The good, the bad and the ugly

As usual, I had most of the early part of this week (Monday-Wednesday) off. Well, I still had to do my usual "home" work and attended a Wycombe Wanderers meeting on Monday night, but you get the picture.

So I decided to tick off two more grounds - Swansea City's the Liberty Stadium and Ipswich Town's Portman Road. Yes, I know, talk about a trek (my carbon footprint must be very high now) but I saw Swansea v Barnsley on Tuesday and Ipswich v Bristol City on Wednesday. They were certainly eventful matches.

The Good: both matches were outstanding games of football - certainly tremendous adverts for the Championship, a much more exciting league than the Premier League will ever be.

Swansea came back from 2-0 down to earn a point with a goal in the fourth minute of stoppage time courtesy of two stunning strikes from Jason Scotland.

At Portman Road 24 hours later, both sides were prepared to attack with Bristol City going ahead through Stern John before Ipswich scored three in a seven minute spell at the start of the second half and looked like they could have had many more.

I was very much a fan of the traditional feel of Portman Road, actually in the town itself - it was my first trip to Ipswich too.

The Bad: plenty of moans - ticket prices and fickle fans being the main ones.

Firstly ticket prices: do Ipswich Town really think it is surprising that they get their lowest attendance in two years when tickets are £26.50 on a cold Wednesday night two weeks before Christmas? Tickets in football are ridiculously high - restricting people from all walks of life from coming. Football should be inclusive for all.

Then we come to the fans. After paying such prices to get in there is an argument that they are entitled to their opinion. But they are supposed to be supporters. Both games were extremely open but you got Swansea fans arguing amonsgt themselves and booing players at 2-0 down. Then when Ipswich had pretty much dominated the first half, the referee's whistle for the interval was greeted by howls of boos. A strange way about going about supporting your team.

The Ugly: Alex Bruce's dreadful lunge at 3-1 Ipswich was both completely unnecessary and dangerous. It meant that Jim Magilton shut up shop and a game, that would have ranked number one in terms of matches I've seen this season, only just makes the top five.

And finally another talking point: Barnsley's Jon Macken received a large amount of flak from the Swansea fans. Some of it witty, some of it funny, but most of it vile abuse. In a week when Sol Campbell has finally got his way and got 17 Tottenham fans charged with abusing him at a football match, it was refreshing to see Macken's response to fan jibes. He pointed to his large nose and laughed ... during the game that is! And afterwards he took the time to applaud the Swansea fans. I somehow feel that is a more refreshing way of dealing with abuse than crying out about it.