As a Brit people may expect me to be a football fan, but I only tend to watch games in the big competitions like the World Cup. Until today I had never been to a big match, but I was in Portsmouth for a work meeting and someone suggested we go to see Portsmouth play Ipswich.
Portsmouth F.C. (aka Pompey) play at Fratton Park and are in the EFL Championship. They are near the bottom of the table with Ipswich in second place.
We needed food, but with the pubs all very busy we ended up in Domino's for some pizza. Then we meet up with the others at the Staggeringly Good Brewery for a quick drink. That is near the ground, but was not too busy. They have a dinosaur theme and my beer was called Short Arms, but Big Ambition (like a t-rex). It was rather nice.
We got into the ground not long before kickoff. Luckily we were under cover as it rained a bit.
It was a good match. There were various attempts at goals in the first 40 minutes until Pompey scored and the place went wild. The chants are really something and some were a little rude. There were some kids there. Just after that goal Pompey had a corner and scored again.
The second half was fairly frantic as Ipswich tried to score, but 2-0 was the final result with chants of 'we are staying up'. The crowd was at full capacity at just over 20,000.
There were a few yellow cards, but no major incidents. Seeing a live match is quite different to watching on TV. I enjoyed it, but will probably not be a regular at matches.
We needed to get a train back to the hotel. It was only one stop, but would be a long walk. I thought it might be an issue to get on a train with all those people, but it was not too bad.
Go Pompey!
