It is the day of the annual team photo at Brisbane Road, a staple of any season and an afternoon that always makes the league opener feel that little bit closer. Everyone appears all smiles but there is no getting away from the immense sadness that lingers at Leyton Orient, a club still coming to terms with the death of their manager Justin Edinburgh. When Orient kick-off their League Two campaign against Cheltenham here on Saturday, a key piece of the promotion-winning jigsaw will be missing and, while staff and players continue to mourn, they are determined to build on Edinburgh’s legacy.
There will not be a dry eye in the house on an emotionally supercharged occasion; Edinburgh’s wife, Kerri, and his children, Cydnie and Charlie, will be among 15 family members at the game. In the home dug-out lays a wreath of red and white roses, adorned with Edinburgh’s name. In the away technical area is a wreath courtesy of Norwich, visitors last weekend.
Across two hours Martin Ling, the director of football, Ross Embleton, the interim head coach, and Jobi McAnuff, the captain and interim player-coach, touch on the overwhelming support from all corners of the country since the shattering news seven weeks ago that Edinburgh had died aged 49 after a cardiac arrest at the gym. “Justin is very much going to be in everyone’s thinking,” Ling says. “He got us back into the Football League and he’s not here to take us through.”
For Embleton, who attended primary school up the road and grew up watching Orient, taking the reins is bittersweet. “The big thing I get is people say to me ‘congratulations’ and every time they say that to me I say, ‘I don’t know about that’ and they’ll say, ‘Yeah, but you know what I mean’ – and I do,” Embleton says. “When I first stepped into the role, I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to tell everybody: ‘Oh my God, I’m interim manager of Leyton Orient.’ For however long that’s going to be, it’s an incredible feeling, it’s something you almost dream about. But, it still doesn’t feel quite right to be enjoying the opportunity I’ve got. I suppose it will not feel like that until things find a rhythm or a bit of normality.”
Ling knew Edinburgh inside-out – the pair were professionals at Southend, when Edinburgh cleaned Ling’s boots – and he speaks candidly about handling a delicate situation. For instance, he believes telling players football is unimportant would do Edinburgh’s zest for the game an injustice.
“I remember I was writing a text to Kerri and I read it 25,000 times before pressing send because I’m thinking: ‘I’m on eggshells here, am I upsetting her?’ It’s something that you don’t expect to ever have to deal with and you’re not given any manual on how to deal with it. It has been testing, there have been times where I have not felt OK but I have expressed to the players that it is OK to not be OK.
“There are times when you have a little bit of a lull and you pick yourself up but we have kept ploughing forward. The one thing I always put into my head is: ‘What would Justin expect from me in this situation?’
“I have had to deal with my own demons – the depression, on two occasions – so I suppose I am more open in my emotions and also I know what took me to not being very well and that was because I suppressed my feelings, and I kept suppressing them and they eventually exploded, so I encourage people to talk about it. I’ve told Jobi: ‘It’s all right to laugh, Jobi. He would expect us to laugh. It would be all right to cry. If you feel down, you feel down.’ A lot of people have asked me how I’ve felt because they are worried about me because of my previous but because I know how to deal with me, it allows me to help other people.”
McAnuff explains how the elation and ecstasy that surrounded promotion turned to despair and devastation little more than a month later. “I’ll be honest, we speak about him pretty much every day,” McAnuff says. Players have been offered counselling by the PFA and LMA but, in terms of Saturday’s team talk, McAnuff is clear. “I don’t need to say: ‘Let’s do it for Justin.’ Everyone wants to do it for Justin. He was very much a person that lived for the day – make the most of every opportunity that you’ve got – that was his big, big thing. Every day in training, it was: ‘Don’t leave it behind, leave everything on the pitch’ and in light of what has happened, we shouldn’t need any reminding of that. I take my lead from him. He was always somebody that tackled things head on – there was never any shirking – and I have tried to use that in terms of what has been a dreadful situation.”
Glenn Hoddle, Teddy Sheringham and David Pleat were among those at a memorial service at Chelmsford Cathedral a fortnight ago and, before that, around 40 Orient players and staff, wearing club ties at Kerri’s request, attended a private funeral at Bentley crematorium, near Brentwood. Josh Wright, a close family friend and the last player Edinburgh signed for the club, did a personal reading. “When Kerri insisted that every player was there, it really pleased me,” Ling says. “She saw how special those players were to him.”
When news of Edinburgh’s death hit, Ling, Embleton and the players Josh Coulson and Craig Clay were in Boston visiting Nigel Travis, the US-based Orient chairman. “We shared some very emotional times,” Embleton says.
Shortly after Edinburgh went into cardiac arrest, the club spoke to Liverpool and Manchester United about how they handled Gerard Houllier and Sir Alex Ferguson being hospitalised. Throughout the grieving process, the club have handled things with dignity and class. On Saturday a card will be placed on each seat in the South Stand, which supporters will be encouraged to hold aloft to spell out a visual mosaic that will read ‘JE3’, a nod to the foundation set up by Edinburgh’s family in his memory, which is campaigning to make defibrillators compulsory at sports clubs and facilities.
Cheltenham fans have raised more than £2,000 for the foundation and a 24ft x 12ft flag with the words “He Made You Dream Again’ will be paraded around the pitch before kick-off.
There have been challenging moments over pre-season; some players headed down the tunnel at Rushden & Diamonds in tears. Embleton and Ling travelled together to an LMA managers’ meeting at Walsall last week. “I’m not saying people avoided us … they semi-avoided us because it is tough,” Ling says.
Looking down on the dug-outs from the west stand, Embleton pauses. “The last time I stood in that technical area for a competitive game,” he says, “I was winning the league standing next to Justin Edinburgh … I walked into the stadium last Saturday, and that was the first time I had come here to prepare for a game of football since Justin had passed. A bloke shook my hand outside and said good luck for the game and I walked inside and burst into tears. That just got me, I don’t know why. I know there will be things the crowd drag up to show their love and support for Justin and how that gets you at the time, you cannot prepare for that. We know the emotion is coming.”
