A club with an incredible history of doing the right things at the right time. One club, one community, one goal.
Ipswich Town Football Club unites people. Politics, as we have seen this week, divides peopole (Image: Ross Halls)
We even have a term for it – ‘The Ipswich Way.’
The club’s own Foundation sums it up nicely – “Our vision has been to build an empowered, inspired, and inclusive community to be proud of, using the power of Ipswich Town to make positive changes to the lives of those in our community.”
It’s something to be proud of. I’m certainly proud of it. It means something.
But this week, it’s hard to feel proud of Ipswich Town.
My heart sank when I saw that picture of a beaming Nigel Farage proudly holding up a Town shirt with his name and number on it, in the club’s post-match media room.
Nigel Farage posted on X about ‘being good on the right wing’ after his visit to Ipswich Town (Image: -)
One wonders how the club’s sponsors – many emblazoned on the advertising board behind him – felt about being associated with a man as divisive as Farage.
Or how the club’s players and staff felt when they saw a politician linked with allegations of racism, homophobia and misogyny holding their famous shirt aloft.
A few days after the Foundation fixture. A few days before the showpiece women’s game at Portman Road.
My guess is not happy.
But Farage’s politics, and my view of them – or indeed yours – isn’t the big issue here.
Replace Farage with Sir Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch, Sir Ed Davey or Zack Polanski, and this remains problematic. Because politics, whatever your affiliation, is divisive.
In contrast, the beauty of football is that it unites. Folks of different backgrounds and beliefs come together under one flag. For 90 minutes, football is the only thing that matters. One club, one community, one goal. Ipswich Town.
Town fans’ group Blue Action criticised the club after Farage’s visit (Image: PA/Reform UK)
The problem now, of course, is that you have pictures and videos spreading across the world which link Farage and Reform with Town. Whatever the original intention, that implies endorsement and support.
So, the crux of the matter is how Ipswich Town, a club synonymous with getting things right, on and off the pitch, got things so wrong here.
They’ve become a national laughing stock, the butt of jokes and memes across social media. Deportman Road, anyone?
They’ve divided their own supporters and caused serious rifts within the fanbase at a time when unity is essential. Indeed, chairman Mark Ashton called for supporters to stick together for the promotion push just a few days ago.
And they’ve allowed a political party to cynically use and manipulate the club for their own gain.
Yet it was all so avoidable.
Ipswich Town Women play their annual showpiece game at Portman Road this weekend (Image: Ross Halls)
Whatever you think of Farage, he is undeniably a tremendously effective politician, skilled at self-promotion and seeing opportunities to further his cause.
He has done exactly that here, at Town’s expense. They have been used.
Regardless of whether the club invited Farage, or if the visit was somehow the result of subterfuge on behalf of Reform, it would have been obvious what was happening the moment he and his team rocked up at Portman Road.
Stadium tours do not generally involve bringing a video unit or taking publicity pictures.
Someone should have stepped in and shut it down.
At best, it is extraordinarily naive. At worst, it suggests complicity.
Town, eventually, insisted they are apolitical in that hastily-cobbled together and thoroughly unsatisfactory statement they rushed out on Tuesday night.
Chairman Mark Ashton has got so many things right at Ipswich Town – but this was a big mistake (Image: Ross Halls)
They totally missed the point.
This is not about left vs right. It’s about right vs wrong. And this was wrong.
Ashton, the man behind so many good things that have happened at Town over the past five years, has always been fond of stressing ‘we will make mistakes’ when engaging with both fans and the media.
As far as I’m aware, he’s never actually admitted to or identified any mistakes that have been made to date.
Well, Mark, this was a mistake. A big one, on your watch. It has hurt people, the very people whom the club claim to cherish.
And the right thing to do now is say sorry.