Thank you, Kev: Maher’s Southend legacy goes far beyond the dugout

Two days. That is all we have had between watching Southend United lift the FA Trophy at Wembley and learning that Kevin Maher, Darren Currie and Mark Bentley are leaving the club. I was still enjoying the first feeling. Now I am trying to make sense of the second.

Southend confirmed the departures today, 19 May 2026, following a review of the season. The club says it is beginning a search for a new head coach. Those are the straightforward facts. The difficult part is what they mean to anybody who has followed this team through the last few years.

I know football moves quickly. Managers come and go, and there are always arguments about results, tactics and whether somebody else could take a team further. I have had my own frustrations watching Southend. But I cannot pretend I like this decision, or its timing. It feels a particularly cold ending to a period when three people gave this club far more than a collection of results.

Kevin Maher was part of Southend long before the dugout

For a whole generation of supporters, Kev was the captain. He arrived from Tottenham in January 1998, became a fixture in midfield and went on to make more than 450 appearances for Southend United. He was not a player who needed to be the loudest or the flashiest to matter. The more you watched him, the more you understood his importance to the side.

He was there for the trips to Cardiff that ended in disappointment in the Football League Trophy. Then came the day in 2005 when Southend beat Lincoln City in the League Two play-off final and finally went up. Kev wore the captain’s armband as we followed that with the League One title in 2006. Two promotions, one after the other, and suddenly we were looking at Championship football.

That is a remarkable chapter of our history on its own. He was twice named our Player of the Season, and those successful mid-2000s teams would not have been the same without him. There are players who pass through a club and become fond memories. There are others who become part of the story you tell when you explain why supporting Southend means so much. Kev belongs firmly in the second group.

He could have left that as his Southend legacy and nobody would have questioned his place in the club’s history. Instead, he came back when the job was about as unattractive as any manager could reasonably imagine.

He returned to a club that needed much more than a manager

When Maher took charge in October 2021, we had just lost our Football League place after 101 years. It was painful enough to be starting again in the National League. What followed away from the pitch was worse. Southend faced financial uncertainty, transfer embargoes, winding-up petitions and periods when staff and players were dealing with problems that should have no place at a professional football club.

Think about that for a moment. We were asking a manager to build a team, prepare for matches and restore some pride, while the very future of the club was being questioned. There were times when supporters wondered whether we would have a Southend United to watch at all. Football results could feel like the least of our worries, which is a dreadful thing to say about the club you love.

Kev, Darren and Mark kept turning up and trying to make the football work. It is easy to talk about loyalty when everything is going well. Loyalty means something else when wages are late, resources are scarce and there is a different worry hanging over the club every week. Whatever anyone thinks of a formation or a substitution, those years must not be reduced to a league table.

There were difficult afternoons, of course. There were matches when we played poorly and opportunities we failed to take. But the team did not collapse under all that pressure. A sense of order returned on the pitch even while so much off it remained uncertain. That matters. It mattered then, and it matters even more when looking back today.

Two Wembley visits, and finally something to hold

Under Maher we got ourselves into the promotion conversation again. Last season brought a place in the National League play-off final, only for Oldham Athletic to beat us 3–2 after extra time at Wembley. That hurt. Anyone who remembers the journey home knows why getting back there was going to mean so much.

This season brought 81 league points, sixth place and another shot at the play-offs. The defeat at Scunthorpe was horribly frustrating. We never really imposed ourselves and the way we went out left questions that deserved to be asked. I have not forgotten any of that simply because we won a cup three weeks later.

But the FA Trophy was still there. After navigating our way through the rounds, we returned to Wembley to face Wealdstone on Sunday. It was a nervous, scrappy final rather than a wonderful display of attacking football. Harry Cardwell hit the post, chances came and went, and after 90 minutes there was still no goal. Then Collin Andeng-Ndi saved two penalties and Gus Scott-Morriss scored the decisive kick. Southend United had won the FA Trophy.

For once we could celebrate a final instead of trying to convince ourselves that losing one was an achievement. We had something real to bring back to Roots Hall: a national trophy, a day full of Southend supporters and memories that will not disappear with the next managerial appointment.

And there was Kev, at the end of it all, celebrating with Bentley and the players. It is a strange thought today that those pictures were the final scenes of his time in charge. If this really had to be the ending, at least his last match gave him and his staff a moment of joy that they had earned.

We can question the football and still respect the man

I do not believe that being grateful means pretending every decision was right. There were matches when I wanted us to play differently, when the substitutions seemed to arrive too late, or when we made an opponent look more comfortable than they should have been. The play-off defeat to Scunthorpe is a recent example. Maher was not above criticism, and he never should have been.

Promotion was the big ambition, and we did not achieve it. The club’s owners are entitled to think about how Southend take the next step. They have to make decisions about the football operation, and those decisions will be judged by what happens afterwards. I understand all of that.

What I struggle with is the idea that a change of manager is somehow a simple answer to everything. Kev inherited problems that would have buried lesser clubs, helped steady the side and took us to Wembley twice in successive seasons. We finished with a trophy in the cabinet. None of that guarantees a manager a job forever. It does demand a proper sense of proportion when his work is assessed.

And the timing? Forty-eight hours after Wembley is difficult to stomach. There will be supporters who think the club needed a fresh start, and others who believe Maher deserved another season. That debate can happen without people forgetting what he gave us. As for me, I would have liked to see Kev given the chance to build on the progress of this season. I am not going to pretend otherwise.

Darren Currie and Mark Bentley deserve their own thank-you

This is not only a farewell to a head coach. Darren Currie and Mark Bentley are leaving too, and I do not want their names lost underneath the bigger headline. They stood beside Maher through the difficult years, helped prepare the players and shared the responsibility when things went badly as well as when they went well.

Bentley has his own place in Southend’s playing history and knows exactly what those promotion-winning years meant. Seeing him embrace Kev after the shoot-out on Sunday was a reminder that there were friendships and shared experiences behind all the coaching titles. Currie’s work was part of the same team effort, even if supporters naturally see less of the preparation that goes on between matches.

There are people behind the scenes whose contribution we will never be able to measure from the stands. That does not mean we should forget to appreciate it. So this thank-you belongs to Darren and Mark every bit as sincerely as it belongs to Kev.

Whatever happens next, this part of our story is theirs

The club will appoint another head coach. There will be new players, new systems, new debates on the terraces and hopefully the push for a return to the Football League that we all desperately want. The search starts now, and whoever comes in deserves a fair chance to succeed. But today is not the day to pretend that a new name will erase everything that came before.

Southend United have had enough upheaval over the years to know that progress is rarely a straight line. A new chapter can be necessary without making the people from the previous one disposable. I hope the club remembers that as it moves forward. I certainly will.

Thank you for standing by Southend

The Wembley trophy is a lovely way to remember Maher’s final afternoon, but it is not the whole reason he matters to me. I will remember the captain who helped take us from League Two to the Championship. I will remember the manager who returned when Southend were at their lowest. I will remember a group of coaches who kept going when it would have been very easy to walk away.

I am disappointed by the decision, and I wish we were not having this conversation two days after one of the happiest moments of our recent history. But my disappointment with the club’s choice should not be allowed to overshadow my thanks to the people leaving. They have given Southend supporters genuine reasons to be proud again.

No matter who sits in the dugout next, nobody can take those promotions, those difficult years survived, the play-off journey or that FA Trophy away from them. They have earned a lasting place in this club’s history.

Thank you, Kev. Thank you, Darren and Mark. I hope you all get the success you deserve in whatever comes next. Up the Shrimpers.