There isn’t too much to look back on in terms of games between Preston North End and Ipswich Town. Despite both clubs being around since the 1870s they have only come up against each other 15 times, and it has to be said that the Tractor Boys have had the upper hand, especially in recent years.

But it wasn’t always like that, in fact if North End’s first three fixtures against Ipswich were anything to go by, you would have thought that the Suffolk club were PNE’s lucky omens.

The two clubs first clashed in an FA Cup Fifth Round tie in the 1953/54 season. Scott Symon’s side had safely negotiated their way through the previous two rounds of the Cup, with 2-0 victories at Derby County and Lincoln City and when Third Division Ipswich Town arrived at Deepdale for the Fifth Round many expected to see a rout.

But Scott Phillips’ side were not arriving in the North West with a bad reputation, they were chasing promotion and had already defeated the likes of Reading and Birmingham in previous rounds.

34,630 fans crammed into North End’s home and the Preston folk would not be disappointed as they were treat to a stunning display of attacking football from the Lilywhites, a pair of braces from Charlie Wayman and Jimmy Baxter plus goals from Angus Morrison and Tom Finney helped PNE to a fine 6-1 win, a victory that catapulted North End into that epic quarter-final tie with Leicester City.

It would be over 10 years before the two sides would clash again, but the results were not much different. North End had slipped down a division for the first league encounter between the two clubs.

Jimmy Milne’s side probably still had the FA Cup Final defeat to West Ham fresh in their memory when they embarked upon the 1964/65 campaign and they got off to a slow start with a 0-0 draw at home to Rotherham United a 3-3 thriller at Cardiff City.

So there was a definite case of venturing into the unknown when Preston made their first ever trip to Portman Road to take on an Ipswich side managed by former Newcastle legend Jackie Milburn.

Milburn was following in the footsteps of Alf Ramsey who had departed for England the previous year and he wasn’t having too impressive a start to the season. The week before North End’s arrival he had watched his side defeated 3-1 at home to Coventry and the last thing he wanted was the visit of a North End side tipped by many to one of the favourites to return to the top flight.

Those fears were realised when North End put on one of their most impressive performances of what turned out to be another disappointing year. A Brian Godfrey hat-trick and a brace of goals from David Wilson helped Milne’s men to a fine 5-1 win at Ipswich.

Milburn had departed Portman Road by the time the two teams met just before Christmas later in the season, new boss Bill McGarry’s main task would have been keeping the score respectable after shipping 11 goals in the first two encounters with North End, but that was not to be!

Brian Godfrey brought his tally against Ipswich to five with a brace and Alex Dawson also chipped in with a couple goals in a 4-1 win. It was a partnership that would produce 53 goals between them during the season, unfortunately it was leaking goals at the back that led to PNE’s demise that year, only the bottom club Swansea conceded more goals than them that year, as North End had to be content with mid-table mediocrity.

One season on and North End still held the upper hand, although the first signs of their grip slipping were starting to show. A 2-0 win in late November of 1966 is actually the last time that PNE beat Ipswich and we have goals from Nobby Lawton and Alan Spavin to thank for that. Later in the year Ipswich scored their first ever success over the Lilywhites when they held North End to a 0-0 draw.

The following season and Bill McGarry’s team were easily the superior, a 1-1 draw at Deepdale would be seen as a decent result for Bobby Seith’s team in the greater scheme of things because by the time North End travelled to Portman Road to be thrashed 4-0 in March of 1968, Ipswich were heading for the Second Division Championship and the Lilywhites were heading for the bottom three.

And that was that as far as league meetings between the two teams go until the Tractor Boys were relegated from the Premiership at the end of the 2001/02 season. Those more recent seasons have seen Ipswich carry on from where they left off in 1968 with impressive wins at Portman Road and hard fought draws at Deepdale.

If the Lilywhites historians can take anything from studying previous battles between the two clubs, the fact remains that in the long and illustrious histories of both clubs Ipswich have never won a league game at Deepdale.