Page 8 - All at Sea Fanzine Issue 68

8 All At Sea Issue 68
On his way: Nile Ranger
for half the guts on the away terrace after the previous evening’s intake, but also at least half the Southend squad, which is a shame because every time I go to this ground it feels like we bang in about 12 goals a time. Well, not today sir.
Cox and Fortune were selected up front seemingly on the basis they have scored goals this year (or a goal, in Fortune’s case) but to suggest either of them were in form would be as accurate as saying Brexit won’t cause any long-term problems. And poor old Yearwood drew the shortest of Phil Brown straws, and was set up for a post-match dressing down by being forced out on the wing.
We won’t go into huge detail here as we all know we are now in a di erent, much more glorious era, but it is important to remember the proverbial trenches that we were all walking around in, in a numbed state – numbed by Phil Brown and his increasingly desperate realisation that his time was up. The walls were caving in this afternoon, typi ed by, on New Year’s Day, the away tea bar running out of hot drinks before half time.
The headlines really read quite simply. Wimbledon, despite being “down there” made us look worse than ordinary, and took the lead quite inevitably before half time with a mishit shot into the ground that was nished o , after a simple knock down, by Liam Trotter who was in more space than even Johnny Vegas would have been if he had just pulled his pants down and taken a dump in the middle of a group of Page 3 models.
The disappointment of not being able to have a cup of tea at half time had not even left me, before we were 2-0 down from a blindingly crap set piece, which unfortunately will live long in the memory as Ryan Leonard’s nal memorable contribution – ending up in the net on his arse trying to stop it and wishing he was somewhere else already (She eld).
Cue some now regular substitutions of desperation, of note on this occasion due to Yearwood being hauled o (for a winger!) almost being made a scapegoat for the whole thing and Nile Ranger closing the chapter on his increasingly insipid career in a Southend shirt.
Thank God the ref hadn’t lost his whistle by the end as you sensed everyone suddenly couldn’t wait to get back to work. We were lucky to get nil. Phil practically sacked himself in the post match interview.
So as I sipped on my nal can of beer for some weeks after the game, I re ected on a possible celebration of sorts, which was basically that surely Phil Brown’s position has become untenable after this debacle. Little did I know that only a few days later, we would be without our best player, and Nile Ranger (bovvered), and we would all do it again, in collective misery, but this time in front of many more faces of disgruntlement.
Piers Hewitt @piershewitt