Play-off Semi Final Derby Special ~ Part One

I'm sure it hasn't escaped your attention that Ipswich Town and Norwich City have been battling at the top end of the Championship this season. Unfortunately neither could grasp an automatic promotion place to the Premier League and thanks to the final league standings it meant that the two rivals would face each other in the play-offs, with the winner of the tie making it to Wembley to face Middlesborough who overcame Brentford last night to win with a score of 5-1 over two legs. 

The first leg of the East Anglian derby took place last Saturday with Norwich heading down south to Portman Road and as always Sanders Coaches provided the majority of the transport. Although I didn't get tickets for the match, the lure of being able to photograph lots of coaches at once was too strong and I headed down to Carrow Road for 9am in order to see which vehicles would be transporting the hundreds of fans who decided not to take the train.

Unfortunately, their new Plaxton Elite was not part of the group that hit the road that day.

After a brief chat with some of the drivers about coaches and the upcoming match, I made my way back out the ground, over the river and round the corner where I could photograph them individually as they started their journey. There were ten coaches all together and photos of all of them can be seen on my flickr page.

Coach 1, adorned with a Canaries scarf is 903 3990ME

904 SGF965 works most weeks as Norwich's disabled access coach, thanks to the lift towards the back of the vehicle

803 YJ07JWK is one of four VDL SB4000 VanHool T9 Alizees owned by the company

908 536FN used to be registered WK06AEC and sits on a Volvo chassis

805 CT05LCT is Sanders' lone Bova and was listed for sale last year.

Part two will be coming from Carrow Road and will be focusing on the Ipswich fan's fleet of Galloway coaches.