1 for Matthew Smith, marked 7.83, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Laurence Maguire has just signed for Colchester United, and for once the answer mattered.
He is 23 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Colchester United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Kevin Piedrahita and Colchester United agree another 1 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
The dugout14 Dec 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Christopher Bennett chose the glass-half-full version of 1‑1; the supporters left with the other one.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Leon Chiwome falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Nobody at Colchester United will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Barnet in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
Duván Riascos and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and James Sasere was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Owura Edwards’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Colchester United needing him to play as if none of it matters.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Matthew Smith signs something — a contract at Colchester United or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Colchester United, and both men came out saying it was fine.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
Next up on the road: Grimsby Town, position 22. The supporters who go will talk about it all week and the ones who do not will check their phones at ten to five.
In brief
SquadTivonge Rushesha is training like a man with a point to make
Two of the goals had his name somewhere on them, which is the afternoon a manager wants from anybody asked to both create and finish. 7.34, and 2 involvements.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Colchester United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 19 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Marked 8.48 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Ezra Mayers was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Leon Chiwome is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Kevin Piedrahita is 35 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Tom Smith’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Colchester United needing him to play as if none of it matters.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Tom Flanagan has written the date down.
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Colchester United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Salford City left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Christopher Bennett left the room before anybody could ask which.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Max Jolliffe has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
Squad5 Oct 2026
James Sasere falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
20 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Colchester United lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
7.68, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Successful dribbles: 22. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Dani Ángel and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.