Ipswich Town football club are based in Ipswich in Suffolk. 

Factsheet

• Stadium: Portman Road
• Stadium Capacity: 30,056 
• Location: Suffolk, East Anglia
• Founded: 1878
• Nickname: The Blues, The Tractor Boys
• Manager:     Kieran McKenna
• Kit: Blue shirt with white pinstripes, white shorts blue and socks

Ipswich is a large town in Suffolk. Suffolk is in an area of England called East Anglia which is east of London on the north side of the river Thames. Ipswich is the second biggest town or city in East Anglia. The biggest is Norwich and the two towns enjoy a friendly rivalry that is most passionately expressed in the East Anglia Derby, when Ipswich Town FC play Norwich City.

Ipswich was founded during the Anglo-Saxon times, sometime in the 7th or 8th century, on a bend in the Orwell river. The Orwell River flows into a wide estuary and was an important trade route. The Anglo-Saxons built a port in Ipswich and while the waterfront has changed over the centuries, Ipswich Dock remains an important port today. The ancient port in the centre of the town has been renovated and is now the Ipswich Waterfront and is full of cafes, restaurants and bars and is a centre for leisure and culture.

If you walk a few hundred metres from the Ipswich waterfront, you can find Portman Road, the Ipswich Town Football Club ground. Ipswich Town FC was founded in 1878 and took up residence at Portman Road in 1884. The ground has a capacity of 29,673 and has four stands including the Sir Alf Ramsey Stand, named after the team’s manager from 1955-1963. Sir Alf Ramsay led the team from the Third Division to victory in the First Division, then the top flight of English football. As well as the Sir Alf Ramsey Stand, there’s the Sir Bobby Robson Stand. Sir Bobby Robson managed Ipswich from 1969 to 1982 and led the team to two major trophies, the FA Cup and the UEFA Cup.

In 1992, Ipswich Town FC were among the 22 inaugural teams that kicked off the Premier League. They survived the first season but were relegated in 1994. The club were promoted back into the premier league and finished in a more than respectable fifth place before being relegated again and then relegated further to League One. In December 2021, Kieran McKenna was appointed as manager. In his first full season in charge, McKenna turned the club around, breaking several club records and managed an impressive 18 league match undefeated streak. Ipswich Town were promoted to the Championship in 2023 and at the end of 2024, secured back-to-back promotions and earned their spot in the Premier League.

The team has traditionally played their home games in a blue and white kit. Their shirt has vertical blue and white stripes and so for most of their history, the club’s nickname has been the Blues. However, they have another, newer nickname.

East Anglia and Suffolk in particular has a long history of agriculture. In 2001, Ipswich were playing Leeds United at Elland Road in the Premier League and the home side were losing 2-1. The Leeds fans started singing "We're being beaten by a bunch of tractor drivers". In popular culture, the country farmer is well loved, but not considered particularly sophisticated. The Leeds fans thought their city players should have been able to beat those country folk from Ipswich so the song was not meant to be encouraging for the visitors. However, the Ipswich Town fans loved it and adopted the nickname the Tractor Boys as a sort of self-deprecating joke.

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