Three weeks ago I wrote about Coventry City's nursery club in 1940s, Modern Machine Tools and how many of the teenagers who played for that team progressed to playing league football with City. I had an email from John Green.
Thanks for a great article on Modern Machine Tools team last Saturday. In the early days they played in the Coventry Minor League and their home games were played at Spencer Park. I was a goalkeeper and played on a couple of occasions as a stand-in for the injured Reg Matthews. Names I recall from those occasions, Albert Sneddon, John Quinney, Billy Gray, Jimmy and Peter Hill. I had signed for the club on a Sunday evening when Charlie Elliot, who was the chief scout, visited my home following a trial that morning at Highfield Road. A successful Cheylesmore Youth Club team who played in the Youth Club League were invited to play against the Modern Machine team and as goalkeeper I was monitored and coached through the game by Billy Morgan, who had been first team keeper before the war. I went on to play in the City 'A' Team but my father wanted me to finish my apprenticeship and so ended my time at Coventry City.
The 'A' team was City's third XI and in the late 1940s they played in the Birmingham Combination alongside some strong Midland non-league sides such as Nuneaton Borough, Atherstone, Bedworth as well as the 'A' teams from Wolves, West Brom and Birmingham City. I found a programme from January 1948 with John in goal for them for a game at Stafford Rangers. Also in the City team were three players who had played first team games, Bob Ward, Jack Evans and Freddie Gardner. Coventry-born Gardner was more famous as a cricketer, playing over 300 games for Warwickshire between 1947-61.
Loan signing Matty James became Coventry City's seventh captain of the season when he led the team out in the home game with Watford two weeks ago. He follows Liam Kelly, Kyle McFadzean, Michael Rose, Matty Godden, Dom Hyam and Fankaty Dabo. Initially I believed this to equal the club record set in 2016-17 (the League 1 relegation season) when seven different players took the armband. Subsequently I discovered that in 2010-11 eight different players skippered the team.
In 2010-11 Lee Carsley was club captain and led the team in every league game until just before Christmas when he was injured and Michael Doyle took over on four occasions. James McPake skippered the team in a League Cup tie at Morecambe. In January Doyle went on loan to Sheffield United and Keiren Westwood took the armband. In early March in a disastrous home game with Bristol City the club used three different captains – Westwood started but was injured and Marlon King took over but then received a red card for striking Bristol's Damian Stewart and Aron Gunnarsson ended the game with the armband. Richard Wood became the seventh captain for four games before Sammy Clingan made it eight captains when he took over for the final eight games of the season.
A while back Marshall Stewart told me a story about former City secretary Bernard Hitchener. Bernard served the club for over forty years, first as assistant secretary before the war and after the war as secretary until 1963 when he became ticket office manager. Marshall takes up the story.
One of Bernard's tasks at reserve games on Saturday afternoons when City's first team were away from home was to answer the telephone at Highfield Road whenever it rang from the away ground with the latest score. He then passed the news - often bad in the darkest days of the fifties - to the chairman in the directors' box. The chairman's expression communicated the bad news to nearby supporters and it gradually rippled around the ground. Otherwise, when City were losing, the fans had to wait until half time until a member of the ground staff trudged around the pitch to display the latest scores on the pitch-side scoreboard.
What a difference from these days when every game is shown on ifollow, social media reports every incident and goal from every game and the days of a hand operated scoreboard are long gone.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment