A strange week in which people are coming and going. We’ve broken another loan player and have sent Lee Hills back to the Palace. In his place we welcome Mark Tierney from Shrewsbury and we’ve added some depth between the sticks with Jimmy Walker from West Ham. Clearly the big news is the departure of Marie Partner. 21 years of age was always significant for the fairer sex and it seems that our Chief Executive didn’t want her tenure at the club to exceed that either. The timing is strange – part way into a season in our new stadium and just as she enters into a process of discussion with supporters about the matchday experience. Hopefully that process will continue. Rumours abound of course but let’s wait and see.
It was good to see the response from the playing side today with a win away at Northampton in the rearranged fixture. While Neil Kelly was describing the descending fog and reassuring listeners that the game would reach its conclusion safely someone in the BBC Essex office thought it might be funny to add a snow report to the weather forecast. I’m beginning to wonder about the motives of local radio. They did give us second half coverage and a poor quality interview with the departing Chief Exec., but they allowed listeners to phone in earlier in the day and complain that there was too much sport on the station on a Saturday afternon. Whatever next – the Saturday afternoon ‘play for today’. Actually we do get that sometimes and we’ve had to suffer too many tragedies, comedies and farces of late. What’s been in short supply are ‘thrillers’.
It seems that despite my view of his footballing skills Clive Platt is on something of a run. Two goals and an assist in 3 games in 8 days. It sounds good, but for me it means that the service he’s getting has improved. Make the passes so acurate that he can’t miss. That’s the spirit. Things are looking up. More importantly we have had consecutive wins for the first time in … living memory. Well, we do get accused of having short memories at times. 68 games is an awful long time, and there have been some awful performances which made that feel like years. Think about it – it was another division, we lived at Layer Road and the starting line ups featured just 4 players who were present in both eras. One thing that’s stayed the same is that those games in April 2007 were against Southend and Leeds and they are still with us.
First Cuckoo 