SOMEWHERE in the middle of a sea of blue, somebody yelled: ‘Give me an S...’.

Hundreds of people behind the goal joined in, continuing to spell out the one word they all cherished: ‘O...U...T...H...E...N...’.

By the time the final ‘D...’ signalled a tsunami warning to the visiting Cheltenham fans next door, a tidal wave of noise crashed around Roots Hall. ‘SOUTHEND’, Clap, Clap, Clap, ‘SOUTHEND’.

The North Bank was reborn. And I was drowning in overwhelming nostalgia, as my eyes moistened and yesteryear football memories flooded back.

I half expected Big Roy and Crowny to saunter on to the pitch and bully and blast the opposition into submission.

Lost in my own personal timewarp, I didn’t even know who this “Freddy” bloke was that everyone was getting so excited about.

I was a teenager again, reared on Third Division relegation scraps in the 1980s – magical floodlit victories over Sheffield United and Wolves, and Donut’s penalty flying past Derby’s England number one Peter Shilton to claim Southend’s first top-flight victims on home soil.

I was also from the blessed generation, as Blues plunged into the 1990s on a completely new high.

Fans packed the crude terrace behind “It’s Sammy’s” goal in growing numbers, sounding the battle cry for Webby’s wonders.

Italia 90-bound Gazza and Lineker’s Spurs were humiliated in the League Cup, and the promised land of second tier football was finally achieved after 85 years of dreaming.

Scanning the song-filled faces of the men, women and children forming a noisy choir under that old barrelled roof on Friday night against Cheltenham brought it all back to life again.

Groups of teenage pals singing to the prompting bang of a drummer with everything they could muster – boys and girls, who weren’t alive when I first stood here.

Others excitedly snapped away on mobile phone cameras – which hadn’t been invented when I took my first tentative concrete steps on the North Bank – capturing pictures of the fabled “home end’” which had previously been no more than a legend passed on by dads and grandfathers.

There were plenty of old school faces too, reliving a second childhood just like me.

I bumped into Herman for the first time in years, who feverishly advised me that Kane Ferdinand’s opener was the first goal scored in front of a North Bank full of Blues fans since Derby were dispatched 4-3 in the old First Division in 1994.

Wow! Eighteen years since Roots Hall’s vocal chords had been cruelly severed, replaced by plastic seats for away supporters, without so much of a consent form for the club’s exiled fans to sign.

But let’s hope this “experiment’ becomes the norm, as the North Bank is the atmospheric heart beat of Roots Hall and can be the proverbial extra man when it comes to pushing Paul Sturrock’s promotion seekers over the finishing line this season.

If you need proof, just ask Cheltenham’s calamity keeper, who was left shaking in his gloves following a first-half savaging from the snarling monster behind his back, throwing two of Blues’ goals into his own net during the 4-0 rout.

The Roots Hall Roar is back thanks to the North Bank, and it must never be tamed again.

‘Give me an N...