There may Jabo Ibehre have been other things Jabo Ibehre to talk about in Carlisle’s game Jabo Ibehre against Cambridge in 2015, but nobody Jabo Ibehre remembers them. Wonder why?
The fixture on August 15 was all about one man, to the exclusion of the other 27 who made it onto the pitch that sunny day.
It was unquestionably Jabo’s finest hour-and-a-half, a virtuoso performance from the big striker, whose hat-trick for the ages hauled the Blues back into a high-scoring game time and again, and established the “Islington Assassin” as a long-lasting fans’ favourite.
It is hard to think of many other recent examples when a game has been salvaged repeatedly and almost entirely by one player’s brilliance.
Against Cambridge six years ago, United were error-strewn and defensively leaky. Without their summer signing, Keith Curle’s transitional side would have been buried by Richard Money’s visitors. Instead, they emerged with a 4-4 draw that left everyone marvelling at the feats of their experienced new frontman.
Ibehre had already scored three in his first two games after signing up to Curle’s rebuilding job for the manager’s first full season in charge. Ahead of the first home league game of term, Curle spoke of “tempting people back in” to United’s ground, playing the right way and laying on better entertainment than the previous campaign’s survival struggle had seen. The 6,000+ crowd certainly got plenty of the latter – along with plenty of the usual Brunton Park stress.
Money, whose Cambridge had recruited expansively, also expected an open footballing contest and it was his side who took the initiative against a United side yet to settle at the back.
The Blues featured other new recruits in Michael Raynes, Tom Miller and, in midfield, Bastien Hery and the returning Luke Joyce, but were picked off in the 11th minute when Barry Corr headed Harrison Dunk’s cross past Mark Gillespie.
Nine minutes later it was two, when some scrambling in the box saw the ball eventually squeezed home by George Taft, and at this point the new dawn under Curle was beginning to appear a little false.
Enter Jabo. After strike partner Charlie Wyke had hit the post, Ibehre showed how it was done with an emphatic finish following a Jason Kennedy break.
Two minutes later and the big man brought United level, this time heading a Danny Grainger cross clinically past keeper Sam Beasant.
It was magnificent stuff yet the 32-year-old and Carlisle had to do it all after going immediately behind again. From the kick-off, United regained possession but their attempt to build faltered when Joyce was dispossessed.
Corr swept the ball home, and United went into the break cursing their brittle foundations. They got level again soon into the second half, Wyke supplying a fine finish, but once more they couldn’t hold onto parity, Cambridge getting a fourth via Luke Berry.
At 4-3 down, Curle sent on three more new faces – Kevin Osei, Angelo Balanta and Alex McQueen but, yet again, it fell to Ibehre to change course.
His treble came up in the 77th minute, when a United corner was cleared and found the frontman loitering towards the back of the penalty area. Somehow he had found space – and somehow, with a finish off his right instep, he found an empty corner of the Cambridge net.
Brunton Park rose for the striker, who had never before scored a professional hat-trick. And after the 4-4 draw his name was chorused around the ground, to the tune of the White Stripes’ Seven Nations Army.
It would become a recurring song during Ibehre’s two-year, 31-goal spell. His Cambridge salvo left him as the country’s top scorer, yet still insisted he could improve. “There’s still more to come in terms of sharpness, hold-up play and getting at people,” he said.
He ended up with 17 in a season which saw the huge disruption of the Storm Desmond floods, Carlisle also enjoying big cup ties against Liverpool and Everton as they finished 10th in League Two.
Ibehre’s ravenous scoring that August, meanwhile, mystifyingly didn’t bring him the division’s player of the month award, which instead went to Leyton Orient’s Dean Cox. Some five years later, BBC Radio Cumbria’s James Phillips put that right, by getting a special trophy engraved for the ever-popular Ibehre, who retired last year.
United: Gillespie, Miller, Grainger, Raynes, Brough (Osei), Thompson (McQueen), Joyce, Kennedy, Hery (Balanta), Wyke, Ibehre. Not used: Hanford, Dicker, Archibald-Henville, Asamoah.
Cambridge: Beasant, Omozusi, Dunk (Taylor), Roberts, Taft, Keane, Coulson, Newton (Carr), Donaldson (Hughes), Berry, Corr. Not used: Dunn, Simpson, Morrissey, Chiedozie.
Crowd: 6,354.
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