Chris Phillips says he felt sick when he realised 20 years of handwritten Southend notes had been stolen from his parents' car. The bag held notepads covering every Southend United game he has covered since 2006, a personal archive built up over years of matchdays. The theft happened while they were watching the Eastbourne Open in East Sussex on Saturday.
The archive Phillips built
Phillips has been clear about what was taken and why it matters to him. "I'm a massive geek, so they're something I take with me and are sentimental," he said. He also said, "They've been everywhere - all around the country and to all the games."
That is what makes this more than a story about stolen stationery. These were his handwritten statistics, built across Southend games since 2006, and Phillips said he may rewrite all the numbers in a new set of notepads, even if it takes months. The scale is plain enough, but so is the attachment. He described the moment as, "It was a horrible realisation. I felt sick."
What happens next
Phillips has not given any sign that the notes are gone for good. "I just hope someone can find them discarded somewhere and reunite me with them," he said. That hope sits alongside a practical reality: if they do not turn up, he is prepared to start again.
Southend's own context keeps moving in the background, with the club having won 3 and lost 2 of their last 5 FA Cup matches in the supplied sample. But the focus here is the missing archive, and whether those notepads can still be recovered before Phillips begins rebuilding them from scratch.
Written by Sam Whitfield with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 1 outlet. How we work →