September 9, 2013 by stuartnoel - 3 Comments

City go to Town in a real Away from Home

The Daggers Diary team head up the M1 to see what is going on at Northampton when Coventry are at “home”.

When it was announced during the summer that Coventry would be playing home games at Northampton, it was almost a given that we would try to attend. As the fixtures had already been announced, many of the games would be played on a Sunday, which also meant that it wouldn’t clash with our Daggers fixtures.

Of course, we waited to see what kind of attendance would be at the first game against Bristol City, before we could gauge what kind of crowds the club would be attracting, but the two thousand or so that paid to go in meant that we wouldn’t have too much trouble getting tickets.

There is though, a moral issue to be confronted about this. From an outsiders point of view, the whole thing is a minefield of opinion, what’s correct and what isn’t. From what I can understand of the whole issue, the point is that the owners of the club, SISU, won’t pay the rent on the Ricoh Arena, which is owned by a separate company, and it is this that has precipitated the move from the city of Coventry. There have also been two periods of administration, and you then have a club that has been in a right old mess in the last ten years.

It was late in the day that the Football League sanctioned the move but, and I may be wrong here, but does this have some of the hallmarks of when Wimbledon were allowed to move to Milton Keynes? I know that there is an agreement in place whereby the club have to be back in Coventry in three years time, but is there any chance that this will happen? Allowing a club to move out of the place that it represents is never a good move. It took Charlton six years to get back to their home town, Brighton took a couple of years (at Gillingham) to get back home, eventually pitching up at the Withdean and Rotherham spent some time at the soon to be demolished Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield before eventually getting back to town, just a few hundred yards along to road from the their original home. Continue reading →

A Fan of football at any level

Tuesday 26th July 2011 – Afan Lido 0 Coventry City 1

Abi simply cannot get enough of the Port Talbot riviera so she was back again. Tuesday nights fixture at The Marston’s Stadium saw a young Coventry side turn out to face Andy Dyer’s newly promoted Afan Lido.

Gregor Rioch’s academy side got the game under way, and from the outset looked confident in possession, spreading the play well finding success down both wings as well as through the centre.

Striker Jonson Clarke-Harris was proving to be one of Coventry’s biggest threats early on, with his blistering pace he was at the forefront of numerous Coventry attacks. With 20 minutes gone Clarke-Harris found himself with space to attack Afan Lido’s defence, however some great work from Carl Evans ensured the young striker could not develop the attack. Continue reading →

March 12, 2011 by stuartnoel - 0 comments

My first game – Michael Hudson

Many thanks to Historical Kits for picture

Newcastle United 0 Coventry City 1
St. James’ Park
April 17th 1985
Attendance: 19,577

I had just turned nine years old, it was a sunny, end-of-season Wednesday evening, and Newcastle United were playing at home to Coventry City. It was the day that Manchester United beat Liverpool to reach the final of the FA Cup, exactly a week before Everton made the Cup Winners Cup Final, and just under a month until Heysel and the Bradford Fire. Not that I knew any of this at the time. Besides, I had enough to think about just trying to stay upright on a concrete crash-barrier.

We arrived before kick-off, climbing the zig-zag steps up from outside The Strawberry Pub, the doors of which men would famously topple out of five minutes before the game began. There was the smell of cooking hops and barley from the brewery next door, mixed in with open-air urinals, cigarette smoke, watery onions, eggy farts and beer breath. We found a place under the Gallowgate scoreboard, halfway up the open terrace, a little to the left of the goal. Continue reading →

February 24, 2011 by stuartnoel - 0 comments

Swans glide into 2nd place

Abigail Davies travels up north with Swansea to see if they leapfrog Nottingham Forest in one of the tightest Championship races for years. You can follow Abigail at Twitter.com/swanabi

Brendan Rodgers Swansea City should have gone into Tuesday nights game against Coventry full of confidence following back to back league victories over Middlesbrough and Doncaster.

The Swans had found themselves 3-1 down at the Riverside before showing great resilience and spirit to turn around the deficit and bring all three points back to South Wales, scoring 4 goals in the league for just the second time this season. This was a vast contrast to Saturday’s win over struggling Doncaster Rovers – a game where The Swans were in control from the outset taking only 6 minutes to make their dominance count as Angel Rangel’s cross into the box picked out the run of Scott Sinclair who turned the ball in for his 19th goal of the season. Swansea continued to apply the pressure and control the pace of the game with Rangel, Dyer and Dobbie’s link up play causing Doncaster numerous problems out on the right wing. Ashley Williams was on hand to double the home sides lead minutes before the interval with his second goal in as many games as his instinctive reaction header beat Neil Sullivan after his initial shot was parried away by the Doncaster keeper. Williams constantly provided long balls from defence, spreading the play and giving Nathan Dyer even more chance to use his pace and skill. Continue reading →

February 13, 2011 by stuartnoel - 3 Comments

Every dog has its day…or two

On Saturday 7th January 1989 the world of Sutton United changed forever. On that historic day at 5pm over 8,000 fans celebrated the fact that they had just beaten Coventry City, playing in the top level of English football in the FA Cup. The same Coventry City who just 600 days before had held aloft the FA Cup at Wembley Stadium.

Whilst everyone remembers Sutton from this game, they also had their day in the FA Cup sun back in 1970 when the club made it through to the Fourth round, having beaten Dagenham (before they found Redbridge down the back of the sofa), Barnet and Hillingdon Borough in the previous rounds. They were then drawn against the mighty Leeds United, League champions and on their way to the FA Cup final. Under Don Revie there was no way that they would come unstuck against a Non League team (12 months later they lost THAT game to Colchester United though), and a 6-0 victory in front of 14,000, still a record attendance for the club. Continue reading →