Vital Colchester Make Match Mag!

Vital Colchester Co-Editor Matt Calmus made the Boxing Day Matchday Magazine, We are please to have forged such strong links with the club and thank the media department and particularly Media Manager Matthew Hudson for his help in 2006.

Matts Article as published on Boxing day is as follows below and he joins fellow Co-Ed’s ‘CO2’, who writes for both and Dan who featured in the Southampton issue.


Listen up! These are the good times

‘Against all odds` has become a bit of a mantra during this festive season in Essex. Not least because U`s fans wake up to fresh league standings believing that Christmas really is every day.

It is also the title given to the club`s 2005/06 season review, where Colchester have spent the past year defying bookmakers` – and their own – expectations. More than a marketing tool, the phrase shows that winning has become a habit at Layer Road; so much so, that the ‘p word` might even be banned on matchdays.

Dwelling now on a possible Premiership promotion might be too soon for most right-thinking fans and it would, in the event, be too premature for the FA, whose regulations would prevent the current stadium from gracing the top-flight.

A ground share with some fierce rival (Southend or Ipswich) would then be on the agenda instead, which brings on the kind of nausea you can get from seeing United so high up the table.

The Championship is like a giant version of snakes and ladders, and Colchester can be thankful that fate has landed them on more of the latter so far. If the form book in 2007 goes on to mirror the first half of this season, pondering life in the Premiership will soon become more of a legitimate pastime. Having said that, the priority remains to avoid relegation, achievable (on average) once the 48-point barrier is broken.

This campaign is developing in an aptly pantomimic fashion, as football`s unscripted drama again mocks those employed to pen exciting stories for a living. Is it a sign of the times in East Anglia that we fret about how high we will finish in a season, or whether we will leap from Cloud Nine, to Cloud Cuckoo Farm, in time for promotion?

Truthfully, those words shouldn`t even be on the page as we prepare to face Luton Town. Today`s opposition, have more pressing issues to contend with – such as their patchy form. United, in this era of the turbulent take-over, ought to be proud of their status as a community club, where passion and pride on the terraces clearly translate out onto the field.

Is this fortune more than just fate at work? The saying goes that you make your own luck, and certainly any potential reservations of last summer have materialised as unlikely positives. The ground has evolved into a fortress, and a small squad have grown into a dedicated bunch of revolutionaries. Our novice manager is also a damn sight better than anybody would have guessed. On that note, the best conspiracy theory around is that Geraint Williams was actually the brains behind the Phil Parkinson operation all along.

Whatever the reason, the point – in case you hadn`t noticed yet – is that these are the good times. Considering the bigger picture might be fun for a while, but not if it obscures the view of what we already have.

Yes, the perennial nature of the beautiful game always demands us to look ahead, but for the moment, those words on a very popular DVD cover should resound around the county.

‘Against all odds` is neither an epitaph of times past, nor a menacing apparition of things to come. It represents something stronger: – an appreciation of events as they are unfolding in the here and now.