Gifts from the heavens have not generally been bestowed upon Southend United in their benighted past ten years or more, but it was in keeping with the sense of a club restored to life that a scoreboard malfunction at Southport’s little ground momentarily put them 5-1 up, on Saturday afternoon.
They’d just gone 3-1 ahead in their FA Trophy semi-final when the device went haywire, randomly adding two more to their tally. ‘We want six,’ sang the delirious 800-strong away following, whose collective desire to make the 500-mile round trip in such huge numbers testified to the club’s monumental support.
Southport’s staff brought the scoreboard back down to 1-1 – ‘We want our goals back!’ demanded the travelling Shrimpers – but the prevailing Southend anthem was the one they’d been singing since packing out the place in the lunchtime sunshine. ‘We’re going to Wembley twice!’
The idea of the Shrimpers contesting the National League play-off final, seven days before meeting Wealdstone in the Trophy final in May, might seem wishful, given that the side sit seventh, 33 points off second-placed York City. But it was from that league position that they ran Oldham Athletic extremely close in last year’s promotion decider, and the club’s gradual – albeit complicated – emergence from the shadow of Ron Martin, the owner who ran them to the brink of extinction, gives cause to believe that anything is possible now.
It’s been nearly two years since a consortium led by Australian businessman Justin Rees completed the club’s takeover from Martin, and though it’s by no means been all freewheeling ever since, fans are consciously happy to be engaging in football debates rather than how to get rid of the detested Martin.
Southend United beat Southport 3-1 on Saturday to book a meeting with Wealdstone in the FA Trophy final at Wembley in May
The side sit seventh, 33 points off second-placed York City and boast the biggest home and away attendances in the National League by a distance
Saturday lunchtime’s debate centred on whether the FA Trophy was a distraction from the promotion push. ‘No! Grab your chance of Wembley whenever it’s there,’ says Colin Hunt, who is with his son Chris in the Thatch and Thistle pub near Southport’s ground.
Chris, who is on the club’s Supporters Trust board, calls up the brilliant Tifo, featuring the child who helped clean up the club’s Roots Hall, unfurled in last year’s Wembley final and now an emblem of how fans kept Southend alive. ‘We’ll take any trip to Wembley we can get,’ he agrees.
These fans and others want to be back in the EFL so much that it almost seems to hurt. Southend have the biggest home and away attendances in the National League by a distance, outnumbering the home fans at places like Brackley and Eastleigh this season, and this month alone have beaten Rochdale and Forest Green Rovers on huge occasions at Roots Hall.
Yet the fifth-tier bottleneck is notorious, with only two promotion spots, one automatic, which the league’s strong and imaginative ‘3Up’ campaign is seeking to resolve. Clubs like Carlisle United, York City and Forest Green Rovers are spending heavily.
Many of the new ownership consortium are Southend through-and-through. Chris Hunt played with one of them, Ian Redbourne, in a Southend District under 13s team decades ago and produces a photograph to prove it. But investors like this are not multi-millionaires like Carlisle’s or Forest Green’s.
The consortium’s talk is of ‘sustainability’ and reducing last year’s £2m losses, and they are yet to prove that, in a footballing sense, they can really shift the dial and put the club back where fans believe they belong.
The owners have just announced a relaunch of the club shop, a change of kit supplier and taken a five-year lease on the sprawling ‘Spread Eagle’ pub – locally known as ‘The Spread’ – near Roots Hall, whose four floors will become a fan pub and meeting place, with a matchday fanzone in the large back yard.
‘It’s a sign that they get the club,’ says another supporter, Gillian Callaghan, before heading up to Southport’s idiosyncratic Haig Avenue ground, set within a suburban housing estate. ‘Ron Martin just ran up debt. He’d never have conceived of an idea like that.’
Fans these days are happy to be engaging in football debates rather than how to get rid of their detested former owner Ron Martin
It’s been nearly two years since a consortium led by Australian businessman Justin Rees completed the club’s takeover from Martin – and the feel-good factor is back in the building
But the very need for the pub lease reflects the unexpected challenges the club’s owners have faced. They were quoted prices way over budget for a fan-zone in the Roots Hall car park, while plans to knock down the stadium’s East Stand and build a fan area into the redevelopment drag on.
The consultancy costs for the new stand, which will create potential for non-matchday ventures, run to six figures – the kind of cash Carlisle are throwing at the wages of loanee Chris Conn-Clarke.
The pub lease is a good temporary solution to the challenge, but the shadow of Ron Martin, who still owns the Roots Hall freehold, is still on the wall. He was declared bankrupt this month, so money he was supposed to be giving the club from a housing development he stands to profit from will not be forthcoming: a major blow.
How to build a promotion-winning team on a much smaller budget is a bigger challenge. Rees and his consortium have stuck with manager Kevin Maher, a playing legend, though public opinion is clearly mixed. By half-time at Southport, as Southend trail 1-0, some fans are questioning him.
The owners have clearly decided that recruitment is a problem – announcing last week the recruitment of a new director of football, American Oliver Gage. His LinkedIn CV shows his data-driven experience with the Association of Professional Football Analysis and US and Canadian clubs, rather than a proven track record inside the British game.
This will clearly mean an adjustment for Maher, who has yet to declare that he sees his bosses’ recruitment of Gage as an asset which will help him. Judging by public opinion in Southport, some fans have their doubts.
Having been rescued from their death spiral, Southend are a club in transition, with different views on what constitutes success. ‘When you’re equalising in the 88th minute at home to Woking, you think “Is this as good as it gets?”,’ says Liam Ager of the club’s All At Sea fanzine. ‘But we no longer have that Sword of Damocles hanging over us. That’s so significant.’
Southend’s Jack Bridge and Charley Kendall raised the level on Saturday to bend it in the visiting team’s favour with two goals in as many minutes
The advance to Wembley – with the money and momentum it brings – transmits the story of a club who are alive and kicking once more
Saturday’s opponents, who are 14th in National League North and dreaming of a first Wembley appearance since 1998, pull out all the stops to accommodate the Southend travelling support – with a disused bus and screeds of temporary scaffolding used to pack 5,400 into their ground. It looks like the minnows will prove immovable, too, after a first half of superiority when playing ‘up the hill’ with the wind behind them.
But Southend’s Jack Bridge and Charley Kendall, a former QPR academy trainee signed from Woking, raise the game’s level to bend it in the visiting team’s favour with two goals in as many minutes. Kendall, outstanding on a difficult surface, then scores again. ‘We kept on being us,’ he says at the end.
The dodgy scoreboard is eventually switched off, and a broken-down train at Nuneaton means many of the joyful fans do not make it home to Essex until 1am. But the advance to Wembley – with the money and momentum it brings – transmits the story of a club who are alive and kicking once more. ‘This is so big for us,’ says Colin Hunt. ‘It’s another sign of the new light.’
