Peter Carroll posed an interesting question recently. He asked how many players have pulled on a Coventry City jersey but have never kicked a ball in Coventry.
It's probably easier to list those that have played for the club at the Ricoh, before the move to St Andrews in 2019. There are eleven in total.
Dom Hyam
Max Biamou
Jordan Thompson
Jordan Shipley
Amadou Bakayoko
Liam Kelly
Jodi Jones
Morgan Williams
Jack Burroughs
Sam McCallum
Brandon Mason
Out of 31 players who have appeared for the club this season and are still at the club or out on loan, 23 have never played for the club at the Ricoh. There may be several of the 23 who will never play at the Ricoh including current loanees Leo Ostigard, Matty James, Ben Sheaf and Viktor Gyokeres.
Several of the current squad have played at the Ricoh, against City. Marko Marosi appeared for Doncaster, Kyle McFadzean has played there for Crawley, MK Dons and Burton. Matty Godden appeared for Stevenage and Peterborough. Jamie Allen played for Rochdale and Burton (scoring for the latter) and Ben Wilson appeared for Bradford City. Interestingly all five played at the Ricoh in 2018-19.
Peter seems to remember Nahki Wells, Bristol City's scorer in City's Bank holiday victory , scoring against us previously. He did, for Bradford City in 2013-14 when he scored a hat trick in a 3-3 draw at Valley Parade. He left Bradford for Huddersfield a few weeks later for a sizeable fee and has subsequently played for Burnley, QPR & Bristol City. I understand he is one of the highest paid players in the Championship currently. That game in 2013 incidentally, was his only other appearance against the Sky Blues so his record against us is played two and four goals.
Mark Browne is a City fan with also strong allegiances to Millwall. He collects City programmes and wanted to know about a pre-season friendly game at Highfield Road in August 1990. The game was against non-league Halesowen Town and I believe it was part of the deal that took Halesowen's Andy Pearce to Highfield Road earlier that summer. Normally these types of game would take place at the non-league club's home ground to generate some extra revenue for the selling club. City were well into their pre-season campaign and four days earlier had defeated Czech side Banik Ostrava 3-2 at Highfield Road. John Sillett put out a strong team but the non-leaguers pulled off a surprise 1-0 win with a 73rd minute goal from Lee Johnson in front of a miniscule gate of 735. Also in the Halesowen team were Sean Flynn and Tim Clarke who both later signed for City.
Mark also reminded me that in a pre-season friendly game in Germany in 2003 the Sky Blues fielded two Scottish international trialists – Simon Donnelly and Phil O'Donnell. Donnelly, a midfielder, played over 150 games for Celtic and won 10 Scottish caps (when he would have been a teammate of Gary McAllister) before moving to Sheffield Wednesday in 1999. After his trial at Coventry he moved back to Scotland to St Johnstone and later played for Dunfermline and Partick Thistle.
O'Donnell, another midfielder, played for Motherwell and Celtic and won one Scottish cap in 1993 and joined Wednesday at the same time as Donnelly. He came from Bellshill in Lanarkshire where McAllister grew up so that was probably the connection with City. After his trial at Coventry he rejoined Motherwell and played for them until tragically suffering a fatal heart attack in a game in 2007.
The
friendly, against German fifth division side Suhler SV, was won 2-0
with goals from Donnelly and Craig Pead.
If you have a
question about Coventry City's history please drop me an email at
clarriebourton@gmail.com and follow me on Twitter @clarriebourton
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Jim, my second game ever , aged 8, was the 2-0 win against United in 1968. The (less obvious) reason I remember it was that I couldn't see the game because of the beehive hairdo of the lady in front of me. (Nothing says 1968 like a beehive). So my dad passed me to her and I happily watched the 2nd half on her lap with her Thermos of coffee and some biscuits.I do wonder sometimes if she is still alive and, if so, does she remember it? I do hope so.
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