I spotted this artical by "BONNIEPRINCE" and it brought a tear to my eye. I hope i have not done wrong in cut and pasting it!
It's a real shame the club has to move from Roots Hall. It's a funny, lovely old ground, full of soul. I've had fine times there and seen some great games, and some of my favourite football memories are tied up in that stadium, like meeting paul gascoigne at a charity game, or being amongst 12,000 odd packed in for cup games and local derbies, or seeing an aged and enormous nev southall make one amazingly athletic save.
There is nothing like walking to the ground at quarter to three and seeing people closing their front doors behind them and rushing down the street in time for kick off. The stadium is at the heart of the community, in the centre of the old town, from the west stand you can see the spire of St.Mary's, the mother church of southend, and the trees of prittlewell park. On a thursday the huge car park next to the ground has its weekly market, with the second-hand market on sunday, and every second saturday the chip shop at the end of the road has a spike in sales. You can go for a pint in the pub where the club was formed, still standing about a hundred odd yards from the gates. There is little branding, free parking, beer, pies, old duffers, gangs of kids, wooden terracing, stinky toilets, flaky paintwork, familiar faces, season in season out, baking in the summer and freezing in the winter. It is not sentimental, it is still a functioning part of working class culture and part of the football tradition in this country - something which is being lost on an almost yearly basis as clubs move grounds. It is something Arsene Wenger noted when he first came to this country, that in Britain football grounds are in the middle of towns, rising above roof tops and very much part of the fabric of a community. Now, however, the trend is to have an identikit plastic stadium on a ring road or junction, part of a 'leisure park' or supermarket development, surrounded by arable desert, out of town, out of the way. You have to drive or get the bus, then drive back to go to the pub or chippy, no banter at the bar or on the street. And the old ground? flattened to make way for poor quality housing, offices, more supermarkets, money for the developers, kudos for the tory council, screw the people.
Don't get me wrong, I want the club to survive, to prosper, to move on. But for me, the club is so tied up with Roots Hall that to leave it will kill part of its soul. Whilst I can't go much these days I know there is a core group of supporters, some friends and some I don't know, madly loyal fans who follow the club through thick and thin, from the edge of oblivion to the top half of the championship and back down again. I want success for them as much as the club. I only wish they didn't have to get rid of the old Hall and build yet another supermarket in it's place.
