By James Christmas

There's one rather large stumbling block for many football fans travelling around London on days like today - Twickenham-bound supporters! But nevertheless, I'm full of good old hope and expectation on this fine morning as I finally get to the ticket machine and have a mercifully un-stressful walk to my platform.

For today's game I'm meeting my mate and his dad at Basingstoke station, and being Plymouth fans I know that they're secretly hoping for our result to go the way of the Green Arrrmeeee. Or not so secretly, as for the whole journey they're both plotting how our result can help them out and I feel oddly like I'm in an Aviva advert. But as we hurtle towards the Madejski I'm feeling confident after the cracking win up at Coventry. Even though Ipswich managed to finally find a win, I feel our prospects are looking much better than theirs and after a purposeful warm-up we look up for the game. The poignant Remembrance Sunday minute's silence puts everything in perspective a little, but before we know it we're ready to go and the atmosphere kicks up, giving me the feeling it could be a bit of a humdinger today.

After an understandably cagey first few minutes a bit of head-tennis sees the ball drop to Jon Stead's feet and he loops the ball over Adam Federici into the far corner. There's a bit of disbelief, but no heads go down and we're starting to look more positive on the ball again. Good work on the left from Ryan Bertrand and particularly the impressive Gylfi Sigurdsson create one or two chances for us, and both Simon Church and Gregorz Rasiak see half chances go amiss, before a good run from the industrious Brian Howard ends in his effort giving the cross bar a teasing kiss. We're looking the better team on balance, and Ipswich are weathering the pressure well without threatening much going forward.

At half time the verdict seems to be that we're looking good for a goal and we have right to be quite confident that we'll find at least one or two before the chilly night sets in. At the start of the second half we've burst out of the traps, putting together some lovely moves and stamping our quality on the game - Rasiak's cross reaches Sigurdsson at the back post and his hopeful poke comes off Simon Church's shin and nestles in the back of the net. Not the prettiest of goals but nothing less than we've deserved and certainly reward for our youngsters' hard work. You can see from the celebrations how close the players are and the roof is shaking inside the ground - there is definitely a feeling that we can go on and win this one now. Unfortunately we can't break Ipswich down, Federici only has to make a couple of saves and Church's blistering half volley rattles the bar, but another very promising performance bodes well for the rest of the season.

I'm now going from one heavyweight battle to another, joining the masses and becoming a boxing fan for the night as David Haye takes on Nikolai Valuev in Nuremburg. It probably won't be as exciting as today's game but surely an epic battle will unfold. But today gives me hope, and our team will gel together well in good time - Rome wasn't built in a day and the case is the same for this team. But I've just found out Plymouth beat Doncaster to go above us so I think it might be a long journey home with these two! At least I won't have to navigate my way through hordes of Twickenham fans though.