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The U’sual Ramblings #22 finds the U’s anticipating the visit of Barrow AFC to the JobServe, on the back of a gritty, sometimes gnarly performance at Hartlepool, which saw the U’s come home victorious with a 2-1 win. Kels picked up his second in two games early on, and just when I thought we’d have to settle for a point following Sterry’s late equaliser, Matt thought different, sending on Ashley and Newby, and with two minutes to go Newby bundled the ball home (apparently off the boot of hero to zero Sterry) to take the points. Yes, there was an element of luck about the winner, but in this game you make your own luck, and we wouldn’t have scored if we hadn’t been up there trying to score in the first place...if that makes sense?
The world outside U’s World So currently dominating sporting headlines for the last day or so is the Welsh Rugby Union’s decision to ‘ban’ the crowd favourite and Tom Jones classic Delilah from being played at the Principality Stadium during Welsh international rugby matches, primarily due to the problematic nature of its content (i.e. man dates lady, lady prefers someone else, man stabs lady). This kind of isn’t news though, the song had already been taken off the stadium’s half-time playlist eight years ago, and although the difference might be tenuous, the WRU have stated it’s not banned per se, just removed from the venue’s playlist for visiting choirs etc.
So obviously one must applaud the sentiment behind the decision — violence against women is a global epidemic, even in our apparent ‘civilised’ societies in the west, and we all must do what we can to oppose it. Is this the right way of going about it — probably not, particularly considering the ‘anti-woke’ backlash it’s creating. But then again, where do you start? Someone has to make a stand somewhere, if not here then where? Tom Jones, who has been involved in claims of sexual abuse both endured by him and caused by him in the past, is allegedly “shocked” by the decision.
Of course, a cynic might observe that this is all just smoke and mirrors to deflect attention away from the WRU as an organisation. A BBC investigation last month alleged that the WRU was riddled with sexism and discrimination, with Charlotte Wathan, former general manager of Welsh women’s rugby claiming there was a “toxic culture” of sexism at the organisation. Former CEO Steve Phillips stepped down after the allegations, and yesterday the WRU chair Ieuan Evans announced the formation of an external taskforce to investigation the federation’s culture and behaviours.
If you want to see more positive action in the battle against misogyny, look no further than a handful of unnamed female celebrities who were due to appear on a celebrity special of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The ladies have apparently made it “very loud and very clear” that it would be a cold day in hell before they appeared on a stage alongside odious slimeball Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson has a long and shameful misogynistic history, his latest outburst being he wanted to see Meghan Markle “paraded naked through the streets and “dreams of people throwing excrement at her”.
The show has been scrapped.
U’s World Whilst we await announcement of the League 2 Manager of the Month nominees, it would be a cruel and unjust world if Matt Bloomfield wasn’t one of them. Although how he’s turned around our season since Christmas is nothing short of a miracle, I wouldn’t expect him to win the January award if nominated, I suspect it will go to Carlisle’s Paul Simpson, but it would be a noteworthy achievement just to be nominated.
Incidentally, since the competition was first introduced 18 years ago under the then Coca-Cola sponsorship, a U’s manager has won the League 2 award just once — John McGreal back in December 2016. In League 1 we’ve won it twice, Parky in January 2006 and Lamberk in January 2009, and most notably in the Championship, Geraint Williams in September 2006.
More sobering news from the treatment room, Tom Dallison has been ruled out of action for up to two months with a knee injury. There’s no doubt he’ll be missed in what is clearly a revitalised back three, but it’s not like we haven’t signed some real quality to help fill the space. If there’s good news from this announcement, at least (a) Tom should be fit as we head into the final couple of months of the season, and (b) the injury doesn’t require the operation some feared.
Also on the injury front, the double blow of losing goalkeepers Sam Hornby (shoulder injury) and Ted Collins (broken tibia) for the rest of the season was marginally offset by the immediate signing of Tom Smith from Arsenal. Tom has been with Arsenal since joining their youth set-up in 2018, ad has seen loans at Bromley, Welling United, Dover Athletic and even my former adopted home Salisbury City. I expect Tom will be on the bench today, so welcome and good luck Tom!
In brighter news, and pertinent as far as the Match of the Day below, the U’s U21 side played their rearranged fixture against Cardiff City at Maldon & Tiptree’s Park Drive Stadium yesterday lunchtime, after the original fixture was called off before Christmas because of a frozen pitch. Dave Huzzey’s team humiliated their more illustrious Championship opponents, hammering the Bluebirds 3-0. Let’s hope Matt’s U’s can achieve the same result against todays Bluebirds.
Stat attack I’ve already featured a potted history of Barrow AFC and our stats against the Bluebirds in WSC#05, so I won’t be repeating that here. However, do enjoy the highlights from our visit to Holker Street last season.
Instead, seeing as I brought it up in the first place, what about the dreaded Manager of the Month “curse”? If I had time to do this properly, there’d be spreadsheets, pie charts and probability curves, but I haven’t, so there won’t be. Instead, how about a purely subjective view based on the League 2 award winners from last season.
As far as I can tell, the nominees are usually announced midway through the second week of the following month, and winners chosen 2-3 days later. From that perspective therefore, on the hypothesis that the curse (or lack of) is only activated when the winner is announced, I’ll be looking at league results approximately two weeks into the following month in each case.
August 2021 — Rob Edwards (Forest Green Rovers): Won four and lost one in August, received award and won the next game 4-0 at Stevenage — definitely no curse.
September 2021 — Darrell Clarke (Port Vale): Won three and lost one in September, and although he lost the previous Saturday 4-3 at Sutton, after receiving the award Clarke won the next game 3-1 at home to today’s opponents Barrow — no curse.
October 2021 — Darrell Clarke (Port Vale): Darrell Clarke again, won four, drew one and lost one in October. After gaining the award, drew the next game at home to Bradford and lost the next two - smells a bit cursified to me.
November 2021 — Rob Edwards (Forest Green Rovers): What is this, some sort of MoM old boys club? Won all three in November, and didn’t lose again until February — curse, wot curse!.
December 2021 — Micky Mellon (Tranmere): Won four out of four in December, and although he drew the previous Tuesday at Salford, after receiving the award Mellon won the next game 2-0 at home to Rochdale, and indeed the next away at Crawley. However, Tranmere were on the brink of dropping into a dreadful run of form, losing five of their next nine games — no immediate curse, maybe more of a slow-acting poison?.
January 2022 — Rob Edwards (Forest Green Rovers): Oh come on, do me a favour — won four and drew two in January, see November for more info — no curse.
February 2022 — Matt Taylor (Exeter City): Won four, drew one, one postponed in February. Drew his next post-award match 0-0 at home to Salford but continued to win thereafter six of the next seven matches — no curse.
March 2021 — Joey Barton (Bristol Rovers): Won four and lost two in March, a surprisingly poor return for the award recipient. However, won his next match post-award at home to Salford, and remained unbeaten to the end of the season — definitely not cursed.
April 2021 — Matt Taylor (Exeter City): Won five, drew one and lost one in April. Of course, with the award being made after the end of the season, it’s a bit difficult to judge whether cursed or not, but for what it’s worth Matt Taylor moved to Rotherham in the summer and went five games unbeaten (with two wins) at the start of this season — no curse.
So there you have it, empirical proof that the curse of the Manager of the Month award is probably bobbins — you heard it here first.
Match of the Day Cardiff City v Colchester United 2nd January 2015 FA Cup (3rd Round) Attendance 4,194
Match of the Day for this blog, and the random memorabilia match selector has ironically, given both the current Delilah debate and today’s Bluebird opponents, chosen one of my few visits to the Principality, as the U’s travelled on a Friday evening for an FA Cup 3rd round match at Cardiff City. This was actually my first (and so far only) visit to the new look Ninian Park, and as we were going ‘international’ Alfie’s first match following the U’s in another country. As we headed out across the Second Severn Crossing he was genuinely quite excited about it too!
It was also an opportunity to meet up with my god-daughter Claire, who was over in Cardiff with boyfriend Stuart visiting his family — Stuart was honour-bound to sit with his own supporters, not that there were many of those. Bluebirds owner Malaysian Vincent Tan had decided he wanted to bring good fortune to an ailing Cardiff City, and in Malaysia red is the colour of prosperity, so insisted Cardiff City play in all red. I know we bemoaned not having blue and white stripes, but this was on a wholly different level, and Cardiff City supporters voted with their feet and stayed away in their droves. As a result, the attendance that evening was barely over 4,000, and 2-300 of those must have been U’s supporters.
The route to the 3rd round had been relatively straightforward, a 6-3 win away at Gosport Borough, followed by much tougher 2nd round game against fellow League 1 side and near neighbour Peterborough United. It had been three seasons that we’d failed to make the 3rd round draw, so we were all hoping for a decent draw — sadly, we got Cardiff City away. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight we now know that apart from the following season, this would be one of the last times we’d be in the 3rd round. Had we known that we might have made more of an occasion of it.
Tony Humes’ U’s lined up that chilly Friday evening:
As for the game, despite being more than a league apart, the U’s started playing some bright possession-based football. We hadn’t had a particularly good November of December in the league, so it was kind of a relief to forget about our tricky league position for once and watch the U’s play with a bit of confidence about them.
Szmods and Sears in particularly were keeping a clearly nervous Cardiff City defence on their toes, and even when Cardiff City showed some attacking intent, with Joe Ralls firing a fierce 25-yard effort, Sam Walker was its equal, diving to his right to push the effort wide. The U’s continued to press, with Gorkss heading narrowly wide from a Fox corner, before at the other end Whittingham’s own corner bounced unnervingly along the top of the bar before going out, but Walker had it covered.
However, just after the half hour we were undone by Bluebird dangerman Joe Ralls who drove in a 30 yard piledriver that deflected off not one but two U’s players (Gorkss and Kpekawa) to leave Sam Walker flat-footed with no chance of keeping it out. The handful of City supporters celebrated briefly before returning to their anti-Tan chants, and the U’s despite playing the more promising football, found themselves undeservedly a goal down.
It was nearly two a couple of minutes later, as Adeyemi’s low somewhat weakly hit shot seemed to be creeping into the corner before Sam came to the rescue to push it aside for a corner. Still though the U’s had some fight in them, and Massey was unlucky to be denied by a Simon Moore save after Freddie had dummied Szmods pass to allow the ball to run through for him just before half-time.
Into the second half, and following refreshments and a Bovril, the U’s looked to get back into the game, and at the very least force a replay back at the JobServe. Unfortunately though, whatever manager Russell Slade had said to his team at the break, it clearly worked, and the U’s attacking intent was constantly stifled by a hard working Cardiff City midfield. Less than ten minutes into the game, and the U’s were undone a second time, with the defence failing to deal with a lofted corner that Turner basically headed straight up in the air. As it came back down Kadeem Harris was first to it and expertly hooked in over his shoulder, again giving Sam no chance.
The effort from the U’s didn’t falter, but now the worry was avoiding a route more than can we get back into the game, and on the hour mark that fear become ever more concerning, when again from a corner Kenwyne Jones was given the freedom of our penalty area to waltz in and easily head home unmarked. It was galling that Jones had only just come on, and this was his first touch of the ball. Tony Humes had seen enough, and swapped Sanchez Watt for Gavin Massey, and making his debut for the U’s, Tom Lapslie for George Moncur.
If nothing else the changes tightened up the U’s midfield, and even if we didn’t look like seriously troubling Cardiff City, at least we appeared to have averted an embarrassing route. Fifteen minutes later we finally got the goal we deserved, with substitute Watt and Sears working well together exchanging passes before Freddie drilled home from just inside the penalty area, and finally the travelling faithful had something to cheer about — and we did!
And suddenly, hopes of a cup upset were alive again. With six minutes to go Freddie set up Watt to return the favour, but his effort flew narrowly over the bar. Dion Sembie-Ferris came on with five minutes to go, and doing brilliantly down the right wing, he managed to cut in and get past goalkeeper Simon Moore, only for the ball to bounce around off legs literally right on the goal-line before squirming wide for a corner. And that was more or less it — the U’s bowed out of the FA Cup, but there was certainly no disgrace in our performance.
Cardiff City 3 (Joe Ralls 43’; Kadeem Harris 53’; Kenwyne Jones 60’) Colchester United 1 (Freddie Sears 74’)
The following Monday our U21s exacted some revenge, beating the Cardiff City U21 side 2-0 at the Cardiff City stadium. Cardiff City were drawn at home to Reading in the FA Cup 4th round, a match they lost 2-1 in front of a marginally better crowd of 11,750 — albeit about 4,000 of those had travelled from Berkshire. Reading actually made it all the way through to the semi-finals, before going out after extra-time against eventual cup winners Arsenal.
This would be the last appearance for Cole Kpekawa before his loan from QPR expired, though he would return to sign for the U’s in 2017. His second spell at the club wasn’t as successful, and in April of the following year his contract was cancelled by mutual consent. In the league, this was of course Tony Humes’ great escape season, with that memorable last day against Preston North End. Although he started as manager for the 2015/16 season, he was relieved of his managerial duties by November.
Up the U’s!
There’s still a highlights reel on YouTube if you’re that way inclined:
And just to coincide with the Cardiff featured game . News from the Vanderama
Scunthorpe United is delighted to announce the signing of winger Dion Sembie-Ferris.
The 26-year-old arrives after leaving Peterborough Sports and reunites with new management duo Jimmy Dean and Chris Plummer who joined the club at the weekend.
Sembie-Ferris began his youth career with Peterborough United before eventually joining Colchester United in 2013, following spells at Netherton Vultures, Tresham Academy and St Neots Town.
The U'sual Ramblings #22 on 10:06 - Feb 7 by durham_exile
Chilling to read Hume's U's lined up.........
Very scary.
Cardiff, Swansea and Newport remain grounds that I have never been to or have watched Col U play at.
Up the U's
Played some really good football under Humes. Better points per game record than Brown, Ball, Mullins and Keen. Averaged more goals scored per game under him than any other recent manager, the problem was we couldn't defend.
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