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TamarBridgeLatics

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    National League Thread

    in The opinions4u Terraces - Latics Forum

    Posted

    5 minutes ago, disjointed said:

    Are Cormac the contractors on the A30 upgrade. 

    No, it's Costain. Cormac are more local, CORnish MAintenanCe for the council. Mostly roads and other organised cock ups and removing stuff from the Great Wall of Cornwall on the A39 https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/cornwall-great-wall-china-quacking-9130388. Then again, at least Cormac would have built Cornish hedges and not dry stone walling that collapsed after three months on the Chivvy upgrade, it's now due to be completed by the start of the summer. As I said, doing it dreckly.

    National League Thread

    in The opinions4u Terraces - Latics Forum

    Posted

    This gives a very good report on the original Stadium For Cornwall plans that fell by the wayside:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_for_Cornwall

     

    And this is the latest update: https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/stadium-cornwall-site-become-truro-8879206

     

    Trouble is, things are done dreckly here in Cornwall, and it's anyone's guess when anything will be built, especiallyn if Cormac are involved.

    Ex players and that

    in The opinions4u Terraces - Latics Forum

    Posted

    The team right now who encapsulate the romantic element of the FA Cup are undoubtedly the lowest-ranked club left in the competition — Maidstone United. The sixth-tier side have reached the fourth round for the first time.


    Suddenly, everyone wants to shake hands with George Elokobi, the Vanarama National League South club’s manager, including the owner of the restaurant where I meet the former Wolverhampton Wanderers defender for lunch, along with Mick McCarthy, the man who brought him to Molineux in 2008.


    “This happens a lot and not just in Maidstone,” Elokobi says. “Someone actually went to where my wife works [in a bakery] and handed her a congratulations card, saying, ‘This is for George.’ It was amazing. Being recognised is good, it is good for the community.”


    McCarthy adds that everyone seems to know who Elokobi is but they seem to have only a slight suspicion that they ought to recognise the former Ireland defender and manager.


    “I’m taking the heat off you, gaffer,” Elokobi jokes, summing up one of football’s most heart-warming relationships. Elokobi called McCarthy “the gaffer” when he arrived at Wolves, called him “the gaffer” after leaving the club, calls him “the gaffer” as we eat and will refer to him as “the gaffer” for ever more.


    Elokobi’s career, from the moment he was scouted by Wolves, has been shaped by McCarthy and so, when Maidstone reached the third round, the 37-year-old invited McCarthy to the Gallagher Stadium for the tie against Stevenage of Sky Bet League One.


    “My mum is proud of me,” Elokobi says, “and she was so excited to see the gaffer at that game as well. She said, ‘My goodness what a moment for you, son, to have your former boss there witnessing you make history.’


    It was the icing on the cake for me, having the gaffer there.”


    McCarthy dashed off after the match but left a voicemail for his protégé.


    “Wahey, you f***ing beauty,” was what greeted Elokobi when he picked up his messages.


    “I played it over and over,” the former centre back says. “It was like, ‘Wow’ to hear how excited the gaffer was. He’s happy to see me do what I am doing because I respected his environment. Having the gaffer there for the third-round game was just an incredibly proud moment for me.”


    “And it was for me, to be asked by a former player to come to the game and watch it,” McCarthy says. “I loved it, I took it as a compliment. Bear in mind I’ve had over 1,000 games as a manager and a coach, I’ve not had too many invites so I must have pissed a few players off. You put me through the mill, George, with it being 1-0. I kicked every ball for the last five minutes, you put me through the wringer.”


    Their bond first formed when negotiations over the transfer of Elokobi from Colchester United to Wolves started to drag on, with his agent and the club’s board unable to agree terms.


    “So I just knocked on the door and invited myself in,” Elokobi says, “and everyone was in shock and I told them I wanted what was fair and that I wanted to play for the gaffer.”


    “I’m not going to lie, we would have been getting a good deal,” McCarthy says. “He didn’t want the moon and stars, he wanted what was fair.”


    Impressed, McCarthy then went to find Elokobi, asked him what would be a fair figure, and the Wolves manager returned to the boardroom to say that had to be the agreed deal.


    “Before I knew it, I was signing the papers,” Elokobi says. “It was a long day for me and it was my birthday. All I wanted to do was play for the gaffer, I knew the club would take my game to the next level. I thought, he’s going to love me as a player having seen how he came across. He came with a great reputation. I knew I was still very raw in terms of my technical capabilities and the gaffer had been a defender as well.”


    Elokobi, whose father died when he was 11, then lived for 12 weeks in a hotel. “I bumped into Mick when I was picking up groceries at the local Spar supermarket and he sees me and says, ‘If you want to eat well you are more than welcome to come to my house every evening for dinner.’


    “And I was like, ‘Wow.’ I rang my mum and told her the gaffer actually invited me to go to his house if I wasn’t eating right. That, to me, was like a father to a son. Was I starstruck a little bit? Yes, I had watched him as manager of Ireland and it’s incredible now that I am his player. I didn’t want to let the gaffer down.”


    “What you saw was an uncompromising, physical defender and it was up to us to help him to be a better player,” McCarthy says. “He could head it, run, tackle. What we loved about him was that he was prepared to put the work in.”

    Elokobi was 16 when he arrived in Britain from Cameroon and was spotted playing in the park. Soon he was a cult figure, scoring 14 goals in a career that spanned six divisions, but the most famous of his goals came against Manchester United in February 2011.


    “The magnitude of the game, the entire world had written Wolves off,” he says as he and McCarthy bicker good-naturedly about the details of the league defeat by Bolton Wanderers that had preceded the win against United.


    Elokobi felt the team had let down McCarthy against Bolton and so the entire team raised their game for an unlikely 2-1 victory over Sir Alex Ferguson’s side.


    “That day earned me my international call-up,” Elokobi says, “and I became recognised everywhere, in supermarkets and on the roads because I had personalised my number plates. People would drive after me to take a photo on the motorway.”


    McCarthy, 64, interjects to say he was followed just the once, when he had lost to Coventry City, and was driving down to Bath for a dinner. A car came up alongside his, full of Coventry fans making rude gestures.


    “Nobody took pictures of me,” he says laughing. “All I got was wanker signs.”
    When visiting his sister in Dallas, Elokobi rented a car and the man behind the desk said: “Hold on, hold on, is this for The Beast? I can’t believe this. McCarthy’s body double.”

     

    McCarthy chuckles and explains how, during a post-match TV interview, a shirtless, muscled Elokobi had approached him and McCarthy had quipped: “Here’s my body double.”

     

    “You made the best of yourself and are doing the same as a manager,” McCarthy says.


    “I was out there [at Wolves] learning as much as I could, absorbing everything,” Elokobi says.

     

    “Technically, tactically I was getting better. I never saw myself as a manager. I started my coaching badges in 2018, and then I stopped. Why? My reason was discrimination in football. There were no other black managers in the dugout. The only one I could see was Chris Hughton [the manager of Brighton & Hove Albion at the time]. I thought, what chance have I got? Who is going to offer George Elokobi a job?”

     

    His ambition drifted to becoming a strength and conditioning coach or an assistant “because that’s what I saw at the time”.

     

    However, upon joining Aldershot Town in 2019, Gary Waddock, the manager, asked him whether he was taking his coaching badges.


    “I told him I was done with badges and inequality was my reason,” Elokobi says.

     

    “The only way to change that is to become one,” McCarthy says.

     

    Waddock told Elokobi that within his first two weeks he had changed the mentality of the club. He said, ‘So you know what that means? You are a leader. Everyone listens to you like you are the manager, please reconsider.’


    “So I spoke to my missus,” Elokobi says, “who said you never know where that can take you.”
    Naturally, Elokobi also asked for McCarthy’s advice.


    “I recognised his leadership skills fairly quickly,” McCarthy says. “Even when we tried to sign him I could see he was straightforward, honest. He wasn’t hell set on getting a certain amount and upsetting the apple cart if he didn’t get it. It was clear he could after himself in the dressing room and on the pitch. If you do things correctly you get respect. He wasn’t the best player by any stretch of the imagination but if you do 100 per cent in training you get the respect.”


    “I say this to my players now,” Elokobi says, “even when the gaffer didn’t pick me, I had to make sure I was selfless, I always put the environment first. The players knew I would run through brick walls for them and the gaffer. The gaffer knew that, the fans knew that.”


    Maidstone’s Saturday lunchtime fourth-round trip to Ipswich Town, who are second in the Sky Bet Championship, will be televised live on the BBC. Portman Road, though, does not hold fond memories for Elokobi as it was the scene of the dreadful knee injury that almost ended his career.


    “I was flying that season,” Elokobi recalls. “After two weeks the gaffer calls me in and says I need to slow down and that I don’t need to prove anything to him. I was given a one-in-ten chance of playing again.”


    “The injury was so innocuous as well,” McCarthy says. “It’s ironic, you’re going to Ipswich in the cup tie, got injured there and I managed there for six years.
    “I want George to do well. I had six happy years at Ipswich and I want them to do well. If you beat Ipswich you’ll have to play out of your skin and they will have had to have had a real bad day because they are a good side.


    “Maidstone should try to win it and not sit back because if they do, Ipswich will pick a hole in them. I’m not going to give George any tactical advice, they’re better than you. Just give everything and if you do that you have a chance.”


    Maidstone, anyway, have a dash of McCarthyism. “I rang the gaffer in the summer when I was rebuilding the team,” Elokobi says, “and he told me, ‘You will know what to do when you think how we got our success at Wolves’. And it’s paid off.”

     

    “I guessed his team would be like one of mine,” McCarthy says. “He expects everyone to run around, any slackers wouldn’t be in the team. First and foremost you need a really good atmosphere around the place.”

     

    Even Elokobi’s acting career brings us back to McCarthy. Elokobi was hired to be part of Ted Lasso as one of a group of former professionals who would pretend to be Manchester City players facing AFC Richmond. It was choreographed, not real football, he says.

     

    “I don’t limit myself to one thing, I can do anything if I put my mind to it,” he says. “And how ironic is this? Manchester City is where the gaffer gave me my Premier League debut. So the crew were asking if I had ever been to the Etihad and I was laughing.”

     

    He swapped shirts on that debut with Emmanuel Adebayor but immediately worried in case his gaffer thought he was more interested in the glamour of the occasion and rarely ever swapped shirts again.

     

    If Hollywood came calling then he would go, he says, but only if at the end of his Maidstone career, adding that also on his resumé is a promotional video he did for a Godzilla movie, which involved being in a cage against two other footballers. He then treats me to his movie star villain stare. Ipswich beware.

     

    Quickfire Q&A

    Win a league title or the FA Cup?
    George Elokobi : League title.
    Mick McCarthy: League title, it’s the test of a season.

    Strictly Come Dancing or Ted Lasso?
    GE: Ted Lasso
    MM: I’m all over Strictly. Were you in Ted Lasso?

    Coaching or playing?
    GE: Playing
    MM: Playing

    Yorkshire pudding or groundnut soup?
    Both in unison: Yorkshire pudding.

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    MATCH: Maidenhead United (H) 03/10/23

    in The opinions4u Terraces - Latics Forum

    Posted

    14 minutes ago, Punce said:

    Is there a BBC local radio commentary?  I can never find the things.

     

     

    Not for us tonight.

     

    BBC Sounds, Sport, Football, Leagues and Cups followed by National League. It's then on that page - LIVE Listen - Non league commentaries. You'll see the match commentaries in the top right-hand corner. Some teams have two commentaries but none for us again.

    • Like 1

    Summer 2023 Player Signing News & Rumours

    in The opinions4u Terraces - Latics Forum

    Posted

    Postcards from the pyramid: Fans fight for Southend’s future. The Times.

    With judgment day looming in the High Court and plans for a phoenix club being discussed, Saturday’s mass protest may be just the start of a supporter revolution

    Kit Shepard

    Monday September 25 2023, 12.01am BST, The Times

    Southend fans send a message to the club’s chairman during a protest march from the city centre to Roots Hall on Saturday

    KIT SHEPARD FOR THE TIMES

    These days, Southend United supporters are more like political revolutionaries than the fanbase of a football club. Just look at their protest before Saturday’s home game against AFC Fylde.

    It had a rousing rhetoric. The hundreds of activists marched noisily from the city centre to Roots Hall, chanting their hatred of Ron Martin, the Southend chairman.

    There was cartoonish symbolism. The protesters followed a car that had a model of Martin attached, with the man in power depicted as a clown.

    There were even flashes of insurrection. Once the agitators made it to Roots Hall a handful breached the directors’ entrance, as if they were going to depose Martin there and then. “Shut the gate,” a steward cried desperately.

    Those who got through the entrance soon retreated autonomously and it must be emphasised that this uprising was benevolent, peaceful and had minimal police interference. Considering the fans’ heartache, their conduct was impeccable.

    Yet the measured behaviour should not mask the desperation for Martin to sell Southend. His 25-year ownership has been defined by unsuccessful attempts to move from Roots Hall to a new stadium at Fossetts Farm, as well as financial turmoil.

    Southend are due back at the High Court on October 4 to address the club’s 18th winding-up petition since 2009. This latest petition includes, but is not limited to, an unpaid tax debt of £275,000.

    The under-fire Martin has defended his commitment to Southend over the past 25 years

    PENELOPE BARRITT/SHUTTERSTOCK

    Southend were most recently at the High Court on August 23, when they received a 42-day adjournment, a ten-point deduction and the sternest of warnings. “If this was not a football club with the attachment of its fans, I would be winding you up today. You will be wound up on the next date if it’s not sorted,” Judge Sebastian Prentis said.

    Fans are yearning for Martin, who put the club up for sale last March, to find a buyer. A consortium fronted by Justin Rees offers hope but he announced last week that two takeover bids had been rejected and a deal before October 4 was unlikely. Supporters blame one person.

    “Every corridor we go down has a locked door with Ron Martin on the other side,” Liam Ager, a board member of the Shrimpers Trust fan group, said. “Ron does what he wants. He is not accountable to anybody except himself and the people he has borrowed money from, and he is not interested in the town or the club.”

    Martin, who provided a statement to The Times, rejects criticisms of his commitment.

    “It was I that set up monthly liaison meetings, as we named them, some 25 years ago with the Shrimpers Trust to ensure fans’ views were accounted for,” he said. “In many respects the club were frontrunners, wishing to understand and, as best we can, accommodate the wishes of supporters.

    “After all supporters are the club, without which there is no club. It would be daft for any company board to ignore their customers. Regular contact between the trust and club remains.

    “I don’t know how anyone could suggest I do not care about the club or city,” he added. “I am passionate about the club and have travelled home and away to some 1,200 matches over 25 years. Losing hurts, whether I am at the match or not. I have given up a huge part of my life, as have my family, for Southend United and now wish to pass the baton to a custodian who will make that same commitment to the club’s future.

    “It’s a great club with fantastic potential and as part of selling the club (gifting it, really) I want to contribute to its future so the city can be proud.”

    Southend fans believe Martin is anything but charitable and they marched to the game against Fylde in unprecedented numbers.

    Protesters blame only one man for Southend’s financial turmoil

    PENELOPE BARRITT/SHUTTERSTOCK

    “This is the best protest,” Steven Walsh, who has been going to Roots Hall for 53 years, said. “Before it was quite fractious but everything is together now.”

    Indeed, like any rebellious group, the Southend movement contains various ideologies. As displayed by this protest, alongside supporters throwing tennis balls and fake rats on to the pitch to delay games earlier this season, the more militant faction has prevailed.

    “Back in January, the first protest we did, we took a banner into the South Stand and 50 per cent of the people there were giving us abuse and supporting security for taking it off us,” Sean Wall, who is heavily involved with the protest group, said. “Fast-forward six months and, because of collaboration and the legitimacy of protest, we have got the whole ground stopping games.”

    Complementing the disruptive tactics is a studious group exploring financial solutions, such as this week’s Shrimpers Trust proposal for community ownership of Roots Hall. Ager helps behind the scenes, purely out of necessity.

    “I should not have to be researching insolvency practitioners and filling in application forms to ask the government for £2 million,” he said. “It is not my job as a fan and I am absolutely exhausted, tired, and angry.”

    Martin does accept some responsibility but insists Southend’s consecutive relegations — from League One in 2020 and League Two in 2021 — were awfully timed.

    “It must be true the buck stops with me, but the main reason for the club’s current financial issues is double relegation on the back of Covid,” he said. “I suspect we would have been relegated irrespective of the [2019-20] season being curtailed, nevertheless it certainly didn’t help as we came down with a PAYE debt from League One wages.

    “We could have cut costs further; however, Southend is a big club in the National League and to dismantle infrastructure and reduce the wage bill further would make it harder to compete when the club’s objective, and fans’ too, is to get back into the EFL.”

    They can barely compete in the National League right now. Fylde won 2-1 on Saturday to climb off the bottom of the fifth tier at the expense of Southend, who had only 14 available players. Typical moans from the terraces, such as “will we ever score from a corner again?”, had an uncomfortably literal meaning.

    Southend’s next home game is against Oxford City on October 3 — hours before judgment day. Yet with plans for a phoenix club already being mulled, the revolution may be just beginning.

    “If we are liquidated or wound up on October 4, there will be a football club in Southend in some form or another,” Ager said. “People won’t let this die.”

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