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BBC News
02-05-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
'Football romantic' Cowley hopes for play-off spot
Colchester United boss Danny Cowley hopes his good final-day record can help to conjure up a place in the League Two U's are 10th following defeats in their past two games, but only two points below Salford City, who are must beat Barrow on Saturday and hope none of Salford, Grimsby Town or Chesterfield are victorious in their games."I'm a football romantic so I always believe anything is possible, for sure," Cowley told BBC Essex Sport."We've had some good moments last day of the season - in my first-ever season at Concord Rangers, Essex Senior League, there were three of us that could all win the league and we won 1-0, that was a good memory."At Maldon & Tiptree we won to get into the play-offs, we'd come from nowhere in our first season in Ryman Division One North."Cowley also tasted success at Braintree, who beat Wrexham in their penultimate game to get into the National League play-off places and managed to hang on by beating Altrincham in their final added: "At Lincoln, last game of the season, we drew with Yeovil to get into the play-offs in our first season back in League Two. Great day that was." The final day has not always been positive for Cowley, though, as his Portsmouth side lost to Accrington at home in front of an empty stadium because of Covid in 2021, allowing Oxford United to claim the final League One play-off spot."Football works in mysterious ways and I'm hoping it will turn the other way for us this time around," said at Doncaster Rovers and Salford City saw Colchester slip from seventh place, which they must now reclaim to have a chance of returning to League One for the first time since Ellis Iandolo said, however, that negative results throughout the season had made the players work even harder."Anything can happen in this league, we're going to do our best to try to get things done on Saturday and hope for the best," he told BBC Essex Sport."Naturally as a player you look at the league, look at the fixtures and play different scenarios out in your head but ultimately we know we can only do what we can do."That is us working as hard as we can to get ourselves in the best shape possible and put a good performance on and I think we deserve that as a group."
BBC News
03-04-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Westley challenges Essex to end wait for trophy
Captain Tom Westley has challenged Essex's younger players to help propel the club to a new era of begin the new County Championship season on Friday with a home game against Surrey, who have dominated the competition for the past three Silverwood has returned as Essex's director of cricket, having previously guided them to the title in 2017, which was followed by a Championship and T20 Blast double in 2019 and the Bob Willis Trophy in 2020."We haven't won anything for a few years now and if we want to be remembered like the Gooch era, the Fletcher era, we need to add a couple more Championships before we're even considered," Westley told BBC Essex Sport."That's going to be the shift in the mentality of the players, to want to create their own legacy - which is going to be a challenge because we don't necessarily have the resources of some counties."What we do have is quality and talent in abundance in the changing room. We're tired now of competing or running them close, it would be nice if we can actually lift a trophy again." Essex, who finished fourth in Division One last season, will again rely heavily on the quality of prolific seam bowlers Jamie Porter and Sam Cook and off-spinner Simon Harmer, while Westley - now 36 - and South African Dean Elgar provide the experience in the batting they also have the likes of Noah Thain, Luc Benkenstein, Robin Das and Charlie Allison, who are looking to gain more game time with the first team."There's always a changing of personnel, people getting a bit older, and some of the younger guys are probably at a stage in their careers now where they want to stamp their authority on the club and want their own success," said Westley."It is an exciting time. In the last three or four years we've been competitive but my challenge to the squad and the management's challenge is you actually want to create your own success."There's only a handful of us who were involved in the trophy success of a few years back, so the challenge is can that next crop of Essex cricketers create their own legacy?"On former England and Sri Lanka head coach Silverwood's return to Chelmsford, Westley added: "He is familiar with the club, and is also desperate and hungry for the club to move forward and be successful (again)."Silvers has changed himself, he's had international experience which has been fantastic for him, and hopefully bringing that knowledge and experience back to Essex will only benefit us."
BBC News
25-03-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Essex's Cox unlikely to keep wicket in early season
England's Jordan Cox is unlikely to keep wicket for Essex in the early months of the season following a broken was three days away from making his Test debut in New Zealand last November when he suffered the injury in a net his hopes of returning to the England squad will now depend on the weight of runs he can produce in the early rounds of this year's County Championship."I was absolutely devastated, it was probably the toughest moment I've had in my career to date," Cox told BBC Essex Sport."Two months sitting on Bondi [Beach] was not what I wanted but it was probably the only thing that kept me sane - if I'd come back here with the weather being as bad it was, I don't know what would have happened," he fracture was not straightforward but a specialist decided that an operation was not the best course of action."I came to Essex to have more opportunity to keep more and I didn't keep at all (last year) because my finger wasn't great, and now we're back to square one, I can't keep again," added Cox."It's one of those where if we desperately need someone I probably can do it but the specialist has said it's probably not a great idea."The break in my thumb was a three-way break. I was supposed to have surgery but apparently it was going to be quite risky, I might not have been able to bend my thumb so we ended up leaving it."The 24-year-old hopes to be able to keep wicket in white-ball cricket later in the summer, but added: "Red-ball cricket, pretty much every ball is coming to you, and I don't know how long it [thumb] would last. "If Essex desperately needed me to do it, I'd do it but it wouldn't be something I'd be looking to do at least the first two, three months of the season." Cox moved from Kent before the start of the 2024 season and scored 918 runs in 11 games in the County Championship, with four centuries, including a highest score of was a total which undoubtedly would have been significantly higher but for a mid-season appendix operation which kept him out until The Hundred got under way in August."Sport is tough, there's so many highs, but there's also so many lows," he added. "It's just about getting back on that horse, believing in yourself and believing that the coaching staff are going to look after you - and at Essex they've been awesome, they've been absolutely phenomenal."Cox has played five white-ball games for England but a highest score of 17 in both 50-over and T20 formats is no reflection of his now, though, he is concentrating on helping Essex make a positive start to the summer, which begins for them on 4 April with a home game against reigning champions and title favourites Surrey."We've got the squad to do it. Essex always fight for championships. If we don't get first place we're going to be pretty annoyed," he said. "I want to set myself high standards, like Dean Elgar - he came over and scored a thousand runs (last year), that's exactly what I wanted to do. I'll be looking to score a thousand runs for the year, that's always my goal - start the year off well and hopefully I can do that."
