Derby Day

Favourites today must be Southend as the home team, and also better placed in the league. However Colchester have some good recent form so the odds must be pretty close.  Two early goals from Southend were quite a setback and provided something of a hurdle to overcome. In addition the continual rain didn’t help.  I was listening to the first half on the car radio coming back from London on BBC Essex Medium Wave and heard the Colchester perspective from the familiar voices of Neil Kelly and David Gregory. When I got home I discovered that there were two commentaries available from BBC Essex – the Colchester experience on FM and one MW frequency while Glen Speller and Ben Fryer gave the opposing view on the other MW frequency and on digital.

In the second half I managed to take in both commentaries.  Kelly and Gregory had the edge for me – apart from being biased the right way their broadcast was about 3 seconds ahead of the other one! I could hear the other commentators in the background of each as well.  A great comeback by the Us to take a 3-2 lead but why do players celebrate by taking their shirts off? They know they’ll get booked. It’s irresponsible. Wordsworth will probably accumulate a few more cards and we’ll lose him for a couple of games later in the season.  I wonder if it happens in women’s football as well?

From the commentary it sounded like Colchester didn’t let up for the whole of the second half. What a performance. They’ve earned their sugar cubes today. I was going to say here that ironically the Southend commentary team felt that a draw should be a fair result – and seconds later, in fact in the final seconds of the game (5 minutes into 4 minutes of time added), they got their wish.  A defensive lapse yet again and the scores ended up level at 3-3.

Still, a great match for those who were lucky enough to be there and a great result for us considering table positions, home advantage and the weather conditions.  We’re set up for a fantastic return encounter at Cuckoo Farm in February to sort out ‘the best team in Essex’.

We’re Not Bottom

Let’s start this off on a positive note. For the last 12 minutes we had them beaten, Gilly got two goals, and we’re not bottom. Beyond that I guess there’s not much to say. It would have been nice to share the whole miserable experience with the BBC Essex commentators but ‘the powers that be’ deemed we could only manage half of such a thrilling encounter. How they knew which half was going to be the best to broadcast I’m not sure. Maybe they can tell us the lottery numbers too – that’s covered by the BBC as well.

Elsewhere it was a day of mixed fortunes for local clubs. The good news is that our leading scorer from last season was on target again and Ipswich still lost. The bad news is that the team from South Essex scraped a victory (and the whole match was covered live by BBC Radio Cambridgeshire).

I have to confess to being a member of the Luton Town Virtual Supporters Club (if indeed it really exists) for this season only. With the daft penalties imposed by the official bodies it’s only fair that someone takes pity on them. Just look at the bottom of League Two before today’s games:

What a ridiculous way to start a season. Mind you losing 2-4 away to Hartlepool isn’t all that impressive either. So here come the familiar sayings – ‘We’ve got it all to do’, ‘The only way is up’, ‘Wait till we play them at home’, ‘We’re not bottom!’.