Mick
Life President
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2003
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On Saturday we play Woking for just the second time in the club’s history, just 2 days short of 24 years after our only previous match – the 2-0 away Cup victory. I don’t remember too much about the game except that we were well on top, it rained a lot and we had an unlikely goalscoring combination of Nathan Jones and Phil Gridelet. Also, they gave us visiting supporters seats in comfortably the best stand in the ground.
Woking are referred to as “the Cards”, not through any abundance of red and yellow cards, but as a contraction of the Cardinals. Again, nothing religious, simply their shirt colours were designated cardinal red. Regular winners of the FA Trophy a while back (although they lost in the final to Grays in the one I saw with Jamie Stuart, Stuart Thurgood, Michael Kightly and Gary Hooper in the Grays squad) and before that FA Amateur Cup winners, their most famous result is probably their 4-2 FA Cup win at West Bromwich Albion with a memorable hat-trick for Tony Buzaglo.
Saturday’s match will be refereed by Londoner, Ryan Atkin who hit the headlines in a big way just over 4 years ago when he decided to publicly declare that he was gay – the first match official in the English professional game to do so (he was running the line in Football League matches at the time). He has since been followed by the seemingly permanently injured Championship referee James Adcock who had averaged just 6 games a season for the past 5 years and has now retired.
A Senior Manager within the railway industry, in his mid 30s, Atkin is now concentrating on refereeing (rather than lining) and is in his third year as a National League referee. Those two and a bit seasons have seen just 16 National League matches – only two of which have been this season. His most recent league match was Woking’s impressive home win over Chesterfield. Those 16 matches have produced 48 yellow cards and 3 red cards.
He has not refereed Southend before but this will be his fourth Woking match. In addition to the win against Chesterfield, he did their 5-1 win at Dover last season and their 2-1 defeat at Ebbsfleet the season before. He has been a regular Assistant or Fourth Official at Roots Hall over recent years.
Assistants are Hugh Gilroy from Chiswick who performed a similar role in our match at Wealdstone and Gary Jerden, a PE educationalist from Wickford. Kirsty Dowle, also a worker on the railways, will be standing by as Fourth Official. Approaching 30, she is on the FIFA list of woman referees.
Woking are referred to as “the Cards”, not through any abundance of red and yellow cards, but as a contraction of the Cardinals. Again, nothing religious, simply their shirt colours were designated cardinal red. Regular winners of the FA Trophy a while back (although they lost in the final to Grays in the one I saw with Jamie Stuart, Stuart Thurgood, Michael Kightly and Gary Hooper in the Grays squad) and before that FA Amateur Cup winners, their most famous result is probably their 4-2 FA Cup win at West Bromwich Albion with a memorable hat-trick for Tony Buzaglo.
Saturday’s match will be refereed by Londoner, Ryan Atkin who hit the headlines in a big way just over 4 years ago when he decided to publicly declare that he was gay – the first match official in the English professional game to do so (he was running the line in Football League matches at the time). He has since been followed by the seemingly permanently injured Championship referee James Adcock who had averaged just 6 games a season for the past 5 years and has now retired.
A Senior Manager within the railway industry, in his mid 30s, Atkin is now concentrating on refereeing (rather than lining) and is in his third year as a National League referee. Those two and a bit seasons have seen just 16 National League matches – only two of which have been this season. His most recent league match was Woking’s impressive home win over Chesterfield. Those 16 matches have produced 48 yellow cards and 3 red cards.
He has not refereed Southend before but this will be his fourth Woking match. In addition to the win against Chesterfield, he did their 5-1 win at Dover last season and their 2-1 defeat at Ebbsfleet the season before. He has been a regular Assistant or Fourth Official at Roots Hall over recent years.
Assistants are Hugh Gilroy from Chiswick who performed a similar role in our match at Wealdstone and Gary Jerden, a PE educationalist from Wickford. Kirsty Dowle, also a worker on the railways, will be standing by as Fourth Official. Approaching 30, she is on the FIFA list of woman referees.
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travelling down later on today....
