O
n the eve of Tuesday 23rd.
March I trundled up the A127 with my brother Vic, President Brian, Geoff and Ray Needham to see Southend United play Walsall. This was the rearranged date from the 9th of January when the teams were originally due to play. This match you may recall was being spon- sored by Rotary as part of the Purple Pinkie Polio eradication week.
N F
ow I haven‟t been to a live professional
match for very many years so I had forgotten some of the rituals involved.
irstly, if you are driving to a match you
have to get there quite early in order to have the privi- lege of parking in a street miles from the actual ground. We didn‟t do to badly on this front and only had to walk about half a mile or so. It didn‟t help our poor old legs when we went to the wrong entrance and had to retrace our foot- steps and go right round to the other side of the ground. We still had plenty of time though and we stood around soaking up the atmosphere and
his team. It was obvious he couldn‟t leave the drum in his car so it was safer to bring it into the ground!
A
watching the two teams going through warming up exercises. They certainly didn‟t do that when I went to West Ham with my young son back in the late 70‟s. In those days they were probably still sobering up from a good night on the beer on the eve of the match. Anyway I was impressed and I could feel the excitement growing as the crowd grew and the time for kick Off approached. I watched with interest as a young man squeezed past us with a big bass drum and I was pleased to think that this young supporter had rushed home early from band practice in order to support
few minutes before the start we took our
seats which were in the second row from the front and with the pitch at chin level. I have to say I was a bit alarmed to see a secu- rity guard standing right in front of us no doubt to stop people like Brian, Geoff and Ray from running onto the pitch, in the event of a goal. The problem was this security person was pretty big and completely obscured one of the goals and at least a quarter of the pitch. He did in fact sit down immediately the referee blew his whistle. A bit Pavlovian really. Anyway I digress. Another worrying fact was a ladder, leading up to the roof, which was also placed right in front of me. I was begin- ning to wonder if I would see any of the match at all.
The Southend mascot and ladder blocking our editor‟s view 11
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