Growing up in Essex it’s almost impossible not to have been to Southend (the correct pronunciation is saafend by the way) before. A few visits to the seaside, plus a summer job when I was 18 doing data entry in the accounts department of an employment agency. Think my wage almost covered the petrol costs to get me there.
There’s been two footballing trips here. The first being in the Mowbray season of 15/16 when a Cov side that had looked far too good for the division a couple of short months earlier slipped to a 3-0 defeat despite having a 1 man advantage for half the game. I believe this game was the precise moment that the season went to shit.
11 months later in December 2016 a new team and a similarly inept performance saw a 3-1 defeat. The lowlight was a fight between two Cov fans in front of me, caused by one of them objecting to the other’s heinous crimes of not taking the plight of the club seriously enough and not being born in Cov. I held my Essex accented tongue at this point. Depressingly it was one of the better performances I saw that season, which gives some indication as to how awful the 16/17 season was.