PIERS Hewitt is the latest Southend United fan to have his say. 

It has only been just over three weeks since we got humiliated at home to Doncaster, an evening that truly felt like the nadir of this awful season, whilst feeling relatively safe in the knowledge that we had a new, invigorated and exciting management team about to step into the breach.

But we have since managed to be defeated another four times since then.

My opinion of Sol Campbell and his assistants has not changed, but his own opinion of the size of the job at hand may well have.

Because as it turns out, we have reached a new low even from that 7-1 drubbing.

Sunday afternoon at Dover felt equally like an experience I shall remember for many years, and not for good reason.

Going into it, it genuinely felt like an opportunity to get a win on the board, to give this baseless squad something to build on in the coming weeks, and to potentially cheer something good from the terraces for a change.

But the result coupled with the general performance on the pitch turned the atmosphere at the final whistle into one of the most toxic we have seen for some time.

As almost every player uncomfortably approached the fans, I assume to thank us for our support, they were met with a tirade of abuse, admittedly well on a par with the dross that those fans had just had to watch.

A personal lowlight for me was hearing of a young boy say to his dad on the way out of the ground that "I don't want to support Southend anymore daddy." Heartbreaking.

And then as if this all wasn't bad enough, the following day we had the fall out of a video appearing on social media of Harry Lennon, one of the star under-performers of that afternoon, out drinking with a Dover player who was celebrating their FA Cup giant killing, all while dressed in his club tracksuit.

As a fan who has followed for many years, and obviously got older and seen football in different lights, I now generally find the more positive side of supporting your team, and not letting bad results cloud everything else that goes on, and I know of others with the same mindset.

But the experience of the last few weeks, and this weekend in particular has found me questioning what we are doing.

I am not about to defend the indefensible.

The Harry Lennon saga could possibly be the tipping point in a number of ways.

The whole thing seems to exemplify the season we have had to endure, watching heartless and carefree performances right across the pitch.

And I still, with some of them, believe that we are not just talking about players out of their depth here - some have genuine talent - but the culture that has set in is rotten, and maybe Harry Lennon putting himself out there as the main example of this is a good thing.

Sol Campbell has forced him to train with the under 23s, and there were also reports in the same hour of Liam Ridgewell leaving the club, having only played an impressively bad 51 minutes for us in August.

Maybe it has taken a few weeks but it seems the party may be over for some of these players and Sol is wising up to it.

And so he should, because the people that have really suffered are the fans.

All of these players will move on (thankfully in the eyes of many), but the fans will remain long after their departures.

And while it is not totally true that the fans pay the players wages, the club would be absolutely nothing without us, and perhaps the most worrying aspect about this whole week is the players are sending fans away in their droves, young and old, who are not keen on returning.

I am a father myself to two young children, too young really to go to games.

I don't live in the town and quite a lot of sacrifices have to be made for me to attend matches.

So for me to have all that rewarded by the performances we have had to watch makes me wonder why I should bother.

I fully expect attendances to plummet very soon and season ticket sales to be heavily down on last year as a result of what we are going through.

The awful statistics of this year have been well documented.

And looking back on my time supporting Southend and seeing some bad results, I can take them when I know the players have given their all in return for their generous wages.

But to put it frankly, if the players don't care, then why should we?

It's high time they proved us wrong.