Shrimpsvoices

Just had the very sad news that Joe Woj ex manager of Morecambe has passed away. Joe lived locally and helped bring the Shrimps out of what could only be called the doldrums in the mid to late 80’s. Went on to mange the very successful Colne Dynamos, but on their demise never involved himself in football management after that. His son Alex played for Morecambe reserves for a couple of seasons, maybe in the mid to late 90’s. I really nice guy, who always wanted to know about the Shrimps. Think is fair to say he never recovered from losing his wife a couple of years ago.

A good manager both of the shrimps and Colne Dynamos. Very sad news. RIP Joe

Very very sad news

RIP Joe

Thoughts and prayers with his family at this very sad time

Very sad news - always had time for a chat in the York Hotel, that he frequented regularly. A lovely man.

Sad news. Got morecambe going again after years near thd bottom of the NPL. His son went to my school.

Brought up on Blades Street in Lancaster.....went to Dallas Road infants, juniors and secondary schools. His younger brothers Michael was an ABA boxing champion, and Stephen played cricket for Lancaster in the Northern League. A thoroughly decent bloke.

RIP

R.I.P. Joe, great bloke. Lived yards from the guy when I was a lad. Always had time to show us his ball control skills when we were kicking a ball about on the street as kids.

Scouseport_Shrimp wrote:Brought up on Blades Street in Lancaster.....went to Dallas Road infants, juniors and secondary schools. His younger brothers Michael was an ABA boxing champion, and Stephen played cricket for Lancaster in the Northern League. A thoroughly decent bloke.

RIP

Mick also passed away around 2015. Stephen is still out and about, a builder who still does a bit with property etc.

Yep, very sad news. Top bloke who wanted desperately to get us into the Conference, but was, shall we say, “encouraged” to get us in the top four of the NPL every season with a decent cup run but no further. At the time the board were convinced we would struggle for support in the Conference National part time league, saying publicly that promotion was their goal. But privately saying the costs of travel and overnight stays would bankrupt the club and as we would only get gates of 800.
Hence Joe rightly went to Colne and took many of the players with him.
However, he was a Shrimp through and through, great times in the mid 80s and great cup games v York. The Gateshead home game when we got a “huge” crowd of over 800 when Tibor Szabo scored the second from a Pete Sayer cross lives in the memory as we were so used to getting 250 and losing to the big teams.
Thanks for giving us some happy days and getting the pride back.RIP.

RIP Joe.

An excellent manager and a thoroughly likeable decent chap.

Freez wrote:Yep, very sad news. Top bloke who wanted desperately to get us into the Conference, but was, shall we say, “encouraged” to get us in the top four of the NPL every season with a decent cup run but no further. At the time the board were convinced we would struggle for support in the Conference National part time league, saying publicly that promotion was their goal. But privately saying the costs of travel and overnight stays would bankrupt the club and as we would only get gates of 800.
Hence Joe rightly went to Colne and took many of the players with him.
However, he was a Shrimp through and through, great times in the mid 80s and great cup games v York. The Gateshead home game when we got a “huge” crowd of over 800 when Tibor Szabo scored the second from a Pete Sayer cross lives in the memory as we were so used to getting 250 and losing to the big teams.
Thanks for giving us some happy days and getting the pride back.RIP.

yes RIP Joe, I remember that Gateshead game and that goal, he told me once that he asked for £500 to sign a player that would have got us promoted, but he never got it because we'd never get gates of 1000 !

Freez wrote:Yep, very sad news.
Thanks for giving us some happy days and getting the pride back.RIP.

^ ^ ^

This

Joe is the first Manager I remember as a Morecambe fan. I remember the buzz around him leaving for Colne Dynamoes and the Non League Harlem Globetrotters he was putting together pinching the likes of Stimmo and Dave Lancaster from us.
RIP.

BerlinWaller wrote:
...pinching the likes of Stimmo and Dave Lancaster from us.
RIP.

Wasn't Stimmo the only one he didn't take, as Barrie was our only contracted player?

Sad to hear the news. He gave us some pride back and was the beginning of our recovery.

Looking back, the pride thing is important. And I don’t want to seem ungrateful to the board at the time, as they had come in and pledged to up the budget so Joe could sign decent players, despite still only upping gates by about a hundred. As with any NPL club at the time, you were only, as good as your manager and your budget, and while we did fall short in promotion in his time, we still finished strongly all three seasons.
Our main rivals at the time were, In the first season Stafford and Marine. Second season, Macc, Bangor, Caernarfon and South Liverpool along with Marine, and third season Barrow, Chorley and Hyde.
Of those, only Barrow have made significant progress and it’s taken them a whole while longer.
Then we decided to go with Billy Wright, who did ok, finishing a poor 16th. Then we tried Eric Whalley, who just brought in half a dozen from Accy in the division below and he resigned saying the job was too big for him, and we finished 15th thanks to Brian Griffith takin over. All on a similar budget. So as can be seen, Joe did a decent job and helped create the blueprint for Griff to sign Robbie Armstrong, Dulla, Paul Thommo, Cainy, Coley, Grimmy, Burnsy etc. And here we are in League 1. RIP Joe.

Keith wrote:Wasn't Stimmo the only one he didn't take, as Barrie was our only contracted player?

He was at the time Keith yeah and Stimmo remained with the club into the Eric Whalley era only to be signed by Colne Barleymows part way through the 1988/89 season for our (then) record transfer fee received.

£6000 if I remember rightly ?