Portman Road

Portman Road's total ground capacity is 30,056, and Ipswich Town are unusual in publishing the breakdown behind it — covered and uncovered, home and away, four numbers. Away supporters are in the Cobbold Stand, blocks VU1, VU2, VL and VA. Visiting supporters who use a wheelchair are not: they sit in the West Stand, beside home fans.

Portman Road capacity — 30,056, and the 383 seats it does not explain

The club states 30,056 as “Total ground capacity”, then splits it four ways.

• 26,243 — Covered home seats
• 2,292 — Covered away seats
• 863 — Uncovered home seats
• 275 — Uncovered away seats

Those four add up to 29,673, which is 383 short of 30,056. Ipswich do not say what the remainder is. The likeliest answer is that hospitality seats, press positions and wheelchair bays are counted in the ground total but sit outside the four seat classes — which would make the split a description of general admission rather than of the whole ground. That is a reasonable reading and it is not a sourced one, so the 383 stays unexplained here rather than being quietly subtracted into whichever category makes the arithmetic work.

Elsewhere the club describes the ground as holding “over 30,000 for matches”. That is the same measurement in looser words, not a second figure, and it would be wrong to present it as a disagreement. Two numbers are only a conflict when they measure the same thing and differ; these measure the same thing and agree.

Where do away fans sit at Portman Road?

The away end is in the Cobbold Stand, blocks VU1 and VU2 in the upper tier, VL in the lower, and VA for visiting supporters with accessible requirements. The published allocation is 2,292 covered seats and 275 uncovered — so a visiting club taking a full allocation is sending a tenth of its travelling support into the open air, and which tenth is not something a ticket makes obvious in advance.

The four stands are the Cobbold, the Sir Alf Ramsey, the West Stand and the Sir Bobby Robson Stand. Block codes are published for the away end only, which is why this page carries no stadium plan: a diagram drawn from one stand's codes would be a guess wearing a schematic's authority.

Visiting wheelchair users are not in the away end

This is the detail most worth knowing before travelling, because it runs against how nearly every other Premier League ground works. Ipswich place visiting supporters' wheelchair positions in the West Stand, in what the club calls a mixed area of home and away supporters, adjacent to the family area. Personal assistants sit behind. A visiting wheelchair user is therefore not in the away end with the rest of their travelling support, and is instead seated among home supporters next to the family section.

There are further accessible seats with personal assistant places in the lower Cobbold Stand, on the front row, which the club notes has limited stepped access. Anything beyond those may require an individual health and safety review arranged through the Disability Liaison Officer. Across the ground there are approximately 101 wheelchair spaces in eight separate areas, in the Sir Alf Ramsey Stand, the West Stand and the Sir Bobby Robson Stand.

Two practical notes the club publishes and most do not. Audio commentary runs through Soccer Sight on 24 radio headsets, and because it is radio rather than a wired position, a supporter using it can sit anywhere in the stadium — headsets must be reserved a week ahead. And the corporate boxes in the Cobbold Stand are stated to be inaccessible to disabled supporters because of the number of steps, which is the kind of thing normally discovered on arrival.

Sources and verification