The Barry Corr interview

By Dave Bishop

Yellow Sports Dave Bishop caught up with former Southend United great Barry Corr, now first-team coach at Cambridge United, recently to chat about the U’s season – and most especially, their dramatic escape from relegation to League Two on the final day of the campaign.

“I absolutely love football but sometimes it is just so weird,” Corr explained. 

I remember we went to Milton Keynes Dons with around ten games of the season to go. We were in terrible form and really needed to start winning but it was an awful game, completely lacking in intensity and Milton Keynes beat us 1-0. We were poor and they weren’t much better. I never said anything to anyone at the time, but I remember thinking that was pretty much it for us if we couldn’t get a result against a team beside us in the table.”

The former Blues frontman continued: “It is funny how things work out though, the following week we were due to play Burton Albion, but they had three players called up for international matches due to be played and the game was postponed. This gave us a bit of a mini-season break, which was great as our confidence was pretty much on the floor at that point. We spoke about it and our manager, Mark Bonner decided to give the players Thursday to Sunday off to relax and do whatever they wanted to do. It proved to be a real turning point as when they came back, our form turned round completely, and we won five of our last nine games.”

The 38-year-old Irishman spoke about the dramatic finale to the season: “The final day of the season was crazy. We knew what we had to beat already relegated Forest Green and hope that both the MK Dons and Morecambe results went in our favour. 

“After we went 2-0 up early in the first half, I wasn’t particularly worried by what I was watching in front of me as I really couldn’t see them getting back into the game after that. 

“Some of the coaching staff had iPads on the bench, so we knew how the other games were going throughout. The players kept looking over at me, but I was just trying to keep them focused on our game, rather than what was going on elsewhere as that was obviously something we couldn’t control.  

“We heard Exeter City were 3-1 up against Morecambe and that would probably be enough but with Burton and Milton Keynes still scoreless, that one was still very much in the balance.”

Corr continued: “When our game finished with us winning 2-0, I headed straight down the tunnel knowing that we had done our job. The players stayed on the pitch, but I wanted to go in, ring my son Jamie and watch the Sky Sports coverage of the other two games as they came to their conclusion. The Exeter v Morecambe game had thirteen minutes of stoppage time and with MK Dons laying siege to the Burton goal, it was extremely nervy at the end but the results both went our way, much to the delight of everyone involved at the club.

“I was actually watching the games in a room by myself and missed out on the euphoric moment our survival was confirmed but we had done it and stayed up and that was all that mattered. I have to say that it wasn’t even a feeling of joy that was the overwhelming emotion at the end, more relief if I am honest together with a feeling of fulfilment, we had pulled it off and survived.

“Our owners were over from America for the game, and we stayed around in the stadium after the game and had a few drinks to celebrate with them. They have been great, and it is to their credit that they kept faith with us because that certainly might not have been the case at plenty of other clubs. They backed us throughout and never at any time panicked – even when we were in the middle of a poor run. Mark is a very talented young manager, and they are fully aware of what he has achieved at Cambridge so far, and together with all of us on the coaching staff, he will have learned much from everything we went through and experienced this season and be better for it moving forward now.”