LIFE AFTER JUSTIN
Leyton Orient’s young boss Ross: Picking up the players up after his death was tough
FOR Ross Embleton, it is a relief just to have a sleepless night worrying about what team he is going to put out on a Saturday. The restless slumbers the young Leyton Orient manager has been having over this last traumatic year have been caused by a multitude of far more painful problems.
Like the grief of suddenly losing your close friend and boss, the worry of taking over from him - and the grim task of dealing with a family and a club suddenly hit by the scourge of Covid.
In one short, tragically eventful year as a manager, the likeable Embleton has faced all of that. So picking the team for Barrow today must have seemed a doddle.
Handed the job of taking over at the O’s last June after the shocking death of his friend Justin Edinburgh, the man who had led them out of the National League a month before, O’s fan Embleton didn’t really want the role. He stood down to allow Carl Fletcher to take over, but when that didn’t work, was brought back as interim boss, and then asked to take on the role permanently. Former youth development officer Embleton, who has been watching the O’s since taken by his grandad aged six, steered the club to safety - and then saw the season halted by Covid. Then his mum and dad caught the disease but thankfully recovered, and then 17 of his squad and staff tested positive last month, locking the club down again and causing their EFL Cup game against Tottenham to be forfeited. Amazingly, Embleton can still smile. The 38 year old said: “I have a bit of a running joke with the League Managers’ Association. They are really good.
“But they keep ringing me up to ask if I’m alright. I say yes, but the next week there is another crisis!
“It has been a tough year – something I would not wish on anybody. Obviously what happened last summer with Justin was horrendous but having to go through that as a group has made everybody a lot closer.
“When we got the players back again after lockdown, people expressed how free they felt now after the cloud they were under for a lot of last season.” As a young coach trying to pull together a shattered club after Edinburgh’s sudden death , Embleton recalled: “Picking them up was tough. Justin and I had a great relationship. “I said to the players, ‘I‘m going to try to make this place normal again to come to work. If I appear like I’m not suffering, don’t assume that is the case. But someone here has got to try to be normal’.”
The start of this season saw Covid hit the club hard, as 17 O’s players tested positive. An EFL investigation is still underway and the club could still face a fine. It meant the loss of £50,000 TV revenue from the Spurs game, and a two-week lockdown.
Embleton said: “Covid hits so many people in different ways. My mum Jill and my dad Steve got it, both in their 60’s, but thankfully have recovered.
“I’ve been a ballboy here as a kid, a mascot, me and my mates used to sneak on the supporters coach for away games.
“We are all together in this. Whatever challenges I face, we face, we will do our best to overcome them.”