COLCHESTER UNITED manager Danny Cowley and Aveley boss Danny Scopes – who famously led Concord Rangers during their most successful period as joint managers – will go head-to-head in a Legends game at their old Canvey Island-based club in April 2024. Here is how I know them… and why any self-respecting Essex football fan should go along and watch.
THEIR grassroots origin story ran parallel to mine.
While Danny Scopes and Danny Cowley were cutting their managerial teeth in some style at Concord Rangers, I was honing my sports journalism skills at the club’s local paper, the Echo.
Their success was great for my newspaper work and my articles were invaluable for their profile. It was a perfectly symbiotic, working relationship.
As with all healthy and ongoing reporting arrangements it was not always sweetness and light, mind.
I remember Cowley (who I’d absolutely refer to as Dan here if he did not have the same first name as Scopes) calling me at home on a Sunday morning once – probably about 15 years ago now and the start of their time in charge of Rangers – to snippily ask why I had suggested in a report they were ‘under pressure’.
The Beachboys (Concord’s nickname for the uninitiated) had had some iffy results and I was duty-bound to make the point. It’s what any sports reporter worth their salt should do. I explained that, it was begrudgingly accepted, and we all moved on and built strong ties based on mutual respect.
I admired their determination and dedication and they valued my opinion. It’s how these things should always work.
And in the years that followed I spoke to them a lot. More than Mrs C, as I like to joke.
I interviewed them on the phone, and we spent time together at social events at the clubhouse and on team coaches heading towards some of the most epic performances and fairytale days out any ‘park team from Essex’ could ever wish to experience. My Twitter coverage was especially well received.
My regular contact with Cowley ended about eight years ago after I’d sat in my kitchen having a lengthy chat on the phone with him one evening as he weighed up an inviting career progression option to move on from Braintree Town and join Lincoln.
He was wrestling with the decision to leave his role as a dedicated and popular PE teacher at that time. I pointed out he could go on and achieve his dreams in professional football and then return as a teacher in his later years and tell pupils at FitzWimarc School all about his adventures in the beautiful game.
And after tenures at a Huddersfield Town side which had only recently dropped out of the Premier League, and at modern-day FA Cup winners Portsmouth, he will have plenty to walk them through on the whiteboard!
He even got to pit his wits against my club Leeds and probably my favourite manager of all time, Marcelo Bielsa. That was a lovely thing for me to watch. Especially as the Mighty Whites won that Yorkshire derby!
Cowley’s Essex homecoming to Colchester United this year and a long-overdue shot at managing one of the county’s top-two sides is simply a blog in itself. I’ve never made any secret of just how daft the U’s and Blues were to let him leave our borders. I reckon recent history has proven me right, as the saying goes.
In the least surprising news ever, with two games to go, he is almost certainly about to save Colchester from relegation to the non league and preserve the vital status of Essex having at least one club in the EFL.
Now it might seem I am neglecting Scopes here so far.
But the truth is he is simply one of my favourite Essex non league legends. As he well knows.
In fact, I ended up chatting to him very regularly after Cowley joined the EFL ranks as he was a regular guest on my now mothballed JC Non League Podcast.
Scopsey left the management game for a while then returned to lead Concord to the FA Trophy final at Wembley in 2021, before taking Aveley on an insane charge through back-to-back promotions and earning a crack at a third on the bounce by securing National League South play-off spot this weekend.
That is next-level impressive for so many reasons but – again – it is a blog in itself.
And talking about a blog in itself, I have to mention Cowley’s younger brother Nicky.
There is a very good reason why anybody who knows them well refer to their management set-up as ‘The Cowleys’. They are a true partnership which came together, ironically, after Scopes stepped down from his joint-gaffer role at Concord in 2012 to take a well-earned break from the game.
Nicky, for the record, was a very influential player at Concord, too. In fact, his match-winning displays in central midfield were so important to Rangers’ achievements that without them I’m not sure any of the trio would have got the platform of success needed to go on and thrive as they have.
Now I know I started off here by suggesting my working relationships with the Cowleys and Scopes started with Concord. But that is not the case at all.
During my very early days (over two decades ago, in fact) as a cub sports reporter at the Recorder newspaper, I reported on all of them during their playing days, with the Cowleys starting off at Romford and Scopes at Great Wakering Rovers, where he has equal legendary status.
So there is more than a little romantic serendipity in the fact both of those proud Essex clubs will clash in the final of the FA Vase on May 11. I have no doubt Messrs Cowley and Scopes have already had a chat about their old clubs setting up that big Wembley date.
But before that they have their own rendezvous booked in when they take charge of opposing Concord Legends sides at the Aspect Arena on Sunday, April 28.
I could (yet again) easily write another piece about all the Rangers greats who will dust off their boots and rub in the Ralgex to make up the teams. But just take my word for it, there will be some class acts on show.
Admission is £5 for adults and £2 for kids. An absolute bargain to see what is sure to be a fantastic epilogue to one of Essex football’s most enjoyable stories.