Club nicknames are a funny old thing, as can be found when looking at the nicknames of clubs like Bristol City and Plymouth Argyle. You can feel as though you’ve got some idea why it is that a team might be called something or other, but you soon realise that you’ve got no idea whatsoever. Sometimes a nickname is introduced in an amusing or self-deprecating way, which is very much the case when it comes to Ipswich Town and their nickname of ‘the Tractor Boys’ on account of the club’s location in the country.
The Origins of the Nickname
In order to get a sense of where Ipswich Town’s nickname comes from, it is handy to get a feel for the club’s history in general. Football as a sport had been played around the town for a number of years when the pupils of Ipswich School adopted Association Football rules in 1874 . Four years later and the team that we now know as Ipswich Town was formed, albeit with the name of Ipswich Association Football Club so that they could be differentiated from the rugby club that also played under the name of Ipswich FC.
The club’s decision to wear blue and white was almost certainly linked to their maritime associations, remaining in place ever since. They turned professional in 1936 and were elected to the Football League two years later. Although the kit colours have changed over the years, with white sleeves being added and taken away numerous times, the club has remained loyal to the blue and white colour scheme. You will note that there is still no mention of the club being known as the Tractor Boys and nor would there be for some time.
The colours of the kit matter on account of the club’s official nickname, which is ‘the Blues’. Of course, they aren’t the only club with such a moniker, with the likes of Everton and Chelsea also being known as ‘the Blues’. When the club was it its most successful, winning a title under Alf Ramsey, for example, they were sometimes called ‘the Superblues’, although this nickname didn’t really stick. Others call the club ‘Town’, but this is a touch prosaic It wasn’t until the club was promoted to the Premier League that ‘the Tractor Boys’ name came about.
Becoming ‘the Tractor Boys’
With neither ‘the Blues’ nor ‘Town’ sufficing as nicknames, Ipswich Town fans were struggling to know what, exactly, they should call themselves. Then in 1998 they went to play Birmingham City where they faced a degree of mockery for the ‘country bumpkin’ image that was foisted upon people from Ipswich. Some supporters would sing ‘Oooh-arrr, ohoh-arrr’ at them as though they were characters from a song by The Worzels, all declaring themselves to be ‘cider drinkers’. This was in spite of the fact that they were 1-0 up over the West Midlands team at the time.
As Birmingham City fans, who also called their club ‘the Blues’, continued their mocking, Ipswich Town supporters decided to turn things around and began singing ‘One-nil to the Tractor Boys’. So it was that a new nickname was born and the club began to be known as the Tractor Boys from then on. It was a self-deprecating reference to who they were and where they were from, whilst also drawing attention to the fact that Birmingham City fans might have seen them as their ‘rural country cousins’ but they were losing to them regardless.
It Wasn’t Universally Loved
Whilst the supporters enjoyed the idea of taking ownership of their country ways, the same wasn’t really true of some of the players. Phil Ham wrote for the Ipswich fanzine Those Were the Days at the time the nickname first came into use and explained that there was something of a divide amongst the players over its use. There was, he said, a ‘split in the camp’ at the time. Some of the players, Ham admitted, were suffering something of an ‘irony by-pass’ over the issue, with Jim Magilton amongst those that hated it.
Meanwhile some of the others absolutely understood the joke, with Matt Holland and John Scales both loving it. At the time, Ham wondered if the nickname was likely to stick or whether it might end up slipping into the club’s history as a short-lived thing. He said, “It will probably keep going until the end of the season when we give up and become the ex-Tractor fans. We’ve even got the ex-Tractor fan T-shirts for next season”. In the end, though, Ham was completely wrong about it and the nickname ended up sticking around for the long-term.