The banning of TWTD’s very own Philip Ham is bewildering, to put it mildly. If the club really wants supporters to be onside then this is not the way to do things. Ham has edited the TWTD’s website for the last 25 years, and he is an essential part of the fabric of Ipswich Town football club and to expel him in this way transcends belief.
This is a public relations exercise that has gone badly wrong and which remains unresolved. The talk is that the club is trying to find a way to resolve this issue, but nothing, as yet, is forthcoming. It would be a nice Christmas present if it came soon! There is a petition out there for him too and over 2,000 supporters have already put their name to it, including me.
It would appear that is was the TWTD message board that got him into trouble. It all kicked off before last month’s match at Lincoln when one of its contributors revealed manager Paul Lambert’s starting lineup. An incensed Lambert ordered Ham’s immediate exile. We all know about Lambert’s sensitivities. If this was indeed the case that the Town team was revealed, then surely the club should be looking internally for the answers. It does not seem fair to banish the editor of Town’s favourite website because of something someone else did. Yes, he is the editor, but he is not some sort of psychic, who knows what every poster gets up to in their private lives.
I do not support Blue Action and I do not support fans booing their own players, but when it comes to the excellent work that Phil Ham has been doing for the club we love for more than a quarter of a century, I am happy to give him my full backing. Press conferences are quite frankly not the same without him. I suspect that his forensic questioning techniques might have a lot more to do with his expulsion than anything else.
