Another trip to Gillingham, another loss, another poor performance and unfortunately, another barrage of abuse for the players!

The Bradford game, the Saturday before, ended in the same manner. Let’s face it; watching the O’s this season hasn’t been a particularly pleasant experience for anyone involved in the club.

I have missed two league games so far this season and can’t even begin to work out how much money and time that equates to. Far too much is the answer but really, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

No matter how we are playing, no matter the dark and dreary northern town we are playing in, no matter if it starts raining when the away end doesn’t have a roof, that buzz at 3 o’clock of watching my Orient out there is unbeatable.

This season has been a mine field of ‘why did I bother’s and ‘I must be mad’s and let’s face it, by the simple fact of supporting Orient, whether you go to games or not is by definition, completely and utterly crazy. There are so many better teams!

There are so many better teams less than ten miles from Brisbane Road but c’mon, that would be far too easy wouldn’t it?

As an Orient supporter, there is nothing as utterly depressing and yet strangely comforting than going up to Walsall on a Tuesday night in January to see the O’s lose 4-0, all the while, losing the feeling in your toes until May! It’s what we do; it’s why we support the Orient, for better or for worse.

That’s why I have been a bit shocked and even saddened by some of the stuff being bandied around the Orient stands at the last few games. There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Orient fans this season have been the model of patience.

There are a lot of fans who would have turned a lot earlier and a lot more viciously than us this year. The massive rise in expectation going into the season and the obvious failure to deliver on and off the pitch by the club means that you can’t bemoan any Orient fan having the major hump with how virtually everything has gone so far.

With that said, something I have been forced to learn by family who have passed the Orient gene onto me and from personal experience is that nothing is simple when it comes to Orient. NOTHING!

After the Bradford game, one of our best players for the past four seasons, Dean Cox, was abused whilst leaving the pitch. Visibly upset he was coaxed away by Scott Cuthbert into the changing room.

Fast forward to the next Saturday and Romain Vincelot, a hero of last season and one of the best players to wear the shirt in the last 20 years was called over and verbally abused by a ‘fan’. Football is passionate, football means the world, football is our life.

This does not excuse grown men or women from calling out players to swear at them, to shout racial slurs at our new Italian staff, to sing songs mocking our own players. All of these and more I heard on Saturday.

To be clear here, I am the first to have a moan and a grumble. Heck, I’ve even been known to boo after a poor performance (I’m ashamed). I am by no means saying that our players are excused of all criticism and that we should have a sterile, neutral atmosphere where we politely clap the players off after a poor performance.

On Saturday I shouted at Romain after being out muscled in a tackle, I moaned at McAnuff for miss-controlling the ball in a good position, I screamed in frustration at Pritchard for missing what looked like a tap in.

It’s a natural reaction, football wouldn’t be football without it but when you get an Orient player misplacing a pass and then hearing your own ‘fans’ singing about how completely (censored) awful they are for the next five minutes, in what world does that help anyone?

To sit in the stand and listen to this vocal minority is a lot worse than watching what is being served up on the pitch, which is far from amazing! We all pay our money, we all love this club, but unfortunately that doesn’t give you the right to abuse players in the extremes I have seen recently.

If someone came to your job and mocked a mistake you made or waited for you to leave the office so they could swear and berate you I would guess you wouldn’t be very happy. These players of ours know they aren’t performing, most of them are riled up after a loss as much as us and they are humans just like us.

Make no bones about it, we are in trouble this season and if results don’t improve very soon then we are in for a relegation scrap. It is down to the players to pull us out of it and get us up the table but if we, the fans aren’t in it with them then we have absolutely no chance.

We have a new manager and whilst looking at his experience and the trouble we are in it’s a strange choice on the face of it. However, he is our manager and he deserves our support, not some of the negative comments floating around social media before he has even taken a training session.

I recently worked out that this is my 20th season supporting the O’s which means that my first was in the fateful 94/95 shambles.

Some things never change. This is Orient, we don’t have a divine right to win every week, we do have a divine responsibility to back our players, our staff, our owner, our Orient.

E10Mess is a weekly podcast available at www.soundcloud.com/e10mess or by searching “E10Mess” on Itunes.  It features interviews with former players, managers and club characters, as well as tribute songs, chat, analysis, moaning and more.