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Here we go then, another season and another blog, as Ben Garner’s U’s prepare to embark on their 82nd season as a football league club. Surely this is the best day to be a football supporter – a day full of hopes, dreams and aspirations, a day when clubs cement their ambition for the hallowed ground of (at least) the play-offs. We’ve had a very solid positive pre-season, some new faces have joined, some more are still anticipated, and as Durham has already highlighted in his excellent review, the ’will he won’t he’ saga of Junior Tchamadeu continues to rumble on. This season for once feels different, there’s an air of positivity and believe pervading not just the squad but the fanbase too, the club is working hard to reengage with the supporters and under Ben Garner we have a manager who really does look to be on the verge of Col U greatness.
In Ben we trust!
So, in the absence of any suggestions (polite or otherwise) on the content of the blog for this season, it’s going to be more or less more of the same, though less of the bits that were more tiresome to research and write. The underlying concept remains, memories of matches for the most part from my (now dwindling) matchday memorabilia archive, interspersed with the occasional ‘special’ as and when the moment demands it. The main thrust behind the concept has always been to stimulate discussion and encourage you to share your own memories of matches covered, maybe even correct my own recollection if necessary, so do please join in.
The world outside U’s World It’s been a hectic few months since the dust settled on our largely meaningless final day match against Mansfield Town, dominated by major developments in the multiple ongoing court proceedings in United States vs Donald J Trump – one of my favourite subjects these days. On the eve of the final day of last season, and too late to allow coverage of it in my blog, Trump was found liable for defamation and the sexual abuse of E Jean Carroll. Without wishing to be too gross about it, the sexual abuse charge was simply because E Jean Carroll couldn't be certain it was his finger or his (ahem) tallywacker, though the judge has since confirmed that what Trump did was for all intents and purposes rape. He was ordered to pay $5m in punitive damages to E Jean Carroll, and then immediately went on TV and defamed her some more, so expect the sum to at least double in a follow-up defamation civil lawsuit.
The former president had already been indicted in New York over the Stormy Daniels hush-money case, with no less than 34 felony charges listed. Since then, in Florida he has been indicted over both his handling of confidential and classified material and attempts to obstruct justice and conceal his actions, with (for now) 40 criminal charges levied against him and his alleged co-conspirators. Most recently, and most seriously for Trump, Special Counsel Jack Smith formally charged him in Washington DC over crimes related to the January 6th insurrection and his attempt to subvert and overthrow the results of the election.
Also waiting in the wings, and likely to land very soon, is Judge Fani Wallis’ ongoing investigation in Georgia over Trump’s attempts to overturn that election result, including his attempts to coerce, bully and threaten Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, demanding he “find 11,780 votes” for Trump – the exact number he needed to win by the narrowest of margins. All of the above, if found guilty, carry some serious jail time sentences as mandatory, which given Trump’s age would mean he’d likely live out the remainder of his sorry and sordid existence behind bars – I can but hope.
Closer to home, the UK braces for the impact of Storm Antoni, the first of our storm season, with Northern Ireland and down here in the South West expected to bear the brunt of it. It is currently raining outside, but if this is as bad as it gets, it looks to be literally the proverbial storm in a tea cup. Covid still hasn’t gone away (I had my first official dose in the close season, after seemingly dodging it for three years), with a significant spike in reported cases. There are those that claim this is a result of the perfect storm (apologies for the analogy) of unseasonably wet weather, and millions flocking to the cinema to watch Barbie and/or Oppenheimer – I haven’t seen either mind you.
Greenpeace protestors have targeted Rishi Sunak’s North Yorkshire home, with five managing to get on the roof of his home whilst he and his family were on holiday in America. They draped the house in oil black cloth and displayed a “No New Oil” banner from the rooftop – a reference to Rishi Sunak signposting he intends to award hundreds of new oil and gas North Sea licences. The protestors were arrested and then released on bail without incident when they returned to the ground, in what has been described as an entirely peaceful protest. In retaliation, Defra have been ordered to cut off any dialogue with Greenpeace on climate matters.
U’s World Much of the latest U’s World news has been covered by Durham, but it is worth reiterating that Gazette journalist Jon Waldron expects two more signings imminently (maybe even this weekend?), and that another Col U observer on Twitter (sorry “X”) has hinted at the identity of no less than five potential strikers in the frame.
The breaking news, and I’m not certain if this counts as one of Waldron’s signings, is the arrival of new goalkeeping coach Yilmaz Aksoy. Yilmaz joins from Charlton Athletic, where he was Head of Goalkeeping for their academy team. His playing career started at Arsenal’s academy, followed by a couple of seasons as a professional for Leyton Orient, before signing for Bulgarian Premier League side PFK Etar. However, a knee injury finished his playing career, and since then he has focussed on coaching – so welcome and good luck Yilmaz!
Of course, the reason why we had a vacancy in the first place was the departure of mercurial Graham Stack. Always a controversial figure during his playing days, Stack left Col U in the summer to take up the role of First Team Goalkeeping Coach as part of manager Robbie Keane’s management team at Maccabi Tel Aviv. However, true to form, Stack managed to get involved in a barroom brawl less than a month into his appointment and was summarily dismissed with immediate effect. I doubt the U’s made any attempt to see if he wanted to come back.
Match of the Day Norwich City v Colchester United 8th August 2009 Coca-Cola Football League One (Tier 3) Attendance 25,217
Thanks to ColuData for the programme cover
As mentioned in the intro, on occasions I will be doing a ‘special’ and the very first blog of this season is a perfect opportunity. It has already been mentioned that we are currently going through a somewhat unenviable run of opening day fixtures without a win. The count is up to nine, which I recall from elsewhere is currently only bettered (if that’s the right word for it) by someone, can’t remember who, on something like 15?
Therefore, what better opportunity than to go back to one of our most recent opening day victories. I’ve already covered the most recent opening day win, Joe Dunne’s 2013 1-0 victory at Priestfield (I was there with my mate Jon), and the one before that, John Ward’s stunning 4-2 at Deepdale in 2011 – that was a hell of a day out. So the opening day victory before that one – Paul Lambert’s U’s at Carrow Road facing newly relegated Norwich City.
Obviously I wasn’t there, so this blog will rely on reporting and video of that day, which thankfully given the momentous nature of the match, there’s still plenty of both available. I would imagine a reasonably large number of you U’sual boarders were there as well? So where was I? Well, my calendar for that year says at home with the kids whilst Em was working a late shift at the hospital – rock and roll eh! Though I did manage to festoon some U’s scarves in the kitchen as evermore incredulous text messages and goal alerts kept my phone pinging all afternoon and into the evening.
Clearly taken with a potato…
This was of course Paul Lambert’s first full season in charge of the U’s, and despite ruffling a few (actually quite a lot of) feathers with his appalling man-management skills, the U’s faithful were still full of hope that under Lambert we could stake a serious claim to get back into the Championship. Lambert had been busy in the transfer market, with Mark Yeates, Chris Coyne, Akanni-Sunday Wasiu and Dean Gerken either released or sold, and a whole host of others forced to either train with the kids, or not even given a squad number. Coming in, and to his credit, Lambert did sign Lee Beevers, David Fox, Magnus Okuonghae and Ben Williams on permanent contracts, but then again he also signed Hamilton Academical forward Joël Thomas – oops!
Lambert’s U’s for the Carrow Road opener was as follows: 1….Ben Williams 3….Lee Beevers 4….Magnus Okuonghae 5….Pat Baldwin 23..Marc Tierney 8….Dean Hammond (captain) 11..Simon Hackney (17. David Perkins 66’) 14..David Fox 7….Ashley Vincent (10. Kemi Izzet 70’) 9….Clive Platt 20..Kevin Lisbie (29. Scott Vernon 62’)
From the footage I’ve seen, it looks like the U’s had pretty much sold out their Carrow Road allocation, which would mean about 2,500 noisy and proud supporters, and they didn’t have too long to start the celebrations. Kevin Lisbie had already been getting the bird constantly from the home support because of his Ipswich connections, but he stunned them into silence in the tenth minute. Goalkeeper Theoklitos, who was about to have the worst day of his life, made a complete mare of a woefully over-hit lofted back pass from Otsemobor that bounced right over the stranded keeper, leaving Lisbie to nip in around the back and tap into the empty net.
If that momentarily stunned the Carrow Road support, they were pinching themselves hoping it was all a bad dream just two minutes later. A long clearance from Beevers was headed down by Platt for Lisbie to run on to, a simple dummy swerve wrong-footed his marker, and Theoklitos could only parry his far post effort right into the path of Clive Platt, who gleefully tapped in for the U’s second. And it didn’t end there – six minutes later a lofted cross from Simon Hackney had the Canaries defence floundering, and there was Platt again to power in at the back post. 3-0 to the U’s, and there still wasn’t twenty minutes on the clock!
Three minutes later it was four! From probably more than 25 yards out, and on his debut, David Fox struck a peach of a free-kick over the wall and into the corner of the net, with the hapless Theoklitos clutching at air in its wake. By now the U’s support was deafening, and the Carrow Road cheers had turned to jeers. Two carrot-crunchers had seen enough and stormed onto the pitch to throw their season tickets in the face of bemused manager Bryan Gunn, who was probably already expecting the call from Delia later that day.
With that comedy side-show out of the way, the U’s gleefully heaped more misery on the Canaries in the 38th minute. A long throw from Marc Tierney was masterfully flicked on by big Clive, and there was Lisbie again to glance over Theoklitos for his second and the U’s fifth. 5-0 up at half-time, with Canary boos echoing all around, and the scoreline was already rippling out across news channels and social media – could the U’s hold on, would Norwich come storming back in the second half, would there be many Norwich supporters left in the ground if they did, or even could we extend that lead further?
The short answer to the latter was of course, though to be fair Norwich were a somewhat different team going into the second half, making a decent effort to at least stop the rot, if not actually get back into the match. And eventually, in the 72nd minute they did – Grant Holt headed into the box, and Cody McDonald nipped in to get the better of Pat Baldwin and drill past Ben Williams. The palpably sarcastic irony in the Carrow cheer for their goal could not be overlooked.
So, three minutes later the U’s just went back up the other end and restored their five goal lead. A long clearance from Ben Williams was deftly directed by Clive Platt into the path of substitute David Perkins, whose first time volley arced into the top corner of Theoklitos’ goal with nothing the keeper could do about it. In the YouTube video linked below you can even see Norwich supporters mock-celebrating the scorcher, because…well…what else are you going to do when you’re having your pants pulled down on the opening day of the season?
And the U’s still weren’t finished there. In the 90th minute an utterly dejected and beleaguered Canaries defence could only stand by and watch as a U’s passing move saw Izzet break into the penalty area to pull back to a completely unmarked Scott Vernon, who made no mistake at all.
Norwich City 1 (McDonald 72’) Colchester United 7 (Lisbie 10’, 38’; Platt 13’, 19’; Fox 22’; Perkins 76’; Vernon 90’)
Of course, with the benefit of hindsight this sensation result could almost be regarded as pyrrhic. The following week Gunn was inevitably sacked, with Norwich City tapping up Lambert to take over in his role. Although Robbie relented and agreed to allow Lambert to talk to Norwich, he stipulated that nothing could be signed until a compensation deal was agreed. Big club Nodge obviously paid no heed to that stipulation, and it would take until quite late in the season for Robbie to rinse them.
After a caretaker spell for Joe Dunne, Aidy Boothroyd was appointed, and although we spent almost the entire season in the play-offs, a string of poor results going into April saw the U’s slid out to finish in 8th place. Despite their opening day setback, Norwich City under Paul Lambert would go on to win the league and return to the Championship.
Michael Theoklitos never played for Norwich City again.
I wasn't at the Norwich match, I was actually fishing but found it difficult to concentrate and focus with all the texts and updates I was receiving from 15:00 until 17:00. What a crazy game that was! And I never tire of watching it either, in fact it was only a couple of months ago that I re-watched it. The version with the Norwich based commentary is probably my favourite. We really did throw it away towards the end of that season, was such a disappointment given we'd been right up there for pretty much the whole season. I think we drew and lost consecutive matches against 10 men which summed up how bad it got.
Prematch refreshments down by the river, Leadbelly will remember the location . Remember the singing of “ Welcome to Division One ,” and the STH running on the pitch to throw his ticket at Brynn Gunn. Most enjoyable.
Another memorable start was a very hot first game win away at Sheffield Wednesday .
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