The 27-year-old scored his first Premier League goal to hand the Blues a first-half lead, and while they had chances to double their advantage, late goals from Enes Unal and Dango Ouattara saw the Cherries turn the game on its head, extending Town’s winless run at Portman Road.
Asked how it ranks in terms of the most painful defeats that he’s been involved in, Chaplin said: “It’s up there, right up there. It’s tough to take. I don’t feel like it was justified.
“It hurts a lot, the lads are gutted in the changing room. It’s a game that we felt like we could have won.
“I don’t know the time of the first goal, but it felt like we were the better side, creating the better chances. We defended really well in shape and played on the counterattack really well in the second half.
“It’s tough to take, really tough to take.”
Chaplin has often spoken about how good it would feel to score his first Premier League goal, but the circumstances certainly took away from the elation, even though his strike saw him join an exclusive club of players to find the back of the net in the top four tiers of English football.
“It doesn’t feel so great now,” he admitted. “I said it’d be good if it meant something, and it was close to being that.
Chaplin’s first Premier League goal handed the Blues a 1-0 lead (Image: Ross Halls)
“It would have been an incredible feeling if it meant that we won the game. It wasn’t to be.
“I don’t want to discredit it too much, because it’s what I’ve dreamed of my whole life. It’s hard to see that as a massive positive at the end of the game.”
Defender Cameron Burgess played a huge part in that goal, setting up Chaplin with a quick cutback after some hard work on the byline. From there, he put in an exceptional performance, one which came close to handing Ipswich all three points.
“It was brilliant,” the forward said about his team-mates’ display. “I thought he was colossal again. Credit to himself and the way he performs.
“It’s what I expect of him. He’s a clean player on the ball, he’s got a lovely left foot.
“He was going to shoot, definitely, I could tell he was going to shoot. I had to scream even louder than I normally would to make him change his mind.
“He heard me. He said he wouldn’t have passed it if he hadn’t heard me. He heard me screaming for it so trusted me and I was where I usually am.
“It was a similar finish to what you normally see.”
Of course, there were plenty of positives from the performance. Town played well for 87 minutes, but fell apart late on, which means it’s hard to look at the good stuff in the immediate aftermath of the defeat.
“I know for a fact that there are plenty of positives,” Chaplin admitted. “I thought we were brilliant – it’s tough to say that and it sounds silly – but we have to take so much confidence from the way that we played.
The 27-year-old was able to look at the positives from the home defeat (Image: Ross Halls)
“They are a top, top Premier League side. They are a really good team with really good players and I felt like we deserved a lot more from the game.
“It’s one that has so many positives, and I know there is. Outside noise, I won’t delve into that too much now and rightly so. We probably expect that.
“I know for a fact that there were so many positives in what we did today.”
So, with all the positives, what do Ipswich have to do differently to finally get that first home win?
“Firstly, it’s probably a little bit of luck,” Chaplin argued. “Before it gets to seeing out the game, score again, like I felt we could have – on the ascendancy, on counterattacks, on good moments that we had.
“Going 2-0 up would help a lot and I feel like we have to focus on that. We’re not the sort of team that’s going to go 1-0 up and defend the whole time, it’s not the way to win a game in the Premier League because anyone can score at any given moment. It’s not the way to go about it.
“When it gets late, we know that we have to protect that lead.
“There are individual things, individual details, second balls. They are hugely important in games like this. Moments and mistakes that we can eradicate, for sure.
“That’s something that we need to keep working on.”
There will be time to reflect on what went well and what didn’t, but focus will soon turn to next weekend’s clash away at Wolverhampton Wanderers – a side who are in a similar predicament to that of Ipswich.
“We need to go again straight away,” Chaplin rallied. “There’s no time to wait, no time to sulk, no time to be gutted about this.
“It’s going to hurt tomorrow but we need to go again and we need to improve. We need to be ready for next Saturday.”
