Rovers make the journey to Essex to play Colchester on Saturday 3rd Feb.  It’s a 3pm kick off.

It’s a journey by road of up to 180 miles and will take about 3 to 3 and a 1/2 hours each way.

By Supporters Club Coach.  For full details of Away Travel including pick up times: – look at FGR Away Travel – Forest Green Rovers Supporters Club (fgrsc.com)  For further information, including pickup point locations see Away travel arrangements 22/23 – Forest Green Rovers Supporters Club (fgrsc.com)

Book your coach ticket with your match ticket from FGR (£5 adult discount for FGR Supporters Club members) but note that you need to call FGR Reception to get the coach discount (phone 0333 123 1889 Monday to Friday, between 9am and 3pm).  Please try to book early.

By Train – It’s possible to do the journey by rail (about 4 and a half hours each way) but the journey us showing rail replacement buses on all routes on the matchday, so you’d be better off with coach travel.

By Car – The postcode of the stadium is CO4 5UP, but you may find that your sat nav system doesn’t recognise this postcode, so try CO4 5JS, which is the nearby Rapid Electronics factory.  There are 700 car parking spaces at the stadium which cost from £6 to £10.  You can pre-book your car parking space in advance via the Colchester United website  If this car-park sells out, the club direct fans to an overspill car park located on the nearby industrial estate (about a 10-15 minute walk away from the stadium) which costs £8.  There is also an extensive residents only parking scheme in operation around the stadium, so you may need to be over a mile away before you can find a free street parking space.

Away fans will be in part of the North Stand behind one of the goals for this game.  Seating is unallocated and can be bought via the Colchester website if you aren’t travelling with the supporters coach.  Pricing for seats varies – the earlier you book the cheaper the ticket.

It hasn’t been a great season for the U’s.  They sit in 21st place in the league, just two places above the relegation slots.  However, there is now a 9 point gap between Colchester and FGR in 24th place.  Colchester have played one more game than Rovers.

So, this game has the makings of being a pivotal game.   A win for Colchester eases their relegation fears – a loss to FGR would give Rovers some hope of overhauling them before the end of the season.

Colchester have 15 points from their 14 home games so their stadium hasn’t really been a fortress.  They also have the second worst defence in the league – only Sutton have conceded more than Colchester’s 55 goals.

The return fixture on the 14th Oct last year saw Rovers record their best victory of the season as they won 5-0.  The goals came from Morton, McAllister, Taylor & Stevens (2).

Colchester’s leading scorer, by some margin, with 11 goals, was on-loan forward Joe Taylor.  It will have been a blow to the club that Luton recalled him early from his loan spell on 8th January.

Colchester have a very young side, often playing with team averaging about 22 years old.  One of their youngsters, striker Bradley Ihionvien (number 48), has been generating a lot of interest.  Many clubs have been scouting the 19 year-old, including Burnley and Crystal Palace.  It may be a case of watching him while you can – he’s out of contract at the end of this season.

Another 19 year old is goalkeeper, Owen Goodman.  Goodman is on loan from Crystal Palace and is one of the youngest keepers in the EFL.

Even younger, at 18 years old, is Charlton loanee, Zach Mitchell (number 18).  He only joined the U’s fairly recently and his debut was described by his then manager as the best debut performance he had ever seen!

Bradley Ihionvien, the 19 year-old striker who has been at Colchester all of his career.

Crystal Palace loanee keeper, Owen Goodman, is only 19.

Noah Chilvers (number 10) – a true Essex man!

Club vice-captain, Noah Chilvers, is Colchester through and through.  He comes from down the road at Chelmsford, Essex.  He joined the Colchester Academy in 2009 and became part of the 1st team squad in 2018.  After his breakthrough season in 2020/21 he won Colchester’s Player of the Season, Young Player of the Season, and Goal of the Season awards. Chilvers, an attacking midfielder, is still only 22, but it’s hard to imagine him anywhere but Colchester.

Centre back Charlton loanee, Zach Mitchell, has made a good early impression.

Adding a touch of glamour is midfielder, Cameron McGeehan (number 13).  At 28, McGeehan raises the average age of the team.  He left Barnsley to spend 3 seasons in Belgium’s 2nd division before arriving in Colchester on a free transfer recently.  McGeehan married ‘Made in Chelsea’ star Tiffany Watson in 2022.  The couple had a son earlier this year.

Cameron McGeehan and Tiffany Watson.

Danny Cowley, with his brother Nicky, are known as the ‘Ant & Dec’ of football.

Colchester sacked their previous manager, Matty Etherington, early in the New Year.  They appointed Danny Cowley as their new boss on 4th January.  The new manager is unbeaten in his 3 games in charge – a 2-2 away draw against Swindon, a 1-1 home draw against Bradford, and a 1-0 win away at Morecambe.

The Cowleys masterminded Lincoln City’s rise from non-league to League 1 before moves to Huddersfield then Portsmouth.  The brothers formerly worked as school PE teachers just 30 odd miles from Colchester, cutting their coaching teeth at Concord Rangers and Braintree Town.  The Cowleys are back to their Essex roots!

Check on what the Colchester fans are talking about on their forum Colchester fans forum

Colchester started life as Colchester Town.  In 1937 it was felt the club should turn professional but this was resisted by some.  As a consequence, a breakaway club was formed and Colchester United was born.  The new club progressed well and were finally elected to the football league in 1950.

Since then, the club have had a brief drop into the 5th tier in the early 1990’s and a brief rise into the Championship between 2006 and 2008.  In 2006 they finished second in the 3rd tier (just behind their Essex rivals Southend Utd) to gain promotion to the Championship.  They played just two seasons in the Championship before being relegated back to the 3rd tier.  Another relegation in 2016 dropped them back to League 2 – some 18 seasons after they last played in the 4th tier.

Colchester are one of 2 professional clubs in Essex so it isn’t surprising that Southend United are their main rivals.  Wycombe Wanderers and Ipswich Town are other rivalries for U’s fans.

The club originally adopted the Colchester coat of arms as their club crest.  But there was a dispute with the local authority in the 1930’s about the use of this logo and this forced a rebranding.  Since then, the crest has featured an eagle.  The U’s are sometimes also known as The Eagles and their mascot is called Eddie!

Eddie the Eagle is Colchester’s mascot.

Colchester play at the 10,000 capacity Colchester Jobserve Community Stadium.  This has been their home since 2008. 

Colchester was a garrison town in Roman times and remains one to this day with the Colchester Garrison currently home to the 16th Air Assault Brigade.

Perhaps the most famous landmark in Colchester today is ‘Jumbo’. Jumbo is a water tower whose proper name is the Balkerne Gate water tower.  It was nicknamed (after a London Zoo elephant) as a term of derision in 1882 by Reverend John Irvine who was annoyed that the tower dwarfed his nearby rectory at St Mary at the Walls.  Jumbo became superfluous to requirements in 1986 and was sold by Anglian Water. Colchester is still trying to work out what to do with it now!

Jumbo – Britain’s largest surviving Victorian water tower.

Colchester is reputed to be the birthplace of three of the best known English nursery rhymes – Old King Cole, Humpty Dumpty & Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, although all three of these claims are disputed. Humpty Dumpty may have been a Civil War cannon that sat on top of a church tower in Colchester or it may have been a (rather overweight) Royalist sniper who sat on a wall taking pot-shots at Parliamentarians.  Who knows!?

Old Colcestrians include personalitites as disparate as Daniel Defoe and Mary Whitehouse.  In 1947 Margaret Roberts (later to become Thatcher) moved to Colchester to work as a research chemist for BX Plastics.  In 1948 she applied for a job at ICI, but was rejected after the personnel department assessed her as “headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated”.