Roy Keane knows how to handle the press

HAVING been a stranger to winning for so long Saturday’s long-awaited success over Derby County left many Town fans in a vacuum on Saturday.

Heads were scratched to try and recall what happens after three points.

A few beers yes, but then what?

Once the euphoria of the occasion had dimmed the realisation set in that Ipswich Town were still uneasily positioned at the foot of the Championship table.

The worse place of all – there is no further place to drop. Unless you take into account League One!

But do we raise our glasses even higher to celebrate progress? Were David Wright’s goal and an Asmir Begovic-inspired clean sheet enough to believe the nightmare is over?

We are in limbo this week with Saturday’s game at Reading likely to be a defining moment in the season.

Three points at the Madejski and we can broaden our smiles, a draw and we are still treading a much better path than six weeks ago, but a defeat and the gloom will return.

I don’t know about you, but I have been thinking back and recalling what I did differently last Saturday. In the hope that something I did made all the difference after a 14-game run without a win.

Was it the socks I wore, the breakfast I ate or perhaps the route I took to the ground that led to an Ipswich win?

Anyway, fingers crossed that Roy Keane and his men will be able to keep the Royals waiting for their first home victory since January.

Her Majesty’s Press Corps (Ipswich branch) will be on the road again doing its best to find a way through the M25 road works and down the M4 to Reading.

Having had two daughters attending the university in Reading stretching over a four-year period my knowledge of the town is quite vast and I think I have been stuck on every section of the M25 in a traffic jam at some stage or another.

A vast car park surrounds the Madejski, which is ideal until you want to leave with basically just one exit.

A new media centre has been installed since the Royals’ Premier League days and very good it is too with a perfect seat at the end of the ground where Jon Stead scored such a spectacular winner last season.

And when we sit down to meet Keane on Friday morning at Portman Road how great it will be to have something different to talk about.

Instead of how are you coping and how are you feeling without a win, there will be more positive questions to ask.

And despite suggestions to the contrary, Keane’s relationship with the press is perfectly amicable taking time to answer every question and filling notebooks with his forthright opinions and comments.

posted on 04 November 2009 10:59 byElvin King