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Crikey, two weeks away from blogging on the road following the U’s, and then another break thanks to our traditional FA Cup 2nd Round Christmas shopping break last weekend, and it feels a little odd to be sitting down writing another blog. On top of which, over the last two weeks we’ve been bombarded with wall-to-wall World Cup football two or three times a day, makes me feel like I’ve been vaguely unfaithful to my first love — don’t worry U’s, it’s just a bit of FIFA-curious, nothing serious. And so, when Saturday comes this weekend The U’sual Ramblings #15 returns with a tough trip to Mansfield for Colchester United. Much as I might be interested in the outcome of Netherlands v USA this afternoon (come on Holland!), there’ll be absolutely no doubt I’ll be taking full advantage of the IFollow live stream from Field Mill. Safe travelling for the faithful (including our very own Durham, Noah, Gerry and Witham).
Bizarrely, my sweepstake no-hopers Morocco actually won their group!
The world outside U’s World On the domestic front, the hits just keep coming for prime minister Rishi Sunak. Labour candidate Samantha Dixon has comfortably won the Chester by-election by nearly 11,000 votes, a by-election called following the resignation of incumbent Chris Matheson after being found guilty of ‘serious sexual misconduct’. Ms Dixon’s majority significantly eclipsed the previous three labour general election majorities of 93 (2015), 9,176 (2017) and 6,164 (2019), and represented a massive 13.8% swing from Tory to Labour, even more than the 12.7% swing in Wakefield in June.
Sunak is also being pressed by opposition parties to withdraw the whip from House of Lords Baroness Michelle Mone, accused of gaining millions from the profits of a pandemic PPE company. After pledging to lead a government that acts with “integrity and professionalism”, Labour and the Lib Dems are demanding he now shows this wasn’t just empty rhetoric. As if that wasn’t enough, Sunak is also still under fire for his decision to reappoint Suella Braverman just six days after she leaked restricted material. William Wragg, chair of the public administration and constitutional affairs committee, described it as “a dangerous precedent”, and called for a robust system for upholding standards with proper sanctions for those who break the rules.
On the subject of stolen documents, the world doesn’t currently look any rosier for Donald Trump either. The 11th circuit Court of Appeals has overruled Judge Aileen Cannon’s bizarre ruling of “equitable jurisdiction”, bringing an immediate halt to the third-party Special Master review of the stolen documents recovered at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort — not that Judge Raymond Dearie (ironically one of Trump’s nominees) wasn’t doing a fantastic job at holding Trump and his lawyers to account as the Special Master. This removes a major obstacle for the Department of Justice’s criminal investigation into Trump’s mishandling of government records and makes an indictment to follow in due course much more likely.
You looking at me, Trump?
Trump is also under fire for inviting noted anti-Semite and all-round nutjob Kanye West (apparently, Ye these days) and odious anti-Semite, racist, holocaust-denying scumbag Nick Fuentes to a Thanksgiving dinner. Trump being Trump, of course he hasn’t apologised for what could be construed as a massive error of judgement (not that it was, he knew exactly what he was doing), nor has he spoken out in opposition to the beliefs those two hold (why would he, he holds them too). No, instead Trump just pretended he knew nothing about Fuentes’ arrival and claimed he didn’t even know who he was or his politics — yeah right. As one commentator observed, Trump’s defence appears to be “How was I supposed to know when I invited an anti-Semite to Mar-a-Lago for Thanksgiving, he’d bring another one with him?”.
U’s World First off, three games were played yesterday evening, though none really had much influence on where the U’s sit right now. Newport scored late on to win 2-1 at Crewe, and pull three more points away from the relegation zone, at least for now. Doncaster emphasised they’re nothing special right now, losing 2-0 at home to Walsall, but the stand-out result has to be Stevenage’s 5-0 demolition of fellow promotion-contenders Barrow at Broadhall Way, including a 78th minute penalty for our very own (and Boro leading goal scorer) Chuck Norris, who’s now on nine goals so far this season.
We may not have played much league football recently, but the U’s did have a second round Pizza Slice Goblet match against League 1 Bristol Rovers to contend with about six months ago (or so it feels). Okay, so we went out courtesy of a last minute injury-time goal to lose 2-1, but it was a pretty good performance, building well on the fantastic win over Doncaster Rovers the previous Saturday. Although Samson Tovide really should have buried his first half header, it was nice to see Freddie back on the scoresheet in the second half.
On the subject of scoring goals, finally we’ve had a month with enough goals to run a half decent Goal of the Month competition. The winner will be announced next Wednesday, and without wishing to influence an otherwise free and fair election — it’s got to be Tovide against Doncaster every day of the week and twice on Sundays. https://www.cu-fc.com/news/2022/december/november-gotm/
With the festive season officially upon us, the club shop is staying open to 9pm every Tuesday and Thursday evening from now until December 15th for your essential range of gifts and stocking fillers. It’ll also be open late on December 19th, when the U’s U21s entertain Premier League side Everton.
…and finally, after squeaking through the 3rd Round in a penalty shoot-out against Dagenham and Redbridge, in the 4th Round of the BBC Essex Senior Cup the U’s have been drawn at home against Saffron Walden Town. The Bloods have already despatched Woodford Town, Burnham Ramblers and Walthamstow in previous rounds, though a date for their JobServe visit has yet to be arranged.
Stat attack Today we face Mansfield Town, or as my Spireite friends would simply call them, the scabs. The enmity between Chesterfield and Mansfield Town transcends mere local rivalry, it is more of a cultural and societal divide with its roots deep in the heart of the 1984/85 Miner’s Strike. As I lived in Castleford throughout most of 1983 and 1984 and witnessed the growing impact of the miner’s strike on local communities, including striking miners and members of their family who took work with us to help make ends meet, I thought I’d explore this dark chapter in UK labour relations a bit more.
The mining industry had been in steady decline throughout the second half of the 20th century, from an estimated 1,000 collieries across the country in the 50s to just 173 at the time of the strike. That still, however, represented over 230,000 miners and associated trades, almost all with families to support from their wage. By then, much of the richer coal seams had been mined out, and many coal mines were overwhelmingly unprofitable.
In the early 80s the Conservative government, under Margaret Thatcher, looked to close unprofitable pits and privatise the remainder, a move that threatened strike action in 1981, though narrowly averted when the government reached a deal with the unions. However, Mrs Thatcher wasn’t done, she wanted, no in fact needed, a decisive victory over the trade union movement, and who better to take on than the National Union of Mineworkers under the leadership of flawed maverick Arthur Scargill.
In what was considered a deliberately confrontational move, Mrs Thatcher appointed Anglo-American Ian MacGregor as head of the National Coal Board in 1983. Ironically brought back into British industry by then Labour prime minister James Callaghan in 1977, it was MacGregor’s role as chairman of the nationalised British Steel Corporation from 1979 that made him the perfect poster-boy for the new era of Thatcherite politics. There was no doubt that the steel industry was in a mess, producing an estimated 14m tons per year, but with an annual loss of £1.8bn. MacGregor went about it not with a scalpel but an axe, and with little or no remorse for the social impact of his decisions, and by 1983 nearly 100,000 steel workers had lost their jobs, albeit the industry was now only losing £250m per year.
In March 1984, after secretly stock-piling vast reserves of coal at power stations, the NCB under MacGregor announced the closure of 20 of the most unprofitable pits. Many communities in Northern England, Scotland and Wales would lose their primary source of employment because of these closures. Regional union leaders immediately organised local strikes in protest, but Arthur Scargill, fatally without calling for a national ballot of members, announced a UK-wide national strike on 12th March 1984. Picket lines were formed, but support for the strike was mixed, particularly in the Midlands. Mrs Thatcher’s plan was three-fold: build up ample coal stocks to protect the energy sector; keep as many miners as possible working (even if through coercion); and most controversially, use the police force to break up picket lines wherever possible.
What followed was a year-long, bitter, and often violent industrial dispute that would take the lives of six people by the end. The Nottinghamshire NUM as a body initially supported the strike, but most of its members crossed increasingly fractious picket lines and continued to work. A May Day demonstration in Mansfield organised by the Notts NUM in protest about what they perceived as intimidation from the picket lines, ended in violence as opposing factions of mostly Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire miners and supporters fought on the streets. Very few major trade unions supported the NUM, mainly because of the absence of a national ballot. More significantly, because of the absence of a national ballot, the strike was ruled illegal in September 1984.
As the strike ground on into early 1985, and with the government even cutting social security payments to dependants of striking miners in a bid to starve the miners back to work, more and more of the workforce were forced back to work. These so called ‘hunger scabs’ were viewed with considerably more sympathy by striking miners, certainly far more than their strike-breaking colleagues. There were even reports of fights breaking out at working collieries between those who had crossed the picket lines and those forced back to work through starvation.
The strike was finally broken on 3rd March 1985, with particularly Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Kent miners remaining the most resolute to the bitter end. The power and influence of the trade union movement had been severely damaged, and the NUM torn apart by internal factions, recriminations, and blame. Many of the pits marched back to work behind their colliery bands in what were dubbed ‘loyalty parades’. Arthur Scargill even led a procession, accompanied by a Scots piper at Barrow Colliery in Worsborough, but a flying picket of Kent miners (who fought on for another fortnight before being forced back to work) got there first. Scargill refused to cross the picket line and turned the procession away.
Following the strike, the Nottinghamshire NUM formed a breakaway union, the Union of Democratic Miners with their headquarters in Mansfield. The UDM attracted members from mostly Nottinghamshire and South Derbyshire, but also including many isolated pits across the country where the NUM ‘militancy’ culture was not as strong. MacGregor was delighted with this move, giving him the reason he needed to announce that NUM membership was no longer mandatory, thus ending the closed shop arrangement for mineworkers.
Not without controversy, the UDM was widely criticised in 2004 after it was discovered that its two top officials Roy Lynk and Neil Greatrex received pay and benefits of over £150k each, despite the union only having a membership of 1,431. In 2012 Greatrex was found guilty of stealing thousands of pounds from Phoenix Nursing and Residential Home Ltd, a subsidiary company of the UDM charity Nottinghamshire Miners Home. In 2018 the UDM reported just 72 members.
Of the 173 collieries still open in 1984, many were closed pretty much immediately, and all had been closed by the end of 2015. The social impact on local communities was enormous, with poverty almost universally significantly increased in former coal mining areas. By 1994 Grimethorpe in South Yorkshire was recorded as the poorest settlement in the country. Despite the defeat, following the strike Arthur Scargill was elected to lifetime presidency of the NUM by an overwhelming national majority.
Match of the Day Mansfield Town v Colchester United Saturday 2nd November 2019 Sky Bet League Two (Tier 4) Attendance 4,125
Another special for this weeks’ Match of the Day, as we go back to our most recent victory over Mansfield Town, when John McGreal’s U’s visited Field Mill in November 2019. I wasn’t at Field Mill for this game, and I think from the usual U’sual boarders only Durham and maybe Noah(?) were. Though to be fair, after my midweek trip and stayover in Crawley for our stunning Carabao Cup 4th round victory, I’d probably earned a day off 😊.
Going into the game, the U’s were four points outside the play-offs, and three points ahead of their hosts. With back to back victories over Newport County and Crawley in the Carabao Cup, the U’s were looking for a rare victory triple at Field Mill. Mansfield, although struggling through most of August and September, had started to turn things around during most of October, and were gradually pulling away from the relegation zone. Despite the day being mostly grey, damp and overcast (albeit the sun did peek through once or twice), the rain held off — mercifully so, given the pitch was a tad on the soft almost boggy side.
John McGreal’s U’s lined up that afternoon:
1….Dean Gerken 2….Ryan Jackson 3….Cohen Bramall 18..Tom Eastman 5….Luke Prosser (captain) 14..Brandon Comley 24..Ben Stevenson (8. Harry Pell 90’) 49..Kwame Poku (4. Tom Lapslie 82’) 7….Courtney Senior 15..Callum Harriott (26. Luke Gambin 85’) 45..Frank Nouble
Currently pulling up trees at Broadhall Way, Chuck Norris was out with a groin strain following his goalscoring exploits at Crawley in midweek, replaced by Callum Harriott. Frank Nouble would play up front, with Harriott and Senior out wide in support and Poku in behind Frank down the middle.
Both sides started brightly, and with barely a few minutes on the clock Gerken did exceptionally well to palm out a firm header from Andy Cook, latching on to a perfect cross from Kellan Gordon out on the right. Gerken even had the awareness to smother his own save as the ball ran loose in the penalty area. Not be outdone, the U’s swept back up the pitch to create their own chance, with Cohen Bramall skinning his marker out on the left to drill a pass into the heart of the six yard box. Although in their buzzing about making a nuisance of himself, Senior just couldn’t get his toe to what would have been an easy tap-in.
But the U’s didn’t have long to wait to break the deadlock. Three minutes later, from almost out of nowhere, the U’s were in front with an absolute thunderbolt. The ball broke out on the left, Eastman tapped back to the ever alert Bramall, who rolled the ball perfectly into the path of Brandon Comley. Comley didn’t need a second invitation, put his laces through it, and from more than 25 yards rifled the ball into the top right corner of Conrad Logan’s goal, much to the delight of the travelling 212 U’s fans.
With the pace and trickery of Harriott, Senior and Comley causing the Mansfield defence no end of concern, the U’s were rampant. It didn’t take long for opportunities to extend the lead, with on target attempts by both Stevenson and Poku blocked by an ever-increasingly desperate Mansfield rearguard. However, a few minutes before halftime we were reminded that 1-0 is only a very slender and vulnerable lead, when Nicky Maynard fired in his own long range strike which had Gerken scrambling to palm away to his left.
A minute or so later, that threat was realised when Ryan Sweeney tapped in from close range a Malvind Benning corner, with Gerken on the ground seemingly fouled as the corner was swung in. Referee Seb Stockbridge was having none of the U’s protests, and the equaliser was allowed to stand. Despite our dominance in the first half, at half time the scores were level.
However, with just one minute on the clock for the second half, the U’s were given a golden opportunity to restore their lead. Poku weaved his way into the penalty area from the right, goal-provider Benning stuck out the softest of legs, which Poku happily fell over for probably the easiest penalty decision of Stockbridge’s career. Up stepped big Frank with a slightly faltering run, never really looking that confident, to almost pass a fairly tame effort at an easy height to Logan’s left, which the ’keeper gratefully palmed away with ease.
Nouble nearly made up for the miss a few minutes later, his low effort deflecting wide for a corner, as the U’s continued to look to restore their lead. Harriott tried a looping 20-yarder which ended on the roof of the net, and just after the hour mark went even closer, rattling the post with a fine strike as the U’s broke quickly from defence. As the clock ticked down to just 15 minutes to go, John McGreal was probably starting to think about making some changes, maybe bringing on Harry Pell, when Senior made the decision a bit easier for him.
Latching on to an excellent pass from Poku, Senior ghosted past his marker into the box, to lift an excellent strike over the advancing Logan and into the back of the net. The U’s support went mental — surely now we’d done enough, and were sufficiently in control to see out the remaining minutes for a victory? Manager John Dempster had seen enough, and moments later made a double substitution for the Stags, bringing on Jacob Mellis and CJ Hamilton.
McGreal responded by swapping the creative flair of Poku for the tigerish tenacity of Tom Lapslie, and with five minutes to go both managers rolled the dice one more time, bringing on Omari Sterling-James for Mansfield, and Carabao Cup goalscoring hero Luke Gambin for a tiring Callum Harriott. Those changes for the U’s provided inspirational, as it was Gambin, latching on to Logan’s save from a Tom Lapslie shot, who drilled the ball into the net to give the U’s a thoroughly well-deserved 3-1 lead.
Harry finally made it on to the pitch in the 90th minute, but it would be Mansfield Town who took a tiny bit of gloss off the imperious U’s performance, with substitute Sterling-James drilling home through a crowded box in injury time to give the Stags a faint hope of rescuing a point — but to no avail, and as Stockbridge blew the final whistle, the U’s faithful celebrations were almost drowned out by the boos of the home support.
Mansfield Town 2 (Ryan Sweeney 45’; Omari Sterling James 90’’) Colchester United 3 (Brandon Comley 8’; Courtney Senior 74’; Luke Gambin 87’)
A rare third victory on the trot for the U’s, and although we wouldn’t repeat that feat for the remainder of the season, that did provide the springboard for a run of undefeated games that lasted through to the end of January, obviously not including our cracking day out at Old Trafford.
Although we stumbled a bit through February, by the time the season was brought to a premature end in March the U’s had done enough to make the play-offs on the points per game rule. For Mansfield, defeat to the U’s brought an end to their mini revival and heralded in a dramatic slump in form that saw the Stags slide down the league. Although never at any real risk of relegation, thanks to the woefully inept Macclesfield Town and Stevenage, they finished fourth from bottom in the league.
I’ve been down into the Wieliczka Salt Mine near Krakow, Poland. Amazing place. Over many centuries, the miners carved amazing chambers and underground shrines. At its deepest point is an huge underground cathedral, complete with ornate chandeliers, all carved out of rock salt, and with one wall carved into a huge replica of the “Last Supper”.
To exit, they take you back up in an original miners lift that accommodates only three persons in a very narrow shaft. Quite an experience!
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The U'sual Ramblings #15 on 19:14 - Dec 5 with 1640 views
The U'sual Ramblings #15 on 17:41 - Dec 5 by noah4x4
I’ve been down into the Wieliczka Salt Mine near Krakow, Poland. Amazing place. Over many centuries, the miners carved amazing chambers and underground shrines. At its deepest point is an huge underground cathedral, complete with ornate chandeliers, all carved out of rock salt, and with one wall carved into a huge replica of the “Last Supper”.
To exit, they take you back up in an original miners lift that accommodates only three persons in a very narrow shaft. Quite an experience!
Have to agree the Krakow Salt Mines are impressive
Another impressive salt mine is Salina de Turda near Cluj in Romania. The main chamber is so big it has a ferris wheel in it
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The U'sual Ramblings #15 on 13:22 - Dec 6 with 1604 views
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