Life does work in seasons

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 08 May 2006 07:33:39

There is a wonderful line in Fever Pitch that asks what do football fans do between the season ending in May and starting again in August, to which the answer is given they wait for the fixture list to come out. This year I will be doing that very thing even more avidly than usual.

Whilst this has been an extremely dull season, languishing mid table with no hope of promotion, or the play offs but equally with no real fear of relegation and our local rivals doing the same next season will be different, next season will see an edge which has been missing for many years.

How do I know? Well, Southend and Colchester both got promoted through the automatic places into the same division as us next season. For the uninitiated the Tractor Boys are in the Championship, which is Division 1 old money and Division 2 even older money.

So why the excitement about Southend and Colchester joining us? It's all to do with geography. Traditionally Ipswich and Norwich have been outposts of quality(?) football in the East of England. Apart from playing each other our nearest local games have been against London clubs, but this year it will be v. different. Colchester is a mere 20 minutes down the road and Southend is also not too far in the grand scheme of things.