The truth is out at long last

[different gravy 0]

Few people expected Alf Ramsey''s championship side of 1961-62 to retain their title – they had, after all, been handed the prize on a plate by a more talented Burnley side who only won twice in their last 13 games – but nobody expected it to turn so sour, so quickly.

The hapless tone of Ipswich''s 1962-63 campaign was set on a pre-season tour to Hamburg, when the team was accidentally booked not into a hotel but a brothel near the Reeperbahn. At one end of the sassy Strasse, the Beatles were performing to audiences of gangsters and prostitutes while whacked out on ridiculously strong speed; down the other, an incandescent Ramsey was adding to the seedy atmosphere by parping hot jets of sultry steam from his lugs.

Alf''s mood would barely lift all season. The tactical masterplan which had landed Ipswich their title – withdrawing the wingers to create space for strikers behind confused advancing full backs – was quickly negated by opposing managers. Bill Nicholson of FA Cup winners Spurs showed the way in the Charity Shield, simply by putting his midfielders on the wingers; Spurs won 5-1. Ipswich were in the relegation places come November, having won two of 16 games, by which time Ramsey had accepted the England job. Ramsey stayed on in an advisory capacity for the rest of the season – which he whiled away by kicking his successor Jackie Milburn around the training ground like an old sock. (The two had come to blows in a Spurs-Newcastle match during the early 1950s).

The reigning champions ended the season safe in 17th, thanks to a late flourish of wins, but Milburn''s authority had been undermined from the off, and he never really recovered, his abject team ending the following season in last spot. Ipswich certainly hadn''t outstayed their welcome in the top flight: having won their title as a newly promoted side, it had taken them a mere two years to be dispatched back to the lower reaches.

FULL ARTICLE HERE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/mar/12/joy-of-six-football-falls-from-grace

[Suffolk exile 0]

This post couldn''t be more random if it was about quantum physics.