One of the best things about Leeds United getting relegated is that not every man and his glory-hunting dog is gagging for a ticket to watch Championship football. After Saturday’s trip to Portman Road, I can’t understand why not.

You’ll struggle to get a seat at Old Trafford or Stamford Bridge. I don’t know if I’d want to. I’ve never been, but apparently they clean the pie off their walls.

I’ve always loved going incognito in the home end. If you win, you feel smug, surrounded by people moaning and bitching, as though you were not only yesterday moaning and bitching about the hopelessness of your own club. If you lose, you feel such a disaffection for the celebrations happening around you that it reminds you who you are. Even if Leeds were shite, even if you feel a bit miserable, it’s your shiteness, your misery to own. These lot can keep their joy.

Everyone is revelling in the whimsy of Kenilworth Road, a Premier League ground, but honestly, the Premier League wouldn’t know romance if it smacked it in the face. On Saturday, Ipswich Town were walking onto the pitch to the sound of Insomnia and children were ‘waving’ flags that were three sizes too big for them. The pageantry was textbook, nostalgic and cosy. I was having a lovely afternoon in the Championship and I hadn’t seen a whiff of horrendous defending yet.

What a finish from Joe Rodon. VAR might have wound back time to cancel the goal for offside, but it could never delete the memory of Rodon frantically checking for the linesman’s flag without caring to find out whether there were any actual Ipswich players threatening the ball he slid majestically into Illan Meslier’s net.

In the Championship, there is a way through for anyone – even for the peculiar gait of Georginio Rutter, which leaves Ipswich just one shoddy backpass and a spilled save away from the sudden burden of a two-goal deficit after taking an early lead.

In 45 minutes, I felt more excitement than the whole of last season; the disappointment of going behind, the euphoria of cantering into a secure lead, the blunt reality of your second-choice left back relegating himself to third-choice in real time with some of the most disgusting efforts at ball control you’ve ever seen.

Half time. The warren-like ‘concourse’ of the stadium is so cramped that there’s a full-on log jam. There’s no air in here, you could breathe more easily on Pluto, where there’d be no queues to pass through a narrow doorway which you’ll immediately queue to pass out of again once you discover that the un-signposted toilets are (probably) in the other direction.

In the home end the rows of seats are so close together that my knees ache and the proximity escalates the challenge of squashing your excitement when your team scores a goal, the smallest of squeals as exposing as a rotten pie fart. You absolutely stink of treachery and you’ll do well if your neighbours pretend not to notice.

The roof hangs low over the Magnus Group West Stand, so I can’t see the travelling fans on the other side of the pitch. I hear them, though. You can’t be so petty in the Premier League. You can’t sing about six fingers when you’re 6-0 down to a team owned by a nation state who won’t think twice about removing your digits for pilfering. You can’t sing ‘top of the league, you’re having a laugh’ in a league you won’t top before rising sea levels have consumed the town of Ipswich forever.

Everything is turgid in the top flight and the fun of chanting bollocks is in the volatility of fortune. Riotous in the first half, the travelling support went quiet after the break as Ipswich suddenly started to play football. I loved it. When did the tide last turn at a Leeds United game? When were Leeds United last so clearly on top of things that you actually notice when fans stop revelling in their dominance?

But what I’ve been missing, perhaps most of all, is the dogshit standard of officiating. Surely it’s a load off Daniel Farke’s mind, knowing that he can cut the weekly session on holding an effective back line out of his schedule. You can’t gain an advantage by catching people offside if the offside rule simply does not exist in the second tier.

Today, the injustice smells fantastic. When Ethan Ampadu body-checks Samy Morsy mid-air, the Ipswich man doesn’t even wave his arms or complain, and the absence of VAR means I can enjoy Jamie Shackleton’s tiny scurrying legs without fear of some meticulous dickhead on a business estate in West London cancelling the joy of Luis Sinisterra’s goal.

And then there is Luke Ayling. The weathered face of a man whose thunderbastard volley against Huddersfield is but a fading memory, who felt the weight of the world when the Whites surrendered their promotion chances at Nottingham Forest but had no idea what horrors were to come, wearing the armband, putting the referee to rights, wagging his finger, licking his lips to be back in a competition where he has the chance to go genuinely bananas against Birmingham City again.

At the final whistle, Georginio Rutter put his arms in the air like a little boy who has just found out he’s getting ice cream.

This is a league where you can have a rickety defence and come away with all three points, where you can start slowly and still have a magnificent season. The ground isn’t made of sinking sand. You can drop more points in the first ten games than Manchester City do for their entire season and still make the play-offs.

It could be the stripping back of the corporate bullshit or the absence of those over-inflated Champions League titans. Perhaps it was the return of howlers all over the pitch that didn’t actually matter that much. It could be that I’d forgotten how winning a game of football is actually quite fun. I don’t care why. Leeds United’s three year exile from the Championship is over and I couldn’t be more pleased about it. ⬢