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Actually, and on reflection - given the venue will earn next to nothing from the event, placing it at one of the larger PL sides (who can easily afford the loss) seems quite appropriate to me. Man Utd owe us a favour for going easy on them, make it Old Trafford
Indeed - so long as the pitch has a secure boundary to keep out unwanted spectators, sufficient facilities to accommodate the teams and their entourage, and the means to broadcast across the iFollow network (or $ky?), they could play the final anywhere.
Overall total up to £6,280 as things stand - quite incredible what Daniel and Katie have achieved here to help those that helped them! Their generosity of spirit, and of everyone who has contributed (particularly Harry Pell and the auction winner) is frankly humbling, and makes me proud to be part of the Col U family.
I assume the clincher is that all Divisions presumably have to vote the same way. If, for instance, League 1 decide no relegation, surely we can’t then have any promotion from our league?
Hi PWK (and GSY) - sorry to hear about your hacked accounts. Sadly, with everyone shopping more and more online at the moment, scum bags who do this stuff are having a field day capitalising on the current crisis. Just to say, JustGiving is an incredibly reputable fund-raising website with impeccable credentials, so I’m certain they are not involved.
Chaps, if you haven’t heard, Harry Pell has seen Daniel’s post, and is now auctioning his Man U shirt to raise funds. It’s on the Col U Past Present Future Facebook page, and bidding last time I looked was up to £1,100!
The article on the BBC suggests its not that League 1 are voting against relegation, but that there are six clubs, not surprisingly the five immediately outside the automatic promotion zone, plus no-hopers Ipshit (flippin' muppets) who are digging their heels in to play out the remainder of the season - there's one point between those five, and they're only two points outside 2nd place. However, I would imagine eventually they'll have to concede, as surely there can't be any feasible way of actually completing the season.
As for Stevenage, rather see rid if I'm honest, but at least following the demise of Bury, if they are allowed to avoid relegation at least Barrow could still be promoted to bring League 2 back up to 24 members.
Just saw that as well. The EFL will have to approve the vote, but surely the best possible outcome for the U's if they do? We were never going to make the autos from where we are now, and knowing us, there was always the ever-present risk of a complete collapse and dropping out of the play-offs, so a guaranteed play-off spot is probably the best case scenario as far as I'm concerned.
Now we wait to see whether the deal will be approved, and how on earth the play-offs will be managed if it is.
Daniel - I simply can't begin to imagine the pain and suffering that you two have been through. Well done for not only having the courage to speak openly about it, but particularly for your incredibly selfless act in trying to raise money to support those that comforted you in your hour of need - Lucas will be so proud of his Mum and Dad!
How about the EFL vote to promote everyone to the Premier League? Some sort of a season-long mini-league knockout competition for all 91, and everyone gets a fair share of the PL gravy train? We can but dream...
I’m afraid I have to disagree Durham. We’re in the world of survival, as individuals and as companies right now. Expecting Robbie Cowling to bankroll our chances of play-offs that nobody has any realistic belief will happen by extending contracts for players we can’t afford I think is naive. Forget the cup run money, he subsidises a negative account every year, and probably needs every spare penny just to keep his own business going - and without Jobserve, we’re really f’cked. Not a happy decision to read, but 100% understandable in my opinion.
Do we still have a pools panel? They managed to decide outcomes quite happily for years without challenge, albeit no points or places depended on their decision - but it was accepted by all.
And so here we are, at what would have been the last match of the domestic season, at home to FGR, and almost certainly still in with a shout of making the play-offs – maybe even already guaranteed by now. As I look out this morning, it’s a beautiful sunny day, and I would almost certainly already be on the first leg of a train journey to be amongst the faithful at the Jobserve Community Stadium. Given the location of our opponents, I’d probably be sharing the journey with a few hundred FGR supporters too, but they’ve always been a friendly bunch whenever I’ve met them, so I wouldn’t have been too concerned about that. Instead, we sit and wait to see how and when the season may (or may not) finish – strange times indeed…
Millwall v Colchester United Wednesday 14th April 1999 Nationwide League Division 2 (Tier 3) Attendance 4,686
Match #56 of the Matches of Yesteryear series, and for now at least, the last one for this season – we wait to see whether there will be any more. If there are more matches, the series will of course return to cover them, and if all else fails will return next season (whenever that may be). I had hoped that the random match selector would have chosen a real humdinger to bow out on, but chance being the capricious mistress that it is, it has instead chosen one of my more miserable experiences following the U’s. Heyho, those unfortunately are the breaks, and I’m certainly not planning to tinker with fate by overruling the choice.
This was our first season back in the third tier of the football league, and it had been quite a struggle for the U’s. With Steve Wignall falling on his sword in January, deeming he had taken the club as far as he could (I disagreed, if I’m honest), we were managed by Mick Wadsworth, who was just about doing enough to keep us away from relegation. Going into this match, with seven games to go, we were on 45pts, and five points clear of relegation, so whilst it was looking optimistic that we’d avoid relegation, it was by no means certain. Millwall were doing considerably better, three places outside the play-off zone, but in truth the 12-point gap was almost certainly too big a deficit to overcome.
I’m not certain why this match was played on a Wednesday evening, there aren’t many other matches I can remember that had been. Piecing together the evidence available, and without anything definite to corroborate it, I imagine this fixture should have been played on Saturday 17th April, but with Millwall getting through to play Wigan in the Auto Windscreens Shield Final at Wembley on Sunday 18th April, our match had to be rearranged. I guess they chose the Wednesday as a suitable mid-point between the AWS final and Millwall’s previous match at York City on 10th April. Who knows, but there we were, playing on a Wednesday night in South London.
Back then, I was directing excavations in advance of the construction of HS1 (we knew it then as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link). Specifically, at this time we were excavating a nice Late Bronze Age site known as Little Stock Farm, near Mersham in Kent, and whilst we were there also excavating machine-cut evaluation trenches immediately to the east in fields next to Park Wood Cottage farm. I was supervising the main excavation that day, whilst one of our Project Officers was in the next field cutting the evaluation trenches. Mid-afternoon, and my phone rings – disaster! The machine had sliced through a water pipe, which was flooding everywhere.
I dashed over, and sure enough there was the evidence – a somewhat mangled blue plastic water pipe pissing everywhere, and somewhat ominously looking like it ran from the mains along the road straight across the field to the farmhouse – yep, we’d cut through their water supply. Now, I should add, we had done everything in advance that we should have, including checking plans with all utility suppliers, and carrying out a full CAT & Genny scan – but utility companies rarely map local supplies such as these, plastic water pipes are notoriously difficult to detect, and whoever had laid the pipe (probably the farmer himself) hadn’t buried it particularly deeply, nor laid any form of warning tape over the pipe to indicate its presence. However, it didn’t change the fact we’d cut off their water supply, so we had to do something.
The water board didn’t want to know, it was a local supply on private land, not their problem to fix, so it most definitely became our problem to fix. The pipe had been completely mangled by the machine bucket, so my only option was to dash off to the nearest plumbers merchant, pick up a length of replacement pipe, some couplers, and a hacksaw to trim up the broken ends and cut the replacement to fit. I was back within the hour and set-to effecting a repair. Cutting the downflow end of the broken pipe was easy enough, as was fitting the coupling and connecting that end to the replacement section. Now we came to the tricky bit, trimming off the upslope section of the pipe, which of course was still absolutely pissing water.
When I look back, this was in reality quite comical, but if you’ve never tried to hacksaw through a live pressured water pipe, you cannot begin to imagine what it’s like. The best I can compare it to is trying to cut through a pipe whilst someone aims a power-washer straight into your face. I had to take breaks just because I couldn’t hold my breath long enough, for fear of actually drowning. When the end was finally trimmed, and the replacement pipe coupled up (and that wasn’t easy either), to say I was wet is a considerable understatement – everything, and I mean literally everything I was wearing was absolutely soaked, nothing was spared.
Worse still, by then I had no time left to get back to the accommodation to change, I was due to rendezvous with my brother-in-law en route to the match and was already running late. All I had thrown into the car that morning was a U’s shirt, a change of socks and some shoes, so pausing briefly to order a slap-up takeaway for the farmhouse by way of apology, of I had to go – sat in a puddle of misery on the drive into London. We’d arranged to meet at a big sprawling pub we knew alongside either the A2 or the A20 – not sure which, can’t remember its name, nor exactly where it was, but I can definitely still picture it in my head – I’ve had a thorough search on Google Map and streetview, and can’t find anything that looks like I remember, so maybe this is yet another pub lost to the world? We just about had enough time to grab some food and a pint, leave my car in the pub car park, and carry on to the New Den in his car.
This was a slightly different line-up to the matchday programme, particularly Fernandes in goal instead of former Millwall keeper Emberson, who had broken a finger ahead of the match. This was indirectly caused by Richard Wilkins in training the day before, as it was his shot which had done the damage. However, most notably there was the complete absence of Joe Dunne, listed as no. 3 in the programme – was this a portent of things to come, only we didn’t realise it at the time? Nope, he’d broken his arm as it happens. This was also Richard Wilkins’ 250th league game for Colchester United, and in an interview building up to the game “Mr Loyalty” said “…every landmark you reach is very pleasing, but I lost my first-ever game for the club, 2-0 against Preston – I want to make sure that’s not going to happen tonight…[and with Millwall facing a trip to Wembley at the weekend]…so it is very important that we get stuck into them early to find out what their attitude is like tonight”. In researching this match, I also realised this is another game that I still have my ticket for.
Millwall, player-managed by Keith Stevens at the time, were littered with familiar names, including 41-year old veteran Nigel Spink in goal, and of course Bobby ‘Sideways-Bob’ Bowry, Scott Fitzgerald and Leke Odunsi, all of whom would end up playing for the U’s in the future. It is worth reflecting here, Millwall made ELEVEN changes for this match – yep, they fielded virtually an entire second string side, resting every one of the side due to run out for the club’s first game at Wembley – the only survivor from that evening’s line-up was Bobby Bowry, who would be an unused sub on the bench at Wembley. If other teams in and around the U’s with relegation worries were annoyed about this, they really needn’t have been.
What followed was one of the more abject performances by a U’s team it’s been my misfortune to witness, and dare I remind you, endured in a miserably sodden state. Things started very badly for the U’s, when after just 34 seconds we gifted Millwall a 1-0 lead. Aspinall and Green made a complete pigs-ear of what should have been a simple back pass, allowing Kim Grant to break through the middle and slot home easily past Fernandes. With the wind in their sails, the Lions’ makeshift squad continued to press the U’s, until, very much against the run of play, we were thrown an 11th minute lifeline. Millwall player-manager Keith Stevens tripped Aspinall in the box, and up stepped our penalty maestro David Gregory to bring the U’s level. Sadly, replacement keeper Spink hadn’t read the script, and rolling back the years dived superbly to his left to keep Gregory’s rather tame effort out.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Millwall showed how it should be done just four minutes later, to double their lead. Green and Hockton got into a bit of a wrestling match in our penalty area, Greene adjudged to have committed the foul (and booked for his troubles), and Grant stepped up to make it 2-0, sending Fernandes the wrong way. 2-0 down after just 15 minutes, against a second string line-up, and needing every point we could get to stay clear of relegation – could it get much worse? Well, yes and no – finally stung into action pretty much thereafter through to half-time it was all U’s. Both Buckle and Lua Lua went close, both from Dozzell lay-offs, and even when we managed to get anything on target, a towering point-blank header from Pounewatchy and an angled drive from Aspinall, there was Spink throwing any part of his body in the way to keep the U’s out.
The second half was very much more of the same, albeit both Geraint Williams and David Gregory were taken off injured, to be replaced by Duguid and brother Neil respectively. Doogie made an immediate impact, pinging a lovely ball across the face of Nigel Spink’s goal – a simple touch from anyone would have finished it, but no one could reach it. The U’s continued to press, but never looked completely in control, and Grant missed an excellent opportunity to complete his hat-trick, breaking clear from his own half but missing his one-on-one chance. After about 20 minutes of the second half, another setback when substitute Duguid had to be substituted himself because of injury – it’s one of the few occasions I can actually recall this happening, and a real shame, as he was making a big difference. Neil Gregory went on to slice a 12-yard sitter wide, provided by an incisive pass from Pounewatchy, then fired an almost carbon-copy straight at Spink, Buckle and Aspinall went close with efforts that on another day they would have at least got on target, and with only two minutes to go Spink somehow managed to save a close-range header from an unmarked Dozzell.
And that was that, for all their efforts for 75 minutes, against a team of reserves, the U’s were undone by 15 minutes of ineptitude – in truth, it had been a very poor performance, and all I wanted to do was go back to the accommodation, peel off my still decidedly damp attire, and go to bed…
Millwall 2 (Kim Grant 1’, 15’p) Colchester United 0
Sadly, Richard Wilkins’ somewhat prophetic words pre-match had returned to haunt us this game. However, as mentioned in previous blogs in the series that have covered this season, we did eventually avoid relegation, reasonably comfortably too. Likewise, Millwall didn’t amass the unfeasible points haul they needed to have a chance of the play-offs and finished upper mid-table.
If, like me, you care little for Millwall, then you’ll probably be faintly amused that having rested their entire squad for their upcoming first visit to Wembley, they ended up losing the final 1-0 to Wigan Athletic. In gut-wrenching fashion too – conceding in the 3rd minute of injury-time when extra-time looked on the cards, and in front of a crowd of 55,349 – it was estimated that about 47,000 of these were Millwall supporters. Shame 😊
This would turn out to be the last appearance for Geraint Williams in a U’s shirt, though of course he would return as Assistant Manager the following season, eventually taking over the reins post-Parky in our first Championship season in 2006. By coincidence, the colu_official YouTube premiere this afternoon is our final game of the 2005/06 promotion season at Yeovil, which I’m certainly looking forward to.
I think you're probably right mfb - let's be honest, there are only 9 or 10 clubs left with anything to play for now, and only four of them certain of anything to gain once the dust has settled. I'm not so sure on the lack of revenue though, with matches broadcast online to a nation starved of football to watch, I suspect there will be loads prepared to pay £10 to iFollow to watch the matches, and the clubs get 80% of that. With minimal matchday expenditure to worry about, I reckon clubs could actually do quite well financially out of the deal, but enough to make it worth their while - possibly not?
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