Flashing Blade
Youth Team
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2006
- Messages
- 175
I remember reminiscing with some fans a few years back (when you got used to watching McSweeney and co it was best to reminisce about the good times) and I said that my two biggest disappointments as a Southend fan were that we didn't win the Division 3 Championship in 1991 when we should have done and that we'd never had a result that fans of other clubs instantly remember you for.
Col******r have Leeds in 72
Hereford have Newcastle
Wrexham have Arsenal
Sutton have Coventry
Just one game where you are forever linked with that club in the same breath. I didn't think it was too much to ask.
I would love to `do a Wigan' and reach the Premiership but that still requires a leap of faith rather than a realistic hope.
Beating a Premiership side in the cup has always felt like an attainable goal that we've never ever come close attaining.
As one paper wrote yesterday, Southend have never even slain the moderately tall, let alone the giants.
Sheffield Wednesday, Southampton, West Ham, Leicester, Coventry, Crystal Palace, all teams we've played in League games in the last 15 years and yet when it came to playing them in the cup when there's been one or two divisions between us, we've not performed.
0-2 has become our modus operandi when playing a top division side in the cup in recent times.
There had been some glorious failures before that, Everton, Tottenham and Liverpool but they were, in the end, failures. No one from Bristol would remember that Neville Southall somehow saved Benji's shot. No one from Chester would recall Crowny hitting the post with four minutes to go. No one from Carlisle would know about Derrick Parker bearing down on Ray Clemence, one-on-one.
In May of this year, Steve Tilson and the boys buried one of my disappointments. By winning the League One crown they put the name of Southend United on the honours list for that trophy and wiped out the injustice of Dave Martin's penalty miss. Where are Cambridge now, I ask myself?
Six months on and they have achieved the latter against the greatest club side in British football. The long, long wait, all those insipid 2-0 defeats, losing to Scarborough when Chelsea were waiting, never scoring when 10,000 Southend fans are in the same place so you could just see what it was like. It's all been made up for.
The nation was watching. The nation will remember. And when someone from Nottingham asks you who you support and you give your reply, instead of `Who's the manager there now?' or `Who's your Premiership team?' it will be ``Didn't they beat Man United once?''
Yes, sir, we did.
Col******r have Leeds in 72
Hereford have Newcastle
Wrexham have Arsenal
Sutton have Coventry
Just one game where you are forever linked with that club in the same breath. I didn't think it was too much to ask.
I would love to `do a Wigan' and reach the Premiership but that still requires a leap of faith rather than a realistic hope.
Beating a Premiership side in the cup has always felt like an attainable goal that we've never ever come close attaining.
As one paper wrote yesterday, Southend have never even slain the moderately tall, let alone the giants.
Sheffield Wednesday, Southampton, West Ham, Leicester, Coventry, Crystal Palace, all teams we've played in League games in the last 15 years and yet when it came to playing them in the cup when there's been one or two divisions between us, we've not performed.
0-2 has become our modus operandi when playing a top division side in the cup in recent times.
There had been some glorious failures before that, Everton, Tottenham and Liverpool but they were, in the end, failures. No one from Bristol would remember that Neville Southall somehow saved Benji's shot. No one from Chester would recall Crowny hitting the post with four minutes to go. No one from Carlisle would know about Derrick Parker bearing down on Ray Clemence, one-on-one.
In May of this year, Steve Tilson and the boys buried one of my disappointments. By winning the League One crown they put the name of Southend United on the honours list for that trophy and wiped out the injustice of Dave Martin's penalty miss. Where are Cambridge now, I ask myself?
Six months on and they have achieved the latter against the greatest club side in British football. The long, long wait, all those insipid 2-0 defeats, losing to Scarborough when Chelsea were waiting, never scoring when 10,000 Southend fans are in the same place so you could just see what it was like. It's all been made up for.
The nation was watching. The nation will remember. And when someone from Nottingham asks you who you support and you give your reply, instead of `Who's the manager there now?' or `Who's your Premiership team?' it will be ``Didn't they beat Man United once?''
Yes, sir, we did.
