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Joined
Mar 6, 2004
Messages
4,686
Location
Suffolk 'em all
Ok, it was 0-0, and we've seen better games (tho there were certainly some plus points), but sometimes match day can be more than just about the 90 minutes of football.

Alan traveled down from his native North East yesterday with his daughter Claire, and today made an emotional return to The Hall. With us in the Box were old team mates Ronnie Poutney, Paul Clark, Tony Hadley, Frankie Banks, Warren May and John Walker, plus other old friends and faces from the club many of who Alan had seen decades ago. We even had a visit from the legend that is Sid Broomfield. And afterwards we all retired to the Legends Lounge where lots of fans, many of who had helped with the campaign, popped up to say hello and relive past memories.

We presented our cheque (just over £6,200,but by the time we are finished I expect it to be around £6,500) in tribute to Alan which he will use to go towards the cost of a specially adapted car, a wonderful framed print (done by Joe Smith), and various other momentoes (yes, I gave him a copy of my book - no one escapes, and he loved the framed tribute words from us all at SZ, plus Dave Goody provided a wonderful picture tribute compilation).

The club have been great in helping with the organising of the day - Danny Macklin has been superb. And thanks to Ron too for supporting it all.

And IF ONLY Cox had scored that penalty - a goal celebration had been lined up where the players were to come over tp the North east corner where our box was, line up and give a golf swing and salute. Maybe the pressure of knowing this made him miss? I apologise.

Anyway, the campaign has been a wonderful experience, the fans have shown a real togetherness in making it all work for one of our own as many of you have helped and many many more donated.

And it may yet spawn something else which some thought will be given to over the coming weeks, namely a mechanism by which we can put ex players in touch with each other and invite back to the Hall. Watch this space .......

Cheers, Andy

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Massive kudos to you Andy for steering this campaign. It was an absolute privilege to be involved today and in the bucket collection. I hope Alan and his daughter enjoyed themselves and that, next time they visit, he can be persuaded out on the pitch to receive the accolades that many lesser of our former players have already enjoyed. If there is a player more deserving of the applause of the Southend United faithful, then I have yet to meet him.

This has been one of the best examples of the fans and the club working together and you should feel rightfully proud.
 
Seriously, wonderful stuff.

Top effort, Andy and everyone involved.
 
It's not often that the whole of the Roots Hall crowd is focused on one person, but yesterday everyone homed in on Alan Moody and gave their favourite son the applause he so thoroughly deserved. I like to think that those that were instrumental in making that accolade a reality (and you know who you are Andy and co) were also recipients of the crowd response because you all did a fabulous job in making yesterday, and the whole Moody Blues campaign, happen in the way it did. Brilliant stuff and a moment that will live in my memory for a very long time.
 
Thanks RHB and others for your comments. Ensconced in the box we sadly never heard the tanoy announcement (which I assume is what you were referring to - I'm glad they read it, I wrote it!) - Alan & co were so busy chatting away enjoying themselves that the match had kicked off before we noticed they had started playing. Great to know though that he got a good reception.

We had all hoped he would go out on the pitch - he didn't want to as he didn't want folk to feel sorry for him, but we suspected that once he got there he might feel more comfy about doing it but time went oh so quickly and he was just comfortable as things were.

I then learned in a call this afternoon that not only did he really love the day but he had one regret about it all - that he never went on the pitch! Oh well ....... maybe he'll come down again in a year or so, one idea floating around is a re-union of the 80/81 promotion squad.

Oh, and as an aside, having Paul Clark in the box was a bit surreal, he really is a great guy and a great talker and I kept thinking we had BBC Essex Sport turned on!

Cheers
 
I really hope we can have him back and that he will go on the pitch this time. Having done this once, hopefully he will feel more at ease next time.

The announcement was very surreal because everyone was looking to the Directors' box expecting him to appear there!
 
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