Obituary

VIC JOBSON 1937-99

Love him or loathe him, Southend United fans will always have mixed memories about their former chairman Vic Jobson, who passed away yesterday following a long fight against ill health.

The ex-Blues supremo enjoyed a tempestuous 15-year reign in the Roots Hall hotseat, more often than not making more enemies than he did friends.

However, he will always be remembered as the man who saved the Shrimpers from the brink of extinction in the mid-80s, before leading them into the old Second Division, which would become the First Division, for the first time in their history by the end of the same decade.

Sadly though, an out-of-sorts Jobson, who was never a popular figure with Blues supporters in recent seasons, allowed Southend to slip back into the footballing backwaters of the Third Division just as easily, as he battled for his life, following a quadruple heart bypass.

Property developer Jobson first became involved with the Seasiders back in 1984 when he was elected to the board of a sorry Southend side, during their darkest hour.

The Fourth Division outfit were struggling under the managerial reign of former England World Cup winning captain Bobby Moore, which had resulted in the town turning its back on the club, with Roots Hall crowds regularly under the 2,000 mark.

Blues were heading for the scrapheap under the ownership of controversial figure Anton Johnson, the club's major shareholder, and were allegedly £700,000 in debt.

Southend were in real trouble but Jobson was instrumental in securing the resignation of Blues' chairman at the time, Michael Cranston, as he launched a successful takeover of the club.

Jobson saved the Shrimpers from financial ruin by borrowing money from media tycoon Robert Maxwell and Chelsea chairman Ken Bates, before moving himself into the chairmanship at Roots Hall.

During this time Jobson became the majority shareholder and lifted Southend out of the doldrums, ready to embark on an exciting new era.

The team's fortunes were not improving on the pitch though and Moore resigned on April 25, 1986, to be replaced by Southend's most successful manager ever, David Webb.

Jobson looked to have picked the right man as the ex-Chelsea star soon got Southend firing in the right direction.

By March 1987 Blues were heading for promotion to the old Third Division, but Webb quit following an alleged row with Jobson over transfer funds, although promotion was still achieved under new player-manager Paul Clark.

Another manager took over in the summer, Dick Bate, but Jobson, never one to muck around, fired him after just ten weeks as the Shrimpers got off to a humiliating start to life in Division Three - including an 8-1 drubbing at Gillingham.

Clark took over again and kept Southend up, but not long into the start of the 1988-89 season, Jobson patched up his differences with Webb and brought the talismanic manager back to Roots Hall.

Blues were relegated to the Fourth Division, but between them, Jobson and Webb would guide Southend to two consecutive promotions, culminating in 1991's first ever elevation above the old Third Division.

However, this was the beginning of Jobson's slide into unpopularity with the Roots Hall faithful.

Southend more than held their own in the Second Division, at one time leading the table on New Year's Day 1992, following a 4-0 home win over Newcastle United, but it all went wrong from there.

Come February, and with Blues sitting in third place and looking a good bet for an unthinkable hat-trick of promotions to the new Premier League, Webb quit.

He stayed with the club for the rest of the season, with his players' form dropping rapidly as did their league position, citing a series of rows with Jobson over players' contracts as his main reason for leaving.

Southend's supporters began to vocally attack Jobson and his next choice of manager Colin Murphy was met with angry disenchantment by Shrimpers fans everywhere.

Blues struggled under their new boss and with relegation looking a certainty, Jobson moved Murphy sideways in April 1993 leaving ex-Barnet boss Barry Fry to pull off a miracle fight away from the drop zone, aided by Murphy's legacy, Stan Collymore.

The appointment of Fry took the heat off Jobson momentarily, but the loss of Blues' saviour to sleeping giants Birmingham City in December 1993, with Southend again challenging for promotion to the Premiership, saw Shrimpers supporters again question their chairman's ambitions.

Plenty more managers came and went within the next few years - Peter Taylor, Steve Thompson and ultimately Ronnie Whelan, who finally took the club back into lower division football in 1997, following a six-year stay in Division One.

Blues' fans were now desperate for Jobson to leave and many people had already stopped watching the Shrimpers, following Jobson's decision to brand certain sections of the Roots Hall crowd as "Hitler Youth".

He also told Southend's fed-up fans that if they did not like they way he was running the club "to go and follow one of the Football League's 91 other teams", which a lot of them did and to this day still do.

Jobson's relationship with the fans was now at an irreversible low and it was no secret that the chairman was growing more and more frustrated with the local council's refusal to allow him to achieve his dream and build a new stadium for Southend, which had forced him into making Roots Hall all-seater.

On the pitch, Southend slid further down the ladder under the guidance of a new boss - former West Ham defender Alvin Martin, and Blues began the 1998-99 campaign back in the basement league.

Southend's return to the lower echelons was not helped by Jobson's deteriorating health. In 1995 he suffered a heart attack and was admitted to hospital for complex heart surgery.

He finally decided to call it a day, amid frenzied terrace chants for his head, in November 1998, when he sold Southend to Billericay property developer Martin Dawn plc, with John Main becoming the club's new supremo.

However, Jobson left a near £4 million debt behind him, but Southend had made twice that amount in player sales during his reign.

Considerable amounts had been spent on club facilities. Roots Hall was revamped and a training ground purchased.

As Jobson's physical state grew even worse he flew to America where doctors helped to get him back on his feet, but Jobson, who was undoubtedly one of life's great fighters, lost his last big battle yesterday as he passed away in a New York hospital.

Vic was the architect of our success

Former Southend United vice-chairman John Adams today hailed Vic Jobson as the man who scored a hat-trick off the pitch which was as valuable as any achieved on it.

He claims fans should remember the ex-Blues chairman for stabilising the football club in the mid-1980s, gaining the Shrimpers Division One status, a position they maintained for six years, and developing Roots Hall.

"Vic Jobson was a very big man in stature," said Adams. "He was a big man in terms of his contribution to Southend United.

"Vic was a man of his time. He came to Southend United Football Club when it needed someone like him because it was in terrible trauma.

"It was total chaos when we came. We went down Carey Street three times in the early days. The club was going bankrupt - there was only one man who could save Southend United Football Club, that was Vic Jobson."

That Jobson saved the club from extinction is well documented, but having kept the Blues afloat the chairman set about rebuilding Southend United, a task that led to crossed swords with many people involved with the Seasiders.

"Vic had some turbulent relationships with people at this club including with Dave Webb and myself," Adams added. "It is well documented that we came to blows over Barry Fry's departure.

"Dave Webb would come past my office and say is he in and has he got a heart of gold or a heart of stone today.

"If I said a heart of stone he would say 'I'm off to the training ground', or if it was a heart of gold he would go in and see him."

However, Adams stressed that Jobson was driven by the desire to see Southend achieve success.

He said the former chairman vowed to take the Blues from where they were then - the bottom of the old Division Four - and take them to the highest level possible, including playing in Europe.

That prophesy was fulfilled when the Shrimpers made it to Division Two, which became Division One after the formation of the Premiership, and landed a place in the Anglo-Italian Cup which involved games in Italy.

Adams added that Jobson dreamed of Southend moving to a new stadium and when he failed to make progress with the plan in Southend considered moving to Basildon - a move unpopular with the fans.

"Yes Victor was an autocrat in his way, but he was the man who listened solidly to what was said. He did not always like what he was hearing, but he listened to it," said Adams.

"The fans did not want to go to Basildon, so he developed Roots Hall.

"Roots Hall as it is today is certainly the best stadium in Division Three and is better than a lot in Division One and Two - that is what he left for Southend people.

"But he wanted a new stadium so he was happy to pass to Martin Dawn because he wanted that. It was the dream that he and I had. Hopefully that will come to pass, that was his great hope when he passed the baton.

"We always felt that we had the ability to create a club for Essex, but we also knew that was centred around a new stadium.

"I know that if Southend Council gives planning permission for the proposed new stadium and if Alan Little takes Southend United to the Second Division then looking down with a beam will be Victor Thomas Jobson."

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