This week I will try and catch up with some of the email correspondence I have received in recent months.
Coventry City's success in producing home-grown talent is well-known in the modern era. Callum Wilson and James Maddison are the stand out products who have both gone on to win international recognition after coming through the club's academy. Others playing league football include Lee Burge, Jordan Willis, Ryan Haynes and Jonson Clarke-Harris. Go back twenty years and we had Gary McSheffrey, Calum Davenport and Chris Kirkland, and in the Jimmy Hill era we saw Willie Carr, Jeff Blockley and Dennis Mortimer leading an array of youngsters developed 'in-house' that went on to have long and successful careers in the game.
It's not that well-known however that the club had a dazzling array of youthful talent in the late 1940s and early 1950s which produced many outstanding players who graced the Coventry City shirt. Back then they played together under the name of Modern Machine Tools and regular reader David Walker wrote to me some time ago to give me some background to that name.
Modern Machine Tools had two factories in Coventry, the original one in Gosford Street, opposite what was then the old Hotchkiss/Morris works (my father and grandfather both worked there) and the purpose-built, newer factory in Maudslay Road, Chapelfields, which later became the Massey-Ferguson design office, both now long gone.
Modern Machine Tools was owned by Harry Weston, former Coventry City Councillor and Mayor, a lovely man, who I met a few times. He had made his fortune from the machine tool business, but then became renowned as a benefactor for all sorts of worthy causes, which presumably included supporting Coventry City. I believe that he died almost penniless, having given most of his fortune away.
So Harry Weston was an early sponsor of the City Juniors team and his company name appeared in the local football results every Saturday night in the Pink. The teams, I believe they ran several different age group teams, were very successful in local junior leagues winning numerous league titles. Amongst the youngsters who started their Coventry City careers in Modern Machine Tools were Reg Matthews, who went on to play for England, Lol Harvey, Frank Austin, Peter Hill and Gordon Nutt.
I receive some unusual questions about the club but a recent email from Andrew Phillips is the strangest. Andrew is researching a book about 1960s pop band, the Applejacks and wanted to know if the group had ever played a 'gig' at Highfield Road before a City match. The Applejacks were a Solihull-based band who had had three top thirty hits in 1964, including the top ten hit, Tell Me When, and were very popular in the Midlands for a couple of years. In November 1964 the football club engaged them to do a 20-minute slot before the England under 23 international at Highfield Road against Rumania. I wasn't at the game but would love to hear from anyone who remembers the performance. Over 27,000 fans attended the game, the biggest audience the group ever had, which saw City's Bill Glazier make his debut for the under 23s in a 5-0 victory for England. The Applejacks, who were fairly unique in having a female bass player, Megan Davies, disappeared into obscurity soon afterwards but did re-form for a charity concert in 2010.
Staying in the 1964-65 season, a friend who is a Villa fan recently sent me a match report of City's FA Cup Third round tie at Villa Park in January 1965. The report is written by famous cricket correspondent John Arlott for the Guardian newspaper and makes fascinating reading. First Division Villa were in the bottom two at the time and City were a mid-table Second Division side who, with their fans, really fancied their chances. Around 20,000 fans travelled to Villa Park - almost half the 47,000 attendance - and easily out-sung the home fans on a miserably wet day. Jimmy Hill picked a negative side with Brian Hill, as an extra defender, in place of striker Ken Hale, and it backfired as Villa ran out 3-0 victors. Tony Hateley was the Villa hero, scoring twice with his feet, something which surprised Arlott who rightly points out that 'Big Tone's' strength was in the air. Some years later Coventry fans saw first hand how 'ill at ease' Hateley was with the ball on the ground.
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