Just Back

Quoted from chaos33

The pitch is terrible but it’s a bit harsh on staff. I’ve seen many, many a worse surface over the years at BP.

I appreciate its a bit harsh perhaps - but its a disgrace and plenty of pitches in the region that dont look like that.

U cannot play on the deck on that and was partly responsible for the ball being hoofed in the air and on the volley from both teams. No one trusts the pitch and the bounce

Quoted from chaos33

The pitch is terrible but it’s a bit harsh on staff. I’ve seen many, many a worse surface over the years at BP.

Tony Ford commented on this. He said something like he was pleased he was a winger as he got to play on grass in each corner. The centre was a diamond shape of mud from goalmouth to goalmouth.

Quoted from DB

The subject of the pitch came up at the forum the other night. I can't remember the answer but there was at least 5 nought behind the first figure. The groundsman can only do his best within the budget he gets,

Mike Phillips won award after award for the pitch when he was head groundsman.

I played on the park a few times in the 60,s and the goal months never had any grass on them a few games into the season.

The problem then was the pitch was used for training twice a week plus reserve games and some junior games.

Also Grimsby Boys played our home games on it as well.

Today's pitch is so much better as you would expect .

BUT the winter of 62 /  63 was really bad and did the pitch no good at all.

Where is my each bleach ??  Turgid in every aspect.

Quoted from ginnywings

At one time, we had a front four who have about 20 Town games between them.

Wearne and Orsi have most of those and then we had Dickson-Peters and O'Neill as well.

We’ve been moaning about getting a proven striker in for ages but if you’ve ever played at a decent level and it’s not happening upfront it’s usually a midfielder like Waters Groves Boylen Chatterley Cockerill who make it happen and we don’t have anyone in that mould

Not seen a game like that when we had absolutely no answers to anything the opposition did. The quadruple substitution smacked of desperation which is surprising for us. And didn’t make the slightest bit of difference.

In fairness, Colchester are good at what they do, but it’s not football.

Within the opening 5 minutes Lloyd had a defender clamber on him, dragged him down as Lloyd swivelled and even as he then burst away he was then hacked down, and hurt, as the ref waved play on and I knew we were in for an awful game and very likely the worst ref yet.

Both turned out to be true, 2 or 3 times the ref was flummoxed, letting play go while his brain engaged his mental rule book, then whistling much too late to announce his decision.
But yes, we were dire, Hurst's Achilles heel has always been the inability to adapt to the most basic, physical style of play, we drop to the same level of awfulness but without the nous, the cleverness to play the ref, to slog through while matching the opposition with the ugly side of the game.
Home fans have had it rough overall.

Truly awful match and unlike last week nobody came out of the game with any credit other than probably Maher & Waterfall. Lloyd put himself around but had a pretty hopeless task as he found himself in the land of the giants and is cause was not helped when two blatant fouls on him, one in each half went unpunished.

Emmanuel basically played as a right winger but today didn’t demonstrate any abilities that made him suitable in that role albeit he hugged the touch line and tried to give us width. PH tried to change things at half time but in all honesty we probably looked worse in the second half with McAtee in particular looking completely lost and being unsure which role he should have been undertaking.

I think that today’s game once again demonstrated that we don’t seem to have a way of playing (style) at home and appear totally incapable of playing attacking cohesive football and dominating the opposition. Contrast this to the two cup games v Plymouth and Luton and maybe that’s just because they allowed us more freedom to play.

But like many others I am very disappointed by our home performances and if you discount the cup matches I would be struggling to count beyond one hand the number of enjoyable league matches this season. Hopefully today is as bad as it will get and things will improve from now on but unfortunately I can’t help looking over my shoulder at the results of Rochdale and Hartlepool praying they got beat!!

Really poor game. Neither team looked good except Colchester were just better in defence and midfield where they easily dominated the game.

Despite how well we are doing in the cup we must really improve in the League or we are going to get dragged into a relegation scrap if we are not already in one.

That performance reminded me of the crap we had to watch when we got relegated.