Why Portsmouth FC will be remembering Ipswich Town freebie in the build up to September's Southampton clash | OneFootball

Portsmouth were in administration when they last travelled to Southampton in the League, but a freebie from Ipswich gave them something to celebrate.

When Portsmouth travel to St Mary's to play their bitter rivals Southampton on the 13th September, David Norris and one specific goal will be in the back of many of their fans' minds.

Southampton's relegation from the Premier League at the end of the 2024-25 season means the return of one of England's most hotly-contested local derbies for the first time in the League in 14 seasons.

And the Portsmouth fans who make that twenty-mile journey may well have one specific player and one very specific moment in the back of their minds.

Portsmouth were in a bad way when they travelled to St Mary's in April 2012

When David Norris first arrived at Fratton Park from Ipswich Town in June 2011, Portsmouth were a club in crisis. The year before, they'd become the first Premier League club to be forced into administration, and life hadn't turned out much better in the Championship.

A 16th-placed finish in their first season back was a symbol of the poor state of the club at that time.

Norris had been at Portman Road for the previous three years, and at Plymouth for the six years prior to that. But Portsmouth were a very different challenge. Deducted a further ten points over exiting and then re-entering administration, they were struggling again by the time they travelled to St Mary's on Easter weekend 2012, arriving for the match second from bottom in the table and five points from safety with just six games to play. All the worse, Southampton were second and looking good for a return to the Premier League.

Norris's intervention at St Mary's wrote his name into Portsmouth folklore

For 93 minutes, everything had been going very much according to script. Southampton led 2-1, thanks to an 89th-minute Billy Sharp goal, and it looked for all the world as though the Saints were going to walk away with all three points.

But then David Norris intervened. As whistles rang around St Mary's, a long, desperate ball forward was nodded down, finding Norris on the edge of the penalty area, where he sent a dipping left-foot shot wide of the Southampton goalkeeper Kelvin Davis and into the bottom corner. Cue pandemonium in the stand behind the goal. Norris's shot had rescued a point for Portsmouth while potentially throwing a spanner in the works of the Saints' aspiration of a return to the Premier League.

Things didn't end up working out well for Portsmouth. At the end of the season, Southampton were promoted back to the Premier League three weeks later. A week earlier, Pompey had been relegated to League One, and it would take them twelve years to get back to that level, falling as far as League Two along the way.

But football isn't all about the long-term. For fans, those short-term dopamine hits are what reel us in to start with, and they don't get better than stoppage-time equalisers away to promotion-chasing local rivals. David Norris left Portsmouth at the end of the season for Leeds United, but in his own way he'd written his name into Portsmouth folklore. He will certainly be remembered by Pompey fans when they make that journey to St Mary's in September.