Saints legend Benali on defeat to Ipswich and tales from playing days

There have been some strange situations over the years with regard to travelling to Saints matches.

I remember on one occasion we were travelling to West Ham when they used to play at their old ground.

With London being as busy as it can get, the traffic was really bad, and the coach driver was getting a bit nervous.

They turned around to the staff and were saying, "I think we’re going to be running late."

It got to a point where we had to somehow send a teamsheet ahead of us before we arrived at the ground so we could get that in and logged with the referee.

There were even conversations about getting changed on the bus at one point, but we wanted to try and keep the normal routine.

It was quite a rush getting there. It was almost like getting into the changing room, getting changed, then straight out on the pitch, warm up and finally straight into the game.

With the number of games that we played over the years, it’s a surprise things like that didn’t happen more in a way.

On another occasion, we arrived for a game late against Reading due to a hoax call convincing the club that the game was called off. 

There was heavy traffic and kick-off needed to be put back because of the traffic and the delay.

It probably wasn’t ideal match preparation, but you can’t blame that on the outcome of the game, which we lost 2-1.

Flying was not a regular thing for us, but I do recall an away game during one of our relegation fights in the late nineties.

We had to play Sunderland away in a midweek game. Rather than doing the long journey up by coach, the club chartered a plane to take us up.

We thought it would be a novelty and it would get us up a bit quicker. When we walked out, I think it was Eyal Berkovic who looked at the plane and said, “I’m not getting on that.”

Everyone laughed and carried on walking towards the plane. He was not joking - he turned on his heels and walked towards the airport building.

One of the staff members, who was due to fly with us, had to get off the plane and drive him up.

He point-blank refused to get on it. It was a little plane, where the pilot was in front of you behind a little curtain.

We ended up winning the game 1-0 and that was a big result for us because Sunderland were also fighting at the bottom of the table.

Some of the players wanted a drink on the flight back home, similar to if we had travelled by coach. There was a bit of a celebration going on.

I vividly remember the pilot pulling the curtain across and saying “Fella’s, I’m going to need some of you to spread out a little bit more because there’s too many of you at the back.”

We quickly re-arranged ourselves and off we went. It’s different nowadays of course where it’s common for teams to fly all over the place for games.

Looking forward to the present day, the return on points over the Bank Holiday weekend wasn’t what we had hoped for.

The game on Monday against Ipswich Town was huge. There’s disappointment and frustration about another game, something we have felt several times already this season.

We got ourselves into a good position, we were playing well despite falling behind early. We played some really good football and I hoped we would have gone on and taken all three points.

Unfortunately, we didn’t capitalise on the chances that came along, and we were unable to keep Ipswich out.

When you don’t kill the game off, you are always going to be susceptible to a team coming back into it.

The sending off to James Bree almost compounded the situation which resulted in the outcome.

Glancing at the table, the result has probably put paid to the automatic promotion spot. You never know because all of the teams could start slipping up, but you can’t imagine they all will.

At the very least, there are the playoffs still. We can’t afford the last results to derail our season. We don’t want to be going into the playoffs in a negative mindset. We must take the challenge on.

I also want to take this opportunity to wish all the runners who are taking part in the Southampton Marathon all the very best.

I wish I was amongst them, but injury has meant I’m nowhere near a position to be taking part. I do hope to get back to it one day because it’s a fantastic event.