Loving Ipswich Town on Valentine’s Day wasn’t an easy task for the Blues supporters who’d made the 200-mile journey to Bristol Rovers for a drab goalless draw at the Memorial Stadium. After recording just three wins from the last 12 league outings, the League One side were eight points from automatic promotion as a fanbase starved of success for more than two decades feared another campaign stuck in the third tier.
Then, something incredible happened. A staggering 13 wins (and zero defeats) from the final 15 matches secured promotion to the Championship – finishing second on 98 points. During the run-in, Ipswich scored 45 goals and conceded only four. The fans’ love affair with the Tractor Boys was back on track.
“The second half of the season illustrated that we were probably the best of the three teams that went up,” Phil Ham, editor of independent Ipswich website, tells now. “Though Plymouth obviously won the title, I think we showed that we had stepped up a level through some very good business in January.”
