What a weekend, the highs of seeing all the ex players at the golf and dinner on Friday and then the lows of losing to Rotherham United at Portman Road on Saturday. One thing I learnt very early on from being involved in professional football was to never get too high when things were going well for you and never get too low when you cannot seem to do anything right! Recently I have been looking at newspaper cutting, mainly for this blog, and for every one that is praising your performance or giving you the headlines for scoring a goal or winning a game there is every chance that the next cutting will be like a slap in the face. Everything from giving away a penalty, getting sent off, making a mistake which cost a game or just playing like a twat, it is all there in black and white. Sometimes the reporters can make it appear worse than it was, or they say later that they are not responsible for the headlines, it still hurts whatever spin they put on it. Over the next few weeks I am going to dig out some articles to prove my point, the good and the bad, but for now I am still going to enjoy looking back at some of the ex players that I had the pleasure of meeting again this weekend. The picture above is in the Ipswich v Arsenal programme from 15th September 1984. It was great to see Laurie Sivell, Trevor Whymark and Brian Talbot all together on Friday night. The Arsenal team that played that day was not too shabby; Pat Jennings, Viv Anderson, Kenny Sansam, Brian Talbot, David O'Leary, Tommy Caton RIP, Stewart Robson, Paul Davis, Paul Mariner, Tony Woodcock and Charlie Nicholas. Ipswich won that day 2-1 with Romeo Zondervan and myself scoring. Our line-up was an interesting one; Grew, Burley, McCall, Zondervan, Osman, Butcher, Putney, Brennan, D'Avray, O'Callaghan, Gates. it was our first win of the season, drawing the first 4 games and losing a week earlier to Leicester City 1-2 at Filbert Street. (Are we looking at the new Premier League Champions in Leicester City?). Arsenal were top of the table before kick off with 3 wins and 1 draw, on paper it looks like a terrific result for us. Also on Friday night I had a long chat with Mark Lomas whose picture I just came across in the Town v Newcastle programme March 23rd 1985. Hope you like the pic Mark! Prior to this game we were sitting third off the bottom of the Canon League Division One Table., level on points with Luton but we had a better goal difference, and Stoke City were bottom with only 14 points from 29 games. i was second top goal scorer at this point of the season for Ipswich, only 6 goals behind Eric Gates, We survived,,,just! Picture above is one of my favourite ex players, someone else that I grew up with in the junior ranks of Ipswich Town FC. This picture shows Alan Brazil when he was playing for Spurs, the first club that he joined after leaving Ipswich. Alan was by far the best 'one on one' finisher that I ever played with. The rest of his goal scoring skills were magnificent but in a one on one situation with the goalkeeper there was only ever going to one outcome!
i think we first played together in the youth team in about 1975/76, so we go back a long way. To say he is a character is not doing him justice. He has achieved a cult following with TalkSport radio but he has never changed since I first met him. First to the party and last to leave, great company any time, any place, any where!
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AuthorRussell Osman is a former England & Ipswich Footballer, 4 Handicap Golfer and Father of 3. Archives
April 2018
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