Page 32 - All at Sea Fanzine Issue 68

32
All At Sea Issue 68
back to my roots
YOU may have noticed something disturbing the social media air waves of late and starting to make a bit of a Shrimp-like retro noise – it’s
SUEPA.
The Southend United Ex-Players
Association (to give it its rather catchy full title) was born out of the hugely successful Moody Blues tribute to Alan Moody last Autumn and the emotional return of early 80s striking duo Derek Spence and Keith Mercer last April. Seeing the sheer joy of former Roots Hall legends re-uniting with each other, the club and the fans, was the spark for the well-used but seldom followed up on words ‘we must do that more often’.
During the Moody Blues preparations contact had been made with Alan’s former club Middlesbrough and they had put us in touch with their former players association – ‘what a good idea’ we wrote down on a piece of paper which we found again in December when tidying out the Shrimpers Trust cupboards.
Yes, the club has had the occasional legends visit from time to time, but it’s been fairly random and maybe not that well publicised. SUEPA is a mechanism for doing it all in a much more structured, visible and, we hope, fun way. When asked, chairman Ron gave the idea an immediate thumbs-up and it’s clear to see why – bringing ex- players together creates good publicity, and we consider it to be a win-win for all involved.
Who have we got so far?
Following SUEPA’s launch via a club website news item on 12 January our immediate aim was to get to 50 members by the end of the month – we achieved over 60, and at the time of writing (11 February) the number 75 shirt has just been handed out to Jim Stannard.
Any ex-player quali es whether they notched up hundreds of games or didn’t quite make the rst team. Ex coaching/ backroom sta are also welcomed in too – we’ve already got a very busy kit-man (Steve
Parmenter) and a much needed but perhaps overwhelmed physio (Buster Footman) signed up, plus two player managers (Spud and Tilly) and our most successful win-ratio manager ever in Steve Thompson.
As for the players signed up, our oldest is the legend that is Billy Best, the club’s most proli c living goal scorer, whilst also on board is Roots Hall stalwart Frankie Banks who rst played for us back in 1962. We then have a number of 70s heroes on board such as Mervyn Cawston, Ronnie Pountney, Stuart Parker, Derek Bellotti and Terry Nicholl. Into the 80s and already signed up we have names from the past like Gary Bennett and Big Roy, the 90s men include Ooh Andy Ansah, Stanley Victor Collymore, Ricky Otto and that man who put the ball in the Bury net, whilst more recent ex- Shrimpers to join the family include Peter Clarke, Johnny Herd and, last but not least, Ryan Leonard.
To keep them all in order as SUEPA President we have the one-and-only Adam Barrett, who was honoured to take on the role.
So, with seven goalkeepers, 20 defenders, 29 mid elders and 16 strikers (plus three backroom/coaching sta ) we should have enough for Adam to call upon to make up a team even in the worst injury- crisis, though we do expect Buster to have a