Big Roy - U's must get fired up for the fans (From Gazette)

"Larger than life"as the Gazette used to describe him, Roy is absolutely spot on. All the fans want is a team that will put in a shift week in and week out. Not only would Roy get the players up for a match but the fans too. He never pulled any punches, if he dropped a player he wouldn't shy away from telling you why (usually face to face in The Lamb).
It was a great and possibly the best time to follow the U's under his guidance. Two thousand fans travelling away to places like Welling and Kettering! Last week we took less than 400 to Brentford. I could elucidate for hours on the U's during this time, however that is history. Maybe Roy should lead the teamtalk on Saturday.
His book isn't a bad read either.
Up the U's!

Sadly I think 2 or 3 lightweights might be a little bit optimistic the games I have seen this year it is more like 7 or 8!!

Simply not acceptable, a good team on paper but surely Ward must realise he needs more grit in this division to build momentum and he must find this from somewhere in the squad!!

Yes just the sort of talk we should be hearing from J.W. himself. Motivation needed.

*standing ovation*

Bravo Big Roy tells it as it is! This is exactly the attitude and ethos that took us from the Conference to the Championship. Sadly the burning fire and determination the club had to always look to better itself seems to have been extinguished during the Cowling years despite the vast sums of money thrown at it.

Football is an entertainment business and **** right the supporters deserve value for money and a team that prioritizes commitment and desire to the town they represent, not just their wallets. The football on display needs to captivate and capture the imagination of the customers, not just cater for the owner and his close circle of family and friends. It is the manager’s job to recruit the right players and to motivate them to give 100% week in week out. This is exactly where John Ward has consistently failed over the last two-and-a-quarter years.

"There's only one big Roy!!" He was and still remains my favourite of all Colchester managers. The season when he took over and guided us to a Vauxhall Championship and FA Trophy success in one season has to rank as probably the best ever in recent history (with the exception of possibly Parky's season when he took us up to the Championship). Roy's attitude was to score as many goals as possible - attack at all costs and whatever you concede, well you concede - but take every opportunity to score. And we did - I remember one game we played, I think it was against Barrow for the final game of the season at home and we had to win by 3 goals or more to make sure of the goal difference being greater than that of our arch rivals at the time, Wycombe Wanderers, who were just behind us on goal difference. We hammered 5 past Barrow to make sure of the goal difference and every game was exciting! It brought fans in to every game, I think that season gates were regularly topping 5,500-6,000 each home match! What Mr Cowling would and should be giving to achieve that on a regular basis now! But there were differences. Firstly, the ground was easily accessible and not an 'exclusion zone' placed around it; secondly, it was a homely place to go and friendly, in those days it was not full of over-zealous stewards intent on stopping and putting off would-be fans attending; thirdly, it was full of atmosphere and exciting football and fourthly the club shop was full of items that everyone and that includes the 'average' non-prawn sandwich eating hospitality suite fan that could be afforded by alland finally, the food was served from wooden huts that had burco boilers in to heat water that provided cheap teas and coffees, none of this overly-inflated stuff we currently get at WHCS (£2.00 for a tea/coffee is scandalous!) What every fan would give now to have that same experience back now!

What memories - thanks Roy and good luck with the book - can we buy it in the club shop?

Up the U's!!!

P.S. Roy - are you currently employed? If not, PLEASE apply for the soon-to-be-vacant post as Manager of Col U! We need your total commitment to attacking football back!

At the back of McDonough's book
there is a blank page .It lists his
achievements as a Football League
manager.So perhaps he is not really the best person to be offering unsolicited advice to the hard-working and conscientious John Ward,who has produced two promotion- winning
teams (Bristol City 1998,Cheltenham 2006)and is responsible for bringing
three of Colchester's best players - Sears,Bean and Eastman - to the club.If McDonough had taken his own advice and had 'rolled up his sleeves' - and had spent less time screwing and boozing - we might now be able to take him more seriously.

I do love big Roy. He was what Colchester united needed back in the day, and a great man of british football.
But just how much does he know about football management in league 1 or even more so in 2012????

I appreciate the hard fist approach. Men like Fergie, Big Roy and Neil Warnock have had success with it before.
But what about the success that Wenger and Steve Coppell have had with their hands in their pockets ala John Ward????

There is no right or wrong attitude for a manager to have. Big Roy did get one thing spot on above all else and that is that to give the fans there moneys worth regardless of the score line.

Enjoyable as it was, the one year of success under Roy McDonough was in the Vauxhall Conference. That said, with the exception of failing to win the Bob Lord Trophy, there was nothing more that Roy and his team could have achieved that season and he succeeded where Ian Atkins had failed the previous year. In my view, Roy could not bridge the step up to league management with the lifestyle that he and many of his team clearly enjoyed but there can be no doubting the tremendous affinity between club and fans at that time, something that has been sadly missing since Cowling and Ward took over. I read Roy's book last weekend and can thoroughly recommend it to all U's fans that enjoyed that era.

All in the lamb on a saturday night!!!!
Good old days

Layer Road Exile wrote:
Enjoyable as it was, the one year of success under Roy McDonough was in the Vauxhall Conference. That said, with the exception of failing to win the Bob Lord Trophy, there was nothing more that Roy and his team could have achieved that season and he succeeded where Ian Atkins had failed the previous year. In my view, Roy could not bridge the step up to league management with the lifestyle that he and many of his team clearly enjoyed but there can be no doubting the tremendous affinity between club and fans at that time, something that has been sadly missing since Cowling and Ward took over. I read Roy's book last weekend and can thoroughly recommend it to all U's fans that enjoyed that era.

And we didn't win the Bob Lord Trophy because we didn't want to be in it. Players playing out of position just to lose. Quality though we were fined.

Ozzie wrote:
"There's only one big Roy!!" He was and still remains my favourite of all Colchester managers. The season when he took over and guided us to a Vauxhall Championship and FA Trophy success in one season has to rank as probably the best ever in recent history (with the exception of possibly Parky's season when he took us up to the Championship). Roy's attitude was to score as many goals as possible - attack at all costs and whatever you concede, well you concede - but take every opportunity to score. And we did - I remember one game we played, I think it was against Barrow for the final game of the season at home and we had to win by 3 goals or more to make sure of the goal difference being greater than that of our arch rivals at the time, Wycombe Wanderers, who were just behind us on goal difference. We hammered 5 past Barrow to make sure of the goal difference and every game was exciting! It brought fans in to every game, I think that season gates were regularly topping 5,500-6,000 each home match! What Mr Cowling would and should be giving to achieve that on a regular basis now! But there were differences. Firstly, the ground was easily accessible and not an 'exclusion zone' placed around it; secondly, it was a homely place to go and friendly, in those days it was not full of over-zealous stewards intent on stopping and putting off would-be fans attending; thirdly, it was full of atmosphere and exciting football and fourthly the club shop was full of items that everyone and that includes the 'average' non-prawn sandwich eating hospitality suite fan that could be afforded by alland finally, the food was served from wooden huts that had burco boilers in to heat water that provided cheap teas and coffees, none of this overly-inflated stuff we currently get at WHCS (£2.00 for a tea/coffee is scandalous!) What every fan would give now to have that same experience back now!

What memories - thanks Roy and good luck with the book - can we buy it in the club shop?

Up the U's!!!

P.S. Roy - are you currently employed? If not, PLEASE apply for the soon-to-be-vacant post as Manager of Col U! We need your total commitment to attacking football back!

And don't forget the first season iin the championship. Those must be the three best seasons in the last 40 years. Can't pick between them.

i think the general feeling then,big roys era, was that we were better than the level to which we had dropped.when we won promotion we thought we were better than we actually were.when we changed grounds we did it faster than we should without the proper infrastructure in place to take the club forward.we now rely heavily on a man who can't afford us,because in all that time our core support as not changed from around 3000 beings.

The U's' three best seasons in the
last forty years :

1. 2005-2006,winning promotion to the Championship
2.2006-2007,staying in the
Championship
3.1973-1974,Jim Smith's
promotion-winning team,which
featured the greatest defence in
Colchester United's Football League
history,It conceded only thirty six
goals in 46 league matches,setting a new club record,which still stands,38 years later.

It would have been surprising if we
hadn't won the Conference title in 1992,when you recall the inferior,
mostly part time,often unfit teams we played that season.We should have won the Conference by a bigger margin and probably would have done
with a more disciplined manager.

McDonough was a flop as a Football League manager,which might partly explain why he was sacked by the U's in 1994.

He is certainly in no position to give John Ward any advice and certainly not on the
subject of winning and retaining fans.
For in 1993-1994,his third and final season as U's' boss,.the club's average league gate slumped to
2,857,which was a 24.4 per cent
decline on the previous season's average of 3,777.He did have a rapport with some fans,but clearly not all of them.

Let's hope David Blacknall will now
write a book and give his version of events and views about his charming
ex wife and the **** sure Mr
McDonough.

Good luck to David Blacknall and
Shaun Elliott.

yes we did only win the conference on goal difference, but Wycombe werr a good team. The third place were 21 points behind us, so I'm not sure how we could have won the titlw by much more

The word blanked out in my previous
post is not an obscenity.It is 'c* o * c * k s u r e.'