March 18 2006

Clinton Morrison

It wasn’t Christmas time at Selhurst Park but we gift wrapped two goals to give the Tractor Boys a present of a point that they barely deserved, writes Simon Pophale.

Dowie must have been fuming as a frustrating match was left honours even at 2-2. Ipswich were not even near at full strength, with Lewis Price missing amongst others. Dowie made one change, dropping Micheal Hughes for TOM SOARES in midfield.

Yet the match began with us dominating as we won 2 early corners,before we took the lead as Aki Riihilahti scored from close range after McAnuff crossed following a free kick, 1-0 and only 10 minutes gone.

The good work continued as SOARES had a shot blocked on 18 minutes and we were generally holding possession well, until we gifted them a goal on the half hour, in bizarre circumstances.

Matthew Richards drove an eight-yard shot against Emmerson Boyce, which rebounded against the luckless SOARES and trickled over the Palace goal-line.

Kiraly palmed it away with the ball not looking to have crossed the line, but referee Friend (or should that be foe?) gave the goal. Ipswich had not had a shot on target up until that point, it would be fair to say that despite the score being 1-1, they still hadn’t!

However the goal gave Ipswich some buoyancy and Fuller had a shot that went close, while AJ and Watson both threatened the opposition goal, but the half ended level.

The second half began with us dominating the possession and again, we caught Ipswich being sluggish from the kick-off as we took the lead on 52 minutes. Ben Watson crossed a perfect ball for Morrison from a free kick and the Eire International sent an unstoppable header past Shane Supple to give us the lead again.

Yet we could not increase our lead. Fabian Wilnis made a last ditch saving tackle to stop Aki around 6 yards out and AJ, who had little chance to impress with some heavy marking, particularly from Wilnis, shot but his effort cannoned off Morrison to go wide.

Yet Ipswich did not look like getting back on terms, when against the run of play they managed to do just that with a quarter of the match left.

Ricardo Fuller, who played a couple of games on trial for us in the administration season and who has, since then gone on to score against us for Preston and Portsmouth, repeated the trick as he was left totally unmarked in the area and found that all he had to do was nod Richards’ cross past Kiraly. Scandalous defending and it cost us the lead.

Ipswich nearly took the lead as they began to dominate possession and Alan Lee could only pass the ball back to Kiraly when well placed. Yet Fuller was not finished for the afternoon and after he gave the linesman some verbal, found that he was brandished the red card and gave us an unlikely lifeline.

Dowie brought on Freedman for SOARES but despite the numerical advantage, we could not capitalise. Ipswich had lost their momentum but we were below par and never looked like winning the game, not even when Freedman was presented with a half chance at the death, which he could not get a touch on and the chance went away.

As might have our slim chance of grabbing second place.