Duncan Barkes

And because of the nature of the game,

which was a goalless draw.

It was a goalless draw all day long.

But if you nick one, if you fluke one, then you're laughing because it's going to stay the same unless somebody else flukes something.

We came so close with so many good efforts, particularly at the death of the game.

But we had goal scoring opportunities before that.

Didn't Ali play well?

The touchline area where he was operating was, it was a mud pie.

It was awful.

I want to take a second out here to just comment on the fact that a number of... I'm going to be disparaging about the Ipswich fans that were saying this, and I'm going to be rude, and I'm going to call them yokels.

Tractor boys, they call themselves.

I'll call them yokels.

And they were blithering away, foam-mouthed, that Pompey should forfeit the game, should be fined, all sorts of things, because our pitch isn't up to scratch.

Well, I'm sure they don't bother to look at other games in the championship, but if they did, they've only got to have a look at the state of that pitch that that game was played on today and realise that there are actually pitches in the championship.

which are seriously below standard.

That pitch was so appalling, you could have been watching Match of the Day in 1970, because that's what football pitches used to be like all those years ago before the technology caught up.

They would simply be mud pies from goal to goal, from touchline to touchline.

There was not a blade of grass on some of them.

Now, the Preston pitch wasn't quite as bad as that, but as far as playing decent football goes, when the ball comes to you and it's bouncing in front of you on a pitch like that, you simply don't know how and where to take it.

which is the reason I'd like to think why Ali missed that opportunity in the goal mouth when I think it was a result of maybe one of our few successful corners.