbury etc, they might have been bigger, grander but they weren’t home. We went to quite a few games away in the 70s. We never worried about the hooliganism, but did develop a ‘nose’ for where trouble was and took a little care where we went. It sometimes went pear shaped. You could pay at the gate for most games so could wind up deliberately or accidentally in the wrong place e.g. the Shelf at White Hart Lane. Time to move. Segregation existed, but was random and restricted really to big games. People travelled, but not in the numbers you see today. No replica shirts, scarves left at home for certain games. Facilities? There weren’t any. You went before or after. Once on the terrace, there you stayed. We rarely bothered with seats. Far more fun standing, even though I couldn’t see half the time. Food? Sandwiches in the car with a flask of stewed tea, chips, something in the boozer when I was old enough. It was an adventure. So, I’m old enough to have witnessed Robson’s early struggles the Robson’s first good team, then the best ITFC side of that period. The decline and then Duncan. A real low. Lyall’s lovely team, decline, Burley’s smashing team - then the horror of Evans and all of that. The crashing of my club. It’s interesting looking back and comparing times, though one’s memory of course plays tricks with the past. The new owners are not the old. They are not a brewing family living in a mansion; nor are they a faceless individual who allowed the club to rot. Whatever they are, they’ve done more for this football club and it’s supporters in two years than anyone else has managed in decades. At last we have hope and actually, the only valid comparison I can make of my whole time following Ipswich is the last two years to the previous thirteen. I can now dream again and clearly 1000s of others are doing the same.

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ElephantintheRoom added 10:52 - May 13 Armchair critic - good points well made. I’m not entirely convinced that there was a communication issue back in the day. It was a local football club back then - run by local people and had a core of local players who were in it for the football and now it’s a loss-making, foreign-owned business fronted by opportunists who are in it for the money. The only source of $ at the moment is from the supporters so of course the ‘communication’ is good - that’s where the money comes from to offset the losses - and people seem to enjoy being fleeced. Just look at the risible and totally unwarranted ‘black shirt’. The fan zone seems popular too - when back in the day it was a practice pitch. In Ramsey’s day even a toilet you didn’t need wellies to enter was something of a luxury - you went to football for the football and maybe wave at Swede as the nearest thing to club PR. Any drinks came from a flask. The thing that does surprise me is how many people don’t mind the club totally losing its identity - but it’s not surprising really I suppose. Man City used to be an amiable club -and is now enthused over as a sportswashing project for a Middle East dictatorship. Chelsea were little more than a plaything for a gangster - and again supporters loved not being the club of Osgood, Hudson, Cooke et al as long as dirty money won things in a money-doped league. Ipswich has gone from a much-admired local club to an offshore project via an insolvency or two. The absurdity of what football has become might be best illustrated by where Norwich might be headed. Who’s better off - some people frittering away a chunk of money from a US pension fund to ‘add value’ to Ipswich - or a junk bond salesman preying on Norwich? That might be considered a 0-0 draw. The saddest thing is probably how intolerant a sizeable chunk of the support have become - seeing the third division as a ‘terrible division’ and calling for McKenna’s head after a 0-0 draw and for a 20 goal a season striker when two were already in the building. Different times. Although there are sell out crowds I’m sure there are plenty of people like me who think it’s become Ipswich Town in name only. I also suggest that the club didn’t need to communicate with the support because the East Anglian and Green Un did that very well in the Tony Garnett era.

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Europablue added 07:31 - May 15 ElephantintheRoom, I feel exactly the same about the way football has gone. Sadly, a lot of what the modern game is about is just for the money men and TV is more important than the local fans. It's very difficult to get excited about watching the Premier League, the only interesting thing is who is going to get relegated. For me, it's a very foreign concept to support a league. I only want to watch Ipswich matches and then I'd probably be interested in the FA Cup if we didn't have football all the time. If you think too much about it even with game changer and Mckenna, we've brought in a whole lot of outsiders to play for us who are basically mercenaries, but at the same time because of how people like Marc Ashton are determined to engage with the community and the fans, it feels like our club is special again. Like armchaircritic59 and Churchman said, the world is just different now, and even if I would agree that some parts are much worse, we have to live in the world as it is now. I would love to have all clubs owned locally by the fans and limit foreigners (including northerners etc.) or have a homegrown rule which applies the living in the local area. The whole point about football is what it means to the local town, and by that measure, we are living in exiting times.

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Runner added 09:22 - May 20 Agree with everything above, apart from the scores. Two totally different times. Team then 1. Team now 0. Club then 1. Club now 2. So a draw!!!!!!!! Final note on fans: we jumped on a bus back to the town centre from the stadium for more drinks after just winning the UEFA Cup, full of us ITFC fans and all quite & well behaved, I was buzzing, Suffolk people back then were different to now.

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sir_george_burley added 10:58 - May 26 Just to add that the above remarks strike me as all exceptionally well-considered: a proper discussion of an interesting couple of propositions (then and now for team and club). Of course, I too hail from the Robson (actually, McGarry) era and that's why it catches my attention and enthusiasm. Well done TWTD blog-section.
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ElephantintheRoom added 08:09 - Jun 11 I’m quietly intrigued about the love in with the new ‘owners’. - which as far as I know still includes Marcus Evans after recent share issues to cover the massive operating losses as ‘value’ is added to the club. I wonder if any of the current crop of franchise followers ever travelled on a Blue Arrow train. To my mind that summed up the relationship between supporters and the club in bygone era when the club represented Ipswich and Suffolk, rather than a profit opportunity for outsiders. To continues the rail theme, sometimes for a match against London clubs, you might be on the same train as the players and manager - who were left in peace in their compartments on those old diesel trains that seemed to work, even when there were leaves on the line. As a supporter of what used to be Ipswich Town FC I find it bizarre that buying promotion out of the third division - beating some once good but now skint clubs to second place at a cost of £20 million is seen as a huge achievement. Big Dunc might have done the same at Forest Green given the same head start. People like to follow a winning team nowadays rather than a team - and the internet makes communication and belonging’ very easy and potentially very profitable. The motives are chalk and cheese. The Cobbolds were charming figureheads who left the club to be run by some people who cared deeply about the club. I doubt anyone remotely considered Ipswich ‘a big club’ then because they weren’t - they were a successful club punching above their weight - just as they have become an unsuccessful club punching below their weight now. The second division is every bit as curious and eclectic mix as the third division - with the likes of Luton, Coventry and Sunderland showing you dont need very much to get in the promotion mix iin an era when a mediocre 6th place gained fortuitously on the last day of the season might well do. I see the most recent blogs are a shopping list of players to be signed to replace the 30 odd signed in the last two years. You can’t get a better example of the radical difference between then and now. No sense of loyalty to players who are now simply commodities to be bought and discarded on the alter of money doping. Quite sad really to those that recall football as a competitive sport - and ‘little Ipswich’

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