Santa Claus was
good to Coventry City this year. After a poor run of results – four
league defeats in a row and no wins in seven – the Sky Blues
bounced back with three straight wins over the holiday season. Tight
but deserved home victories over Charlton and Southend were followed
by a comfortable win at Wycombe on New Years Day. Daniel Davenport
asked the pertinent question : when did City last win all three
Christmas games?
There have been
some good Christmas's over the years but you have to go back to 1959
for the last time they recorded three victories – coincidentally
the season after the club won promotion from the Fourth Division. The
run started on Christmas morning – the last time City played on the
25th December – with a 5-3 victory over Wrexham with four goals
from Ken Satchwell and another from Peter Hill watched by 17,500 at
Highfield Road. The following day, as was the tradition back then,
the two clubs met again at Wrexham's Racecourse Ground and Satchwell
was on fire again, scoring two of the goals in City's 3-1 victory
with Ray Straw netting the other.
In those days New
Year's Day wasn't a bank holiday so there were no fixtures on the 1st
January but the following day City entertained York City and
Satchwell made it eight goals in three games scoring twice in a 5-2
home win with Peter Hill, Straw and an own goal also on target in
front of 14,400. City did leave it late however with three goals in
the last nine minutes.
The run of three
victories (six points not nine in those days) lifted City to third
place in Division three, four points behind leaders Bury and three
back from Southampton. City eventually finished fifth as Saints and
Norwich won promotion.
This year's
Christmas run coincided with victories over three of the teams they
defeated in the excellent run in October and resulted in three
doubles being recorded in a matter of seven days. I'm pretty
confident that is a first for the club.
The win over
Southend was particularly satisfying as it was the first home league
win over the Shrimpers since 1960. Since then the Essex club have
made six trips to Coventry and won three and drawn three. Older Sky
Blue fans will remember the embarrassing 5-2 defeat inflicted by them
in the 1963-64 promotion season. Jordy Hiwula therefore ended an
awkward bogey record against Southend.
Several readers thought we had fielded
our youngest ever side in the Southend game with Zain Westbrooke
making his first start. Zain is actually older than the player he
replaced, Luke Thomas, and therefore the starting XI v Charlton was
younger. My age expert Geoff Moore ran the numbers for me and for the
Charlton game the starting XI had an average age of 22 years &
250 days and is the youngest for a league game since September 1983
when the average age of Bobby Gould's starting XI at West Ham was 22
years & 248 days. That line up was as follows: Suckling
(17), Hormantschuk (20), Roberts (27), Grimes (26), Peake (26),
Jacobs (22), Butterworth (18), Withey (23), Platnauer (22), Gibson
(20), Adams (21). The youngest team ever put out by Coventry City was
at Cheltenham this season in the FL Trophy which had an average age
of 21 years & 33 days, 25 days younger than the youngest ever
league side which played at Manchester City in 1980.
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