On Tuesday 21st October, Grays Athletic enter this seasons the Essex Senior Cup with an attractive tie, hosting Southend United at the EMR stadium. Kick off is 7.45 pm.

This game is in the 3rd Round, where clubs from Step 4 and above join the competition. In Rounds 1 and 2, a total of 28 games have played and therefore 28 of the 60 sides that entered the competition have already been knocked out, leaving 32 in the 3rd Round.

One tie has already been played in the 3rd Round and resulted in an excellent 5-0 win for Essex Senior League side Little Oakley over struggling National League South opponents, Dagenham & Redbridge.

The Senior Cup has a great history going all the way back to the 1880's. Southend have won the competition on 4 occasions, the last being in 2007/08. Grays have 8 victories with the last success being as long ago as 1994/5. Our 18 appearances in the Final is a record held jointly with Ilford FC.

Southend are of course playing in The Enterprise National League and are currently in the play off places in 7th, with 25 points from 14 games. They are managed by Kevin Maher and his staff include Darren Currie, our former player manager, Mark Bentley and as Head of Football, John Still, who remains the only manager to take 3 different clubs up into the Football League.

We're not 100% sure who will be taking the field for The Shrimpers on Tuesday evening. Most likely it will be their under 19's side managed by Youth Team coach, Danny Heath.

The under 19's are having an impressive season with 5 wins out of 5 in their league and through to the First Round Proper of the F.A.Youth Cup where they will face Bishops Stortford. They are young, hungry Academy players, many of them in their 2nd year at Southend, and will be a very tough nut to crack.

We have had the pleasure of playing The Shrimpers on a number of occasions in the past, many of those games being in pre-season friendlies. However, there have been competitive games in both the Senior Cup and The Essex Thameside Trophy.

Aside from a couple of seasons before the First World War when we played Southend's reserves in the South Essex League (2 wins for Southend, 1 for Grays and 1 draw if you're wondering), we didn't meet in any games until the first friendly in the late 1960s.

In competitive games, the first meeting was in the Essex Thameside Trophy Final at Roots Hall on 24th April 1989, when Grays fought back from being 2-1 down with little time left to win 3-2 with Maverick Bailey coming off the bench to score the winner.

The most recent competitive game between us was on 29th November 2011, when we met in the 4th Round of the Senior Cup again at Roots Hall. The result was 0-0 with Grays prevailing 4-1 in the penalty shoot out.

In total we have met Southend in 7 competitive games with the head to head standing at W4 L3. Four of these games were in the Senior Cup Trophy and three in the Thameside Trophy.

Darren is likely to rotate his squad for this game, so hopefully, there may be a chance to see more of our promising youngsters and new signings. If so, it would be a great test for them and an opportunity to express themselves and catch the manager's eye.

So come down to the EMR on Tuesday 21st for what should be a really interesting and entertaining match against top quality opposition.

Be Loud and Be Proud!!