By Sadie
March 3 2006

New Singing the Blues columnist Sadie looks into the apparent ‘striker curse’ Town have been dealing with all season long.

Howdy,

 

This is my first little report and the subject is on our apparent striker curse so here goes...

 

Having lost just one game since the beginning of 2006 is an impressive form for a team riddled with injuries since the season began.

 

Players such as Nicky Forster and Sam Parkin were brought in to replace what was lost from last season, with town only having to make further signings to stand in for those injured, then having to look even further for players to stand in for those who were brought in to stand in for the original squad- confusing isn’t it!

   

Although we have suffered injuries and suspensions in every playing position, it has defiantly been noticed that we seem to be suffering some kind of 'Striker Curse'.

   

After our Original front men got injured we sought help from Adam Proudlock to stand up with our youngsters who are barely at the age to be called men, the Curse became apparent when our youngsters and Proudlock also became familiar with the treatment table.

 

Finally things started to look brighter when we found Alan Lee, quickly becoming a fans favourite scoring four goals in six games. But still the curse circled our front men as a Hamstring injury saw Alan out of action until March.

 

Then a name we all knew was set to come to town, Ricardo Fuller, who has defiantly not got off to the easiest of starts as it was found, the night before Ipswich were to play Wolves away, that his work permit only allowed him to play for Southampton. But after a successful appeal, Fuller returned to Portman Road in time for the home fixture against Leicester. A quiet yet victorious debut saw him score his first goal in the blue and white shirt to help secure a win against the foxes, however just 14 minutes before all previous bookings were to be wiped Fuller received his fifth yellow card, to bring him a suspension, in what seemed a very controversial booking many town fans were left with a big question mark above their heads, wondering what next?!

 

Alan Lee and Sam Parkin are looking for their returns to be sooner rather than later but Nicky Forster appears to be out for the rest of the season. For Danny Haynes his road back to full fitness is well underway and Jaime Peters is currently fighting off an ankle injury. But for Dean

McDonald his future at Portman Road remains unclear. Ricardo Fuller will be out of next weeks game against Millwall due to his suspension, but we can hope  that will be our last visit from the 'striker curse'.

 

As all of our striker 'incidents' have happened on home turf is this really some kind of 'striker curse', in which case should we find an exorcist to perform a ceremony on our pitch?, Is it Karma getting us back for all the high class players we have let go for next to nothing? Is it just impatience? Yes players get injured and it takes time to heal, on a few occasions we have played our strikers when they are trying to push off injury or barely recovered. Or is it just plain and simple bad luck?

 

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